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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14193 ***
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY
+
+By
+
+THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.
+
+
+BARRISTER-AT-LAW
+
+AUTHOR OF "LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS," ETC. ETC.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+LONDON
+
+T. WERNER LAURIE
+
+CLIFFORD'S INN
+
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON]
+
+
+_TO_
+
+MRS TOM HESKETH
+
+
+_L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as
+possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that
+those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of
+books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the
+compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy,
+with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its
+follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable
+reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I
+have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a
+labour which has been to me a delight.
+
+THORNTON HALL.
+
+
+_As love plays a prominent part in at least twenty of these stones, and
+is only really absent from one or two of them, I venture to hope that my
+good friends, the reviewers, who have been so kind to my previous books,
+will not find fault with my title, which, more accurately than any other
+I can think of, describes the nature and scope of my book_.
+
+T.H.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAP. PAGE
+      I. A PRINCESS OF PRUDES                          1
+     II. THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH                      21
+    III. THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS                  36
+     IV. THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON          51
+      V. A GHOSTLY VISITANT                           62
+     VI. A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY       74
+    VII. A PROFLIGATE PRINCE                          87
+   VIII. THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS                        96
+     IX. A QUEEN OF COQUETTES                        110
+      X. THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER     127
+     XI. A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELOPEMENT               136
+    XII. TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF                       148
+   XIII. THE WICKED BARON                            165
+    XIV. A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_                         177
+     XV. THE MERRY DUCHESS                           195
+    XVI. THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER            207
+   XVII. THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM          222
+  XVIII. A NOBLE VAGABOND                            231
+    XIX. FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS                     243
+     XX. A PEASANT COUNTESS                          256
+    XXI. THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN                    266
+   XXII. TWO IRISH BEAUTIES                          282
+  XXIII. THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS                        298
+   XXIV. THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS                         316
+    XXV. THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES                 326
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON           _Frontispiece_
+  FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND         _to face page_ 18
+  MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON                 98
+  SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH                      110
+  LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH                      184
+  HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS                      252
+  ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER                   266
+  MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY                        288
+
+
+
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A PRINCESS OF PRUDES
+
+
+Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the "Merrie
+Monarch's" passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
+day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him "sitting
+and toying with his concubines," there was, it is said, only one of them
+all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
+simplest, and most designing of prudes, _La belle Stuart_.
+
+When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
+queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
+girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
+future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
+carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
+Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
+blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of France, where
+he had found a fresh field for his valour.
+
+Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
+Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
+frequently "lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre," and even a
+crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
+brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
+mother's pride.
+
+Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
+established herself as the pet _par excellence_ of the Court of France.
+With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
+every gallant, from "Monsieur" to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
+romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
+King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
+her "big sweetheart." So devoted was His Majesty to _La belle Ecossaise_
+that, when her mother talked of taking her away to England, he begged
+that she would not remove so fair an ornament from his Court, and vowed
+that he would provide the child with a splendid dower and a noble
+husband if she would but allow her to remain.
+
+But Madame Stuart had other designs for her pretty daughter; and when
+Henrietta Maria took boat to England to shine again at the Court of
+Whitehall, under her son's reign, Frances Stuart joined her retinue, and
+found herself transported from the schoolroom to the most brilliant and
+dangerous court in Europe. When this transformation came in her life
+Walter Stuart's daughter was just blossoming into as sweet and fragrant
+a flower as ever bloomed in woman's guise. Fair and graceful as a lily,
+with luxuriant brown hair, eyes of violet, and a proud, dainty little
+head, she had a figure which, although yet not fully formed, was
+faultless in its modelling and its exquisite grace. And these physical
+charms were allied to an unspoiled freshness, which combined the artless
+fascinations of the child with the allurements of the woman.
+
+Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of
+Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can
+scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England,
+the French "Mademoiselle," as she was called, was hailed as a new
+revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the
+bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.
+
+To the "Merrie Monarch's" senses, sated with riper beauties and more
+stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose
+compared with exotic hot-house flowers. She was, he vowed, so "dainty,
+so fresh, so fragrant," that none but the sourest of anchorites could
+resist her--and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well. Almost at
+sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her
+the battery of all his fascinations. Was ever maid placed, on the
+threshold of life, in so dangerous a predicament? For the King, who was
+her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a
+past-master in the conquest of woman. But, in response to all his
+advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a
+merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the
+gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another "big
+playfellow" to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did
+not wish to know more. He might kiss her--_vraiment_--why not? and that
+Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told
+that "he would kiss her for half an hour at a time," caring little who
+looked on.
+
+And all her other Whitehall lovers--a legion of them, from the Duke of
+Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the
+same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish
+prudery? "She was a child," says Count Hamilton, "in all respects save
+playing with dolls"--a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet,
+one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper
+than is usually associated with so much simplicity.
+
+She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.
+Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new
+era of nursery games which she inaugurated. Jaded gallants and sedate
+Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in
+blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper with the Stuart maid as Lady of
+Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked--or affected to
+be--one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting
+on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at "I love my love with an
+A because he is Amorous"; "I hate him with a B because he is Boring,"
+and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for,
+Pepys says, "some of them were very witty."
+
+The little madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred
+environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
+exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
+big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
+castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
+toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
+and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
+no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
+Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
+hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
+with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
+unseemly goings-on.
+
+And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
+of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
+had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
+Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
+all his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
+for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
+by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
+summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp--until what was
+"play to the child" began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
+world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
+elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
+ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
+away and not be so naughty again.
+
+Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
+treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
+playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
+Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
+stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
+himself more to win the favour of a maid.
+
+     "Having provided himself," says Hamilton, "with a great
+     number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
+     obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
+     them; at the same time offering her his most humble
+     services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
+     her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
+     of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
+     Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of
+     laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the
+     room. Thus ignominiously was sounded the death-knell of
+     Arlington's hopes!"
+
+George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in
+England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and
+tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of
+them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic;
+and for a time she revelled in his comradeship. He first won her heart
+in the following fashion. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting
+and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and
+hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. "I can do better than that,"
+exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. "Give me two candles." The candles
+were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious
+mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were
+extinguished, while _La belle Stuart_ paraded after him, clapping her
+hands and laughing in her glee.
+
+Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour. Rollicking George
+was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was
+privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had
+ever enjoyed.
+
+     "Since the Court has been in the country," he confessed,
+     "I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You
+     know that the _déshabille_ of the bath is a great
+     convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to
+     their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all
+     their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully
+     acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all
+     other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any
+     lady at Court for a well-turned arm and a fine leg, but
+     she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
+     After all, a man must be very insensible to remain
+     unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions."
+
+It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless
+encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest
+where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont,
+taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of
+flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and
+persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.
+
+Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her
+riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.
+
+     "I followed them," he says, "up into Whitehall, and into
+     the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked,
+     talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and
+     changing and trying one another's by one another's heads
+     and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse,
+     with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes,
+     little Roman nose, and excellent _taille_, is now the
+     greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if
+     ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least
+     in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which
+     I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady
+     Castlemaine."
+
+How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her
+girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know
+that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis
+Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry,
+in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.
+
+And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her
+witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other
+than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her
+Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that
+she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged
+Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a
+rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an
+artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was
+carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the
+cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of
+throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked
+on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments,
+between the pair--"with ring and all other ceremonies of church service
+and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking,
+evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion
+with great spirit."
+
+And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely
+saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.
+
+     "The King," to quote Hamilton again, "who seldom
+     neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom
+     failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most
+     indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment;
+     however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's
+     appearing with her in such a situation, being confident
+     that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all
+     the advantages which these opportunities could afford
+     Miss Stuart."
+
+As a matter of fact Charles's _maitresse en titre_ regarded the
+"Mademoiselle" as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
+"She is a lovely little thing," she once said patronisingly, "but she is
+only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest
+lover in the world." But she was not long left in this unsuspicious
+Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the "child" had made a conquest
+of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held
+the throne of his heart.
+
+Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by
+Gramont with "the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a
+'calash') that had ever been seen." The Queen herself and Lady
+Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to
+take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to
+create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and
+eloquence to secure this concession from the King.
+
+     "Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested
+     to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen
+     retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King
+     was driven to distraction between the cajoling and
+     threats of the two rival beauties."
+
+It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's
+unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in
+the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.
+
+According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the
+"prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she
+was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a
+King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a
+dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a
+bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever
+found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of
+Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as _La belle Stuart;_
+though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition "to be a
+Duchess" that she declared she was "ready to marry any gentleman of
+fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour."
+
+And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so
+cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his
+passion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she
+treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.
+
+     "Mr Pierce tells me," Pepys writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he
+     do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of
+     all business in the world, and to the open slighting of
+     the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by
+     while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in
+     her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him
+     going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or
+     any of the Nobles, when they would ask where the King is,
+     they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
+     meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly
+     disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court."
+
+Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were
+her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which
+she moved a splendid, but unassailable Queen, for every man who came
+within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
+One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the
+youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to
+England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration
+of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was
+asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe
+Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace
+of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in
+love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of
+his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on
+millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the
+faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the
+verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.
+
+It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the
+handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most
+insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good
+looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such
+a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
+who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
+maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.
+
+Small in stature, deformed in figure--a caricature of a man, His Grace
+of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
+Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
+butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
+should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
+England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
+The Court was struck with consternation--and convulsed with laughter.
+Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
+experience. But there could be no doubt about it. _La belle Stuart_, who
+had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
+gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, was not only
+smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
+assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
+reputation a King had been powerless to sully.
+
+Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
+vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
+old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
+had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
+night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
+Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
+pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
+triumph, told him that at the moment _La belle Stuart_ turned him away
+from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
+rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.
+
+Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. "Come with me," Lady
+Castlemaine answered, "and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
+truth;" and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
+his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
+sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
+open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King
+
+     "found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
+     Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
+     probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
+     King, who of all men was usually one of the most mild
+     and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of
+     Richmond in such terms as he had never used before. The
+     Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his
+     master and King justly irritated. The first transports
+     which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous. Miss
+     Stuart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge,
+     the Thames flowing close beneath it. He cast his eyes
+     upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and
+     fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable
+     of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying
+     a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces
+     that were poured on him."
+
+But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart showed a very
+different metal. She was furious at the indignity of the King's
+intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as
+his Royal ears had never listened to. She was no slave, she said, with
+flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to
+receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with
+honourable intentions. She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as
+she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no
+power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and
+throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was
+denied her in his Court! And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by
+pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, "to leave
+her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night."
+
+Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his
+heart. He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he
+would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be
+revenged. On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled,
+and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an
+audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging
+her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a
+convent. So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen
+and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine
+promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.
+
+One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost
+to him for ever. He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the
+Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large
+revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his
+_maitresse en titre_; but to all his seductions and bribes the
+inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye. No future, however
+dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.
+"I hope," said the King at last, "I may live to see you old and
+willing," as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with
+the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his
+sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the
+offence.
+
+But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind. It had long been her
+ambition--from childhood, it is said--to be a Duchess, and she was not
+going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world. What
+might come after was another matter. A Duchess's coronet and a
+wedding-ring were her immediate goal. Thus it came to pass that one dark
+night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to
+London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach. Through the
+night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long
+before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.
+Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles's long intrigue had
+ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.
+
+On hearing the news the King was beside himself with anger. He forbade
+the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court--he even dismissed
+his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a hand in the
+plot.
+
+But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
+presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
+honeymoon. Within a year--so powerless is anger against love--Charles
+summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
+Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
+splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
+a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
+says Pepys,
+
+     "she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the
+     Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
+     to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
+     out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn."
+
+How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's "nose
+out of joint" must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
+doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
+maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
+coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
+prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
+maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
+Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
+Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
+shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
+tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once "did take a
+pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
+Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
+himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
+horrid shame."
+
+[Illustration: FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]
+
+But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To the
+consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with small-pox,
+
+     "by which," to quote Pepys again, "all do conclude she
+     will be wholly spoiled, which is the greatest instance of
+     the uncertainty of beauty that could be in this age; but
+     then she hath had the benefit of it to be first married,
+     and to have kept it so long, under the greatest
+     temptations in the world from a King, and yet without the
+     least imputation."
+
+That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to Louis
+XIV., in which he says that "her matchless beauty was impaired beyond
+recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever."
+During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with anxiety,
+visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
+sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of
+her was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.
+
+With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
+to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
+the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the "Sun-King" had
+sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
+Louis's favour; and _La belle Stuart_ was not slow to realise that at
+last her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least
+until the Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of
+Lady of the Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the
+scene of so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.
+
+For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books
+and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of
+years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her ducal
+robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her
+nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with
+part of it an estate, to be known as "Lennox's Love to Blantyre"; and to
+this day "Lennox-Love" perpetuates, like the Britannia of our coins, the
+memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women who have ever
+driven men to distraction by their beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH
+
+
+A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
+allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the
+haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
+rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms,
+statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell
+mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure
+or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares
+and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the
+moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish
+found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.
+
+But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common
+consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth
+Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at
+the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. She was,
+as all the world knew, only the daughter of Thomas Linley,
+singing-master and organiser of the concerts, a man who had plied
+chisel and saw at the carpenter's bench before he found the music that
+was in him; but, obscure as was her birth, she reigned supreme by virtue
+of a loveliness and a gift of song which none of her sex could rival.
+
+It is thus little wonder that Elizabeth Linley's fame had travelled far
+beyond the West Country town in which she was cradled. George III. had
+summoned her to sing to him in his London palace, and had been so
+overcome by her gifts of beauty and melody that, with tears streaming
+down his cheeks, he had stroked her hair and caressed her hands, and
+declared to the blushing girl that he had never seen any one so
+beautiful or heard a voice so divinely sweet.
+
+Charles Dibdin tried to enshrine her in fitting verse, but abandoned the
+effort in despair, vowing that she was indeed of that company described
+by Milton:
+
+    "Who, as they sang, would take the prisoned soul
+    And lap it in Elysium."
+
+The Bishop of Meath, in his unepiscopal enthusiasm, declared that she
+was "the link between an angel and a woman"; while Dr Charles Burney,
+supreme musician and father of the more famous Madame d'Arblay, wrote
+more soberly of her:
+
+     "The tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting
+     as her countenance and conversation. With a
+     mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation,
+     she was possessed of the double power of delighting an
+     audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of
+     brilliant execution, which is allowed to very few
+     singers."
+
+To her Horace Walpole also paid this curious tribute:
+
+     "Miss Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The
+     king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in
+     so holy a place as oratorio."
+
+Such are a few of the tributes, of which contemporary records are full,
+paid to the fair "Nightingale of Bath," whom Gainsborough and Reynolds
+immortalised in two of their inspired canvases--the latter as
+Cecilia--her face almost superhuman in its beauty and the divine rapture
+of its expression--seated at a harpsichord and pouring out her soul in
+song.
+
+It was inevitable that a girl of such charms and gifts--"superior to all
+the handsome things I have heard of her," John Wilkes wrote, "and withal
+the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen"--should have
+lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if
+not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a
+foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty
+compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and
+rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean
+her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of
+pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold
+shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had promised her hand to an
+elderly, unattractive wooer called Long, a man almost old enough to be
+her grandfather.
+
+That her heart had not gone with her hand we may be sure. We know that
+it was only under the strong compulsion of her father that she had given
+her consent; for Mr Long had a purse as elongated as his name, and to
+the eyes of the poor singing-master his gold-bags were irresistible. Her
+elderly wooer loaded his bride-to-be with costly presents; he showered
+jewels on her, bought her a trousseau fit for a Queen; and was on the
+eve of marrying her, when--without a word of warning, it was announced
+that the wedding, to which all Bath had been excitedly looking forward,
+would not take place!
+
+Mr Linley was furious, and threatened the terrors of the law; but the
+bridegroom that failed was adamant. It was said that, in cancelling the
+engagement, Mr Long was acting a chivalrous part, in response to Miss
+Linley's pleading that he would withdraw his suit, since her heart could
+never be his, and by withdrawing shield her from her father's anger.
+However this may have been, Mr Long steadily declined to go to the
+altar, and ultimately appeased the singing-master by settling £3,000 on
+his daughter, and allowing her to keep the valuable jewels and other
+presents he had given her.
+
+It was at this crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was
+ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome
+by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his
+appearance at Bath--a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined
+to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of
+love was none other than Richard Brinsley Sheridan, grandson of Dean
+Swift's bosom friend, Dr Thomas Sheridan, one of the two sons of another
+Thomas, who, after a roaming and profitless life, had come to Bath to
+earn a livelihood by teaching elocution.
+
+This younger Thomas Sheridan seems to have inherited none of the wit and
+cleverness of his father, Swift's boon companion. Dr Johnson considered
+him "dull, naturally dull. Such an excess of stupidity," he added, "is
+not in nature." But, in spite of his dulness, "Sherry"--as he was
+commonly called--had been clever enough to coax a pension of £200 a year
+out of the Government, and was able to send his two boys to Harrow and
+Oxford.
+
+The Sheridan boys had been but a few days in Bath when they both fell
+head over heels in love with Elizabeth Linley, with whom their sister
+had been equally quick to strike up a friendship. But from the first,
+Charles, the elder son, was hopelessly outmatched.
+
+     "On our first acquaintance," Miss Linley wrote in later
+     years, "both professed to love me--but yet I preferred
+     the youngest, as by far the most agreeable in person,
+     beloved by every one."
+
+Indeed, from a boy, Richard Sheridan seemed born to win hearts. His
+sister has confessed:
+
+     "I admired--I almost adored him. He was handsome. His
+     cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes--the finest in
+     the world--the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a
+     tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same
+     playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that
+     was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
+     delighted the family circle."
+
+Such was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when, in the year 1769, he first set
+eyes on the girl, who, after many dramatic vicissitudes, was to bear his
+name and share his glories. From the first sight of her he was
+hopelessly in love, although none but his sister knew it. He was little
+more than a school-boy, and was content to "bide his time," worshipping
+mutely at the shrine of the girl whom some day he meant to make his own.
+
+He gave no sign of jealousy when his elder brother made love to her
+before his eyes--only to retire quickly, chilled by a coldness which he
+realised he could never thaw; or even when his Oxford chum, Halhed, his
+dearest friend and the colleague of his youthful pen, fell a victim to
+Elizabeth's charms, and, in his innocence, begged Sheridan to plead his
+suit with her. Halhed, too, had to retire from the hopeless suit; and
+Richard Sheridan, still silent, save, perhaps, for the eloquence of
+tell-tale eyes, held the field alone.
+
+It was at this stage of our story that a grave element of danger entered
+Elizabeth Linley's life, with the arrival at Bath of a Major Matthews, a
+handsome _roué_, with a large rent-roll from Welsh acres, and a
+dangerous reputation won in the lists of love. At sight of the fair
+Nightingale in the Assembly Rooms this hero of many conquests was
+himself laid low. He was frantically in love, and before many days had
+passed vowed that he would shoot himself if his charmer refused to smile
+on him. Her coldness only fanned his ardour; and his persecution reached
+such a pitch that in her alarm she appealed to young Sheridan for help.
+
+Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young lover than such an
+appeal and the necessity for it. It was a tribute to her esteem, and to
+his budding manliness, which delighted him. Moreover, it gave him many
+opportunities of meeting her, and talking over the situation with her.
+At any cost this persecution must end; and the result of the conferences
+was that an excellent plan was evolved. Richard was to worm himself into
+the confidence of the Major, and, in the character of friend and
+well-wisher, was to advise him, as a matter of diplomacy, to cease his
+attentions to Miss Linley for a time. Meanwhile arrangements were to be
+made for the Nightingale's escape to France, where she proposed to enter
+a convent until she was of age--thus finding a refuge from the
+persecution to which her beauty constantly subjected her, and also from
+the scandal which the Long fiasco had given rise to, and which was still
+a great source of unhappiness to her.
+
+The plot was cunningly planned and worked smoothly. The Major was
+induced by subtle pleading to leave Miss Linley in peace for a time;
+and, to quote Miss Sheridan:
+
+     "At length they fixed on an evening when Mr Linley, his
+     eldest son and Miss Mary Linley were engaged at the
+     concert (Miss Linley being excused on the plea of
+     illness) to set out on their journey. Sheridan brought a
+     sedan-chair to Mr Linley's house in the Crescent, in
+     which he had Miss Linley conveyed to a post-chaise that
+     was waiting for them on the London road. A woman was in
+     the chaise who had been hired to accompany them on this
+     extraordinary elopement."
+
+For elopement it really was, although ostensibly Sheridan was merely
+playing the part of a friendly escort to a distressed lady, whatever
+deeper scheme, unknown to her, may have been in his mind. After a brief
+stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
+towards Lille.
+
+It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
+hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
+could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
+had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
+and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
+the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.
+
+To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
+her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
+Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had travelled
+many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
+make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
+the convent at the altar.
+
+     "It was not," she wrote to him later, "your person that
+     gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
+     tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
+     that were the motives which induced me to love you."
+
+The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
+duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
+anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
+left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
+to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
+discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
+_Chronicle_:--
+
+     "Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for
+     that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away
+     from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and
+     that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my
+     knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters,
+     nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid
+     himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a
+     gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a
+     treacherous Scoundrel.--THOMAS MATTHEWS."
+
+Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue. Sheridan
+promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the
+Major was compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult. But,
+so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a
+second meeting--and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.
+
+The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few
+furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were
+struggling together on the ground. Matthews, however, being much the
+stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken
+sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face. "Beg your life, and I will
+spare it," he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man. "I will
+neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain," was the unflinching
+answer.
+
+     "Matthews then renewed the attack, and, having picked up
+     the point of one of the swords, ran it through the side
+     of the throat and pinned him to the ground with it,
+     exclaiming, 'I have done for him.' He then left the
+     field, accompanied by his second, and, getting into a
+     carriage with four horses which had been waiting for him,
+     drove off."
+
+Sheridan, unconscious and apparently dying, was driven from the Downs to
+a neighbouring inn, "The White Hart," where for a time he hung betwixt
+life and death. On hearing of his condition Miss Linley (who at the time
+was singing at Cambridge) travelled post-haste to his bedside; and,
+tenderly nursed by his wife and his sister, the wounded man slowly
+fought his way back to strength.
+
+One would have thought that, after such a tragic experience and
+observing the mutual devotion of the young couple, their parents would
+have relented and given their approval of the union, however improvident
+and inexcusable it might appear to them. But, on both sides, they were
+obdurate; and Mr Sheridan carried his opposition to the extent of
+extracting from his son a promise that he would not even see his wife.
+
+But love laughs at parents' frowns and usually triumphs in the end. When
+Elizabeth Linley went away to London to sing in oratorio, her husband
+followed her; and, in the _rôle_ of hackney coachman, had the pleasure
+of driving not only his wife but her father, home nightly from the
+concert-room, without either of them suspecting his identity. When at
+last he revealed himself to his wife, her delight was so great as to
+leave no doubt of the sincere love she bore him. Many a secret meeting
+followed; a final joint appeal ultimately broke down the obduracy of the
+parents; and once again Sheridan led his bride to the altar, to make her
+finally and securely his own.
+
+For a time Richard Sheridan and his Nightingale found a haven in a
+remote, rose-covered cottage at East Burnham. These were days of
+unclouded happiness, when, the "world forgetting and by the world
+forgot," they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
+were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
+of Mr Long's £3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
+now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
+voice--she actually refused offers of nearly £4000 for one short
+season--but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice for his
+own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
+back on fame and fortune.
+
+But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
+such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
+began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
+destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
+which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
+Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
+country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
+Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.
+
+Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
+extravagances more suited to an income of £5000 a year than the paltry
+£150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
+and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
+song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
+dinners and to attend his wife's _soirées_. Sheridan was in his element
+in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
+would gladly have changed it all for "a little quiet home that I can
+enjoy in comfort," as she told her husband--above all, for the Burnham
+cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.
+
+Perhaps if Sheridan had never left the cottage and the roses, his name
+would never have been known to fame. His ambition needed some such
+stimulus as this spasm of extravagance to wake it to activity. He must
+now make money or be submerged by debts; and under this impulse of
+necessity it was that he wooed fortune with _The Rivals_, and awoke to
+find himself famous and potentially rich. Other comedies followed
+swiftly from his eager and inspired pen--_The School for Scandal_, _The
+Duenna_, and _The Critic_--each greeted with enthusiasm by a world to
+which such dramatic triumphs were a revelation and a delight. Sheridan
+was not only the "talk of the town"; he was hailed universally as the
+brightest dramatic star of the age.
+
+It is needless to say that Sheridan's fame was a delight to his wife.
+
+     "Not long ago," she wrote to a friend, "he was known as
+     'Mrs Sheridan's husband.' Now the tables are turned, and,
+     henceforth, I expect I shall be just Mr Sheridan's wife.
+     Nor could I wish any more exalted title. I am proud and
+     thankful to be the wife of the cleverest man in England,
+     and the best husband in the world!"
+
+That Mrs Sheridan adored her husband is evident from every letter she
+wrote to him. She addresses him as "my dearest Love" and "my darling
+Dick," and vows that she cannot be happy apart from him. "I cannot love
+you," she declares, "and be perfectly satisfied at such a distance from
+you. I depended upon your coming to-night, and shall not recover my
+spirits till we meet." But through her letters runs the same hankering
+after the old simple, peaceful days--the days of love in a cottage. "I
+could draw," she writes, "such a picture of happiness that it would
+almost make me wish the overthrow of all our present schemes of future
+affluence and grandeur."
+
+But greatly as he loved his wife, Sheridan was now too much wedded to
+his ambition to listen to such tempting. He had conquered fame with his
+pen; now he aspired to subdue it with his tongue. In 1780, while he was
+still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages;
+and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow
+law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the
+oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries.
+Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he
+had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever
+been heard in our tongue--notably by his historic speech in the trial of
+Warren Hastings, to the preparation of which his wife had devoted
+herself body and soul.
+
+Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband
+in Westminster Hall, she wrote:--
+
+     "It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the
+     astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the
+     breasts of every class of people. Every party prejudice
+     has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence
+     and goodness.... What my feelings must be, you can only
+     imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some
+     difficulty that I can 'let down my mind,' as Mr Burke
+     said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.
+     But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this
+     moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last
+     week."
+
+But Mrs Sheridan's day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near
+to its close. She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of
+fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his
+marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal
+seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved
+sister, began to show themselves in her. Her illness was as swift as it
+was, happily, painless. She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly
+watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was
+pitiful to see.
+
+     "During her last days," says Mrs Canning, her devoted
+     friend, "she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
+     sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
+     niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
+     out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
+     a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
+     an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
+     and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
+     poor heart would have burst in the conflict."
+
+And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
+a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
+"choir invisible." Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
+Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
+the world has ever known "between an angel and a woman." As for Sheridan
+he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
+to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS
+
+
+The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
+far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
+George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
+"threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
+the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
+Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
+was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
+of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
+in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
+wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
+career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
+assassin's knife.
+
+His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
+second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
+playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which in
+its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
+not, as Pope says,
+
+    "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,"
+
+at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
+Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
+Arran, said: "There is not so much as one farthing towards defraying the
+expense of his funeral."
+
+Nor have the men of Villiers' blood had any monopoly of adventure. Their
+wives and daughters have seldom been content to lead the unromantic life
+which happily contents so many of their sex. From Barbara Chaffinch,
+whose intrigues secured the Earldom of Jersey for her husband in William
+III.'s reign, to the Lady Adela Villiers who ran away with Captain
+Ibbetson, a handsome young officer of Hussars, to Gretna Green and the
+altar, they have played many diverse and sensational _rôles_ on the
+stage of their time.
+
+It was but fitting that George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey, should
+make a Countess of the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, in whose veins was an
+adventurous strain as marked as in his own; for she was the fruit of one
+of the most dramatic unions recorded in the annals of our Peerage. A
+year before she was cradled her mother was Anne Child, the richest
+heiress in England--the only daughter of Robert Child, head of the great
+banking firm at Temple Bar, and a descendant of Francis Child, the
+industrious London apprentice who married the daughter of his master,
+William Wheeler, goldsmith, whose riches and business he inherited.
+
+"Old Child," as Anne's father was familiarly known, had many
+aristocratic clients who used his cheques and overdrew their accounts;
+but the most prodigal, as also the most ingratiating, of them all was
+the young Earl of Westmorland, who, not content with making large
+demands on the banker's exchequer and patience, had the audacity to
+aspire to all his wealth through his daughter's hand.
+
+Anne was perhaps as naturally flattered by the attentions of a lord as
+she was fascinated by his handsome face and figure and his courtly
+manners; but the father had other designs for his heiress than marrying
+her to a prodigal young nobleman. "Your blood, my lord, is good," he
+once told him; "but money is better."
+
+Lord Westmorland was not, however, the man to be turned aside from the
+gilded goal on which he had set his heart. If he could not wed the
+heiress with her father's blessing, he would dispense with the
+benediction. That he _would_ marry her he was determined; and Anne was
+just the girl to assist a bold lover in such an ambition.
+
+One day, so the story is told, Lord Westmorland decided to bring the
+matter to a crisis. He had been dining with Mr Child, and, after the
+wine had circulated freely, he said, "Now, sir, that we have discussed
+business thoroughly, there is another matter on which I should be
+grateful for your opinion." "What's that?" enquired the banker, beaming
+benevolently on his guest, as a man who has dined well and is at peace
+with the world. "Well, sir, suppose you were deeply in love with a girl
+who returned your love, and that her father refused his consent. What
+would you do?" "What should I do?" laughed the banker, "why, run away
+with her, of course, like many a better man has done!"
+
+What more direct encouragement could an ardent lover want? It is
+possible that the next morning the banker had completely forgotten the
+conversation, and his vinous approval of runaway matches; but, two days
+later, he was destined to have a rude awaking. In the middle of the
+night he was aroused by the watchman to learn that his front door had
+been found open; and a little later the alarming discovery was made that
+his daughter had flown. His suspicions fell at once on that "rascally
+young lord"; and they were confirmed when he found that the Earl, too,
+had disappeared, and that a chaise, with four galloping horses, had been
+seen dashing northwards as fast as whip and spur could drive them.
+
+The banker was furious. He raged and stormed as he ordered his servants
+to procure the fastest horses money could command; and with lavish
+promises of reward to the postboys he set out in hot pursuit of the
+fugitives. Luckily they had no long start; and, with better horses, more
+frequent changes, and a heavier purse, he had little doubt that he would
+soon overtake them. But the chase was sterner and longer than he had
+imagined. Cupid lends wings to runaway lovers. Fast as Mr Child's
+sweating horses raced, they gained but little on the pursued. Through
+the long night, the next day, and the following night the desperate race
+continued--through sleeping villages and startled towns, over hill and
+moor, until the borderland grew near. Then, between Penrith and
+Carlisle, the quarry was at last sighted.
+
+Mr Child's horses, urged to a final effort by the postboys, slowly but
+surely reduced the interval; and now inch by inch they draw abreast of
+the runaway chaise. The moment of triumph has come. Mr Child, with body
+half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt,
+shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand
+waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's
+near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes
+later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
+which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.
+
+Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
+runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
+pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
+street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.
+
+For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
+and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
+his daughter won her way back into his heart, and to her he left the
+whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
+than £100,000 a year.
+
+It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
+who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
+the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
+dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
+she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
+noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
+tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
+luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
+lily.
+
+It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
+looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
+prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
+to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
+aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
+rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
+the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
+to, resist. And one May day in 1804--almost twenty-two years to the day
+after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green--the Lady Sarah
+became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.
+
+From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
+more than a child) took the position of a Queen, to which her rank,
+wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
+unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her _salon_ was a second Royal
+Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
+to the "Empress of Fashion." She entertained kings with a regal
+splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
+and the Tsar Nicholas I. were all delighted to do honour to a hostess so
+captivating and so queenly.
+
+At Middleton Park, her lord's Oxfordshire seat, she dispensed a
+hospitality which was the despair of her rivals. Her retinue of servants
+seldom numbered less than a hundred, and many a week her guests, with
+their attendants, far exceeded a thousand. Money was squandered with a
+prodigal hand. The very servants, it is said, drank champagne and hock
+like water; her housemaids had their riding horses, and dressed in silks
+and satins. Among her thousands of guests were such men as Wellington
+and Peel, Castlereagh and Canning, all humble worshippers at her shrine;
+and Lord Byron who, in his gloomy moods, would shut himself in his
+bedroom for days, living on biscuits and water, and stealing out at dead
+of night to wander ghost-like through the neighbouring woods. These
+moods of black despondency he varied by turbulent spirits, when he would
+be the gayest of the gay, and would challenge his fellow-guests to
+drinking bouts, in which he always came off the victor.
+
+Lady Jersey had no more ardent admirer than Byron, whose muse was
+inspired to many a flight in honour of
+
+                          "The grace of mien,
+    The eye that gladdens and the brow serene;
+    The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
+    Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair."
+
+And among her army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could
+stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was
+such superabundant energy enshrined in a form so beautiful and stately.
+
+     "Shall I tell you what Lady Jersey is like?" wrote
+     Creevey. "She is like one of her numerous gold and silver
+     dicky-birds that are in all the showrooms of this house.
+     She begins to sing at eleven o'clock, and, with the
+     interval of the hour when she retires to her cage to
+     rest, she sings till twelve at night without a moment's
+     interruption. She changes her feathers for dinner, and
+     her plumage both morning and evening is the most
+     beautiful I ever saw."
+
+She seemed indeed incapable of fatigue. Tongue and body alike never
+seemed to rest, from rising to going to bed.
+
+     "She is really wonderful," says Lady Granville; "and how
+     she can stand the life she leads is still more wonderful.
+     She sees everybody in her own house, and calls on
+     everybody in theirs. She is all over Paris, and at all
+     the _campagnes_ within ten miles, and in all _petites
+     soirées_. She begins the day with a dancing-master at
+     nine o'clock, and never  rests till midnight.... At ten
+     o'clock yesterday morning she called for me, and we never
+     stopped to take breath till eleven o'clock at night, when
+     she set me down here more dead than alive, she going to
+     end the day with the Hollands!"
+
+A life that would have killed nine women out of ten seemed powerless to
+touch her. When far advanced in the sixties she was acknowledged to be
+still one of the most beautiful women in England, retaining to an
+amazing degree the bloom and freshness of youth. And when she appeared
+at a fancy-dress ball arrayed as a Sultana, in a robe of sky-blue with
+coral embroideries and a turban of gold and white, she was by universal
+consent acclaimed as the most beautiful woman there. It may interest my
+lady readers to learn that she attributed her perpetual youth to the use
+of gruel as a substitute for soap and water.
+
+Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most
+fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair
+fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and
+repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity.
+So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage
+alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of
+men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. "Diable!" laughed the
+General, "you must be very little sure of yourself if you are afraid to
+be alone with little Lord John!"
+
+She was merciless to any of her lady friends who lapsed from virtue, or
+in any way, however slight, offended the proprieties. But the vials of
+her fiercest anger were reserved for her mother-in-law, the
+Dowager-Countess, whose shameless intrigue with the Prince Regent
+scandalised the world in an age of lax morals; and the outraged Princess
+Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have
+anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to
+the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was
+the Regent at this slight that "the dotard with corrupted eye and
+withered heart," as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the
+Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned to its owner.
+
+A few days later, however, the Countess had her revenge. At a party in
+Cavendish Square she was walking along a corridor with Samuel Rogers
+when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
+himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
+stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
+contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
+and laughingly said, "I did that well, didn't I?"
+
+It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of "Almack's" that Lady Jersey
+won her chief fame--Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
+in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
+hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
+however great, were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
+which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.
+
+Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
+and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
+to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
+at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
+Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
+doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
+face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
+of fashion and conquest--for, by the rules of the club, male members
+were selected by the ladies, and _vice versâ_. But beyond all doubt the
+destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
+Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club--Princess Esterhazy,
+Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
+Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
+counted.
+
+     "Three-fourths even of the nobility," says a writer in
+     the _New Monthly Magazine_, "knock in vain for admission.
+     Into this _sanctum sanctorum_, of course, the sons of
+     commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
+     'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
+     have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
+     themselves."
+
+     "Many diplomatic arts," writes Captain Gronow, "much
+     _finesse_, and a host of intrigues were set in motion to
+     get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
+     rank and fortunes entitled them to the _entrée_ anywhere,
+     were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
+     for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
+     and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is
+     needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was
+     not innocent of abuses."
+
+The fair ladies who ruled supreme over this little dancing and gossiping
+world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at
+the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+_chapeau bras._ On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to
+ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when
+the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped
+forward and said, "Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers," whereupon
+the Duke, who had a great respect for orders and regulations, quietly
+walked away.
+
+Another inflexible rule of the club was that no one should be admitted
+after eleven o'clock; and it was a breach of this regulation that once
+overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington with humiliation. One evening, the
+Duke, who had promised to meet Lady Mornington at Almack's, presented
+himself for admission. "Lady Jersey," announced an attendant, "the Duke
+of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted." "What o'clock
+is it?" she asked. "Seven minutes after eleven, your Ladyship." She
+paused for a moment, and then said with emphasis and distinctness, "Give
+my compliments--Lady Jersey's compliments--to the Duke of Wellington,
+and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of
+exclusion is such that, hereafter, no one can complain of its
+application. He cannot be admitted." And the Duke, whom even Napoleon
+with all his legions had been powerless to turn back, was compelled to
+retreat before the capricious will of a woman.
+
+Such an autocrat was this "Queen of Almack's."
+
+     "While her colleagues were debating," says the author of
+     the "Key to Almack's," "she decided. Hers was the
+     master-spirit that ruled the whole machine; hers the
+     eloquent tongue that could both persuade and command. And
+     she was never idle. Her restless eye pried into
+     everything; she set the world to rights; her influence
+     was resistless, her determination uncontrollable."
+
+"Treat people like fools, and they will worship you," was her favourite
+maxim. And as Bryon, her intimate friend, once said, "She was the
+veriest tyrant that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to
+shake their cap and bells as she willed."
+
+It was at Almack's, it is interesting to recall, that Lady Jersey first
+introduced the quadrille from Paris.
+
+     "I recollect," says Captain Gronow, "the persons who
+     formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
+     They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
+     Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
+     Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti."
+
+It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
+shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.
+
+     "What scenes," writes Mr T. Raikes, "have we witnessed in
+     these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
+     _débutantes_ at the commencement of a waltz, what
+     giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
+     owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
+     opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
+     of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
+     cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
+     became a scene of feud and contention."
+
+But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
+divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
+many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
+victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
+Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
+twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
+waltz.
+
+For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
+world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
+inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
+her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a
+tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
+abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What ---- nonsense Lady Jersey talks!"
+and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor
+humour." But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
+and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
+and personal charm.
+
+The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
+sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
+her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
+her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
+bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
+unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the
+darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the
+slayer of her hopes was not stayed. Her husband, whose devotion had so
+long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest
+son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the
+crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken
+from her.
+
+For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one
+January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the
+world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have
+ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON
+
+
+The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the
+far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly
+seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud
+'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain,
+and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.
+
+Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley "a low wretch, a mad
+assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He
+was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by
+devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in
+his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle,
+whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the
+Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And
+this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy,
+and ended it in tragedy.
+
+As a boy, he was subject to violent attacks of rage, when it was not
+safe to approach him; and his madness grew with his years. Strange tales
+are told of him as a young man. We are told that he would spend hours
+pacing like a wild animal up and down his room, gnashing his teeth,
+clenching his fists, grinning diabolically, and uttering strange
+incoherent cries. He would stand before a mirror, making horrible
+grimaces at his reflection, and spitting upon it; he walked about armed
+with pistols and dagger, ready at a moment to use both on any one who
+annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
+and hatred of all around him.
+
+When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
+into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
+Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
+with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
+petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
+obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
+appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.
+
+Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
+calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
+became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
+and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.
+
+     "I still retain," writes a Mr Cradock in his "Memoirs,"
+     "a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
+     who, with the Ladies Shirley, his sisters, frequented
+     Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
+     the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
+     character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
+     but in the evening he became the terror of the
+     inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
+     to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
+     was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
+     behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
+     afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
+     My father's house was situated midway between Lord
+     Ferrers's lodgings and the Town Hall, where the race
+     assemblies were then held. He had, as was supposed,
+     obtained liquor privately, and then became outrageous;
+     for, from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to
+     the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a
+     silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies. He was
+     then secured for that evening. This was the last time of
+     his appearing at Leicester, till brought from
+     Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.
+
+     "It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady
+     Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him,
+     no greater precaution had been used with respect to his
+     own safety as well as that of all around him. Whilst
+     sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always
+     urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters
+     ventured to come with him to the races, they had an
+     absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises."
+
+Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
+lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
+surrounded himself with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
+both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
+eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
+tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
+from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
+figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.
+
+But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
+became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
+wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
+such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
+or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
+the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
+And this is how it came.
+
+The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
+received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
+his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
+lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
+this delicate post--for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
+such a "tool" he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
+who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
+his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
+Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
+was possessed of a conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
+could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.
+
+In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
+adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
+it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
+unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
+hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
+his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
+the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
+to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.
+
+One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
+steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
+was on a Friday; and punctually at two o'clock, the hour appointed, Mr
+Johnson made his appearance, and was ushered into his Lordship's study.
+Unknown to him, Lord Ferrers had sent away his housekeeper and his
+menservants on various pretexts; and, apart from the Earl and the
+steward (the spider and the fly), there was no one in all the great
+house but three maidservants, whose chief anxiety was to keep as far
+away as possible from their mad master.
+
+With a courteous greeting Lord Ferrers invited Mr Johnson to take a
+seat; and then, placing before him a document, which proved to be a
+confession of fraud and dishonesty in his office of receiver, he
+commanded his steward to sign his name to it.
+
+On reading the confession which he was ordered to sign, Mr Johnson
+indignantly refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. "You
+refuse to sign?" asked the Earl with ominous calmness. "I do," was the
+emphatic reply. "Then," continued his lordship, producing a pistol, "I
+command you to kneel." Mr Johnson, now alarmed and awake to his danger,
+looked first at the stern, cold eyes bent on him, and then at the pistol
+pointed at his heart, and sank on one knee. "Both knees!" insisted the
+Earl. Mr Johnson subsided on the other knee, looking calmly at his
+would-be murderer, though beads of perspiration were standing on his
+forehead. A moment later a shot rang out in the silent room, and the
+steward fell to the floor mortally wounded. Laying down the smoking
+weapon, Lord Ferrers opened the door and called loudly for assistance.
+The horrified servants, who had heard the report, came, huddled and
+fearful, at his bidding. One he despatched for a doctor, and, with the
+assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom.
+When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside,
+trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's
+chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours
+at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on
+the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in
+agony at his house, a mile away.
+
+     "As soon as it became known," to quote the account given
+     by an eye-witness in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, "that
+     Mr Johnson was really dead, the neighbours set about
+     seizing the murderer. A few persons, armed, set out for
+     Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard they saw the
+     Earl going towards the stable, as they imagined, to take
+     horse. He appeared to be just out of bed, his stockings
+     being down and his garters in his hand, having probably
+     taken the alarm immediately on coming out of his room,
+     and finding that Johnson had been removed. One
+     Springthorpe, advancing towards his lordship, presented a
+     pistol, and required him to surrender; but his lordship
+     putting his hand to his pocket, Springthrope imagined he
+     was feeling for a pistol, and stopped short, being
+     probably intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to escape
+     back into the house, where he fastened the doors and
+     stood on his defence.
+
+     "The crowd of people who had come to apprehend him beset
+     the house, and their number increased very fast. In about
+     two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the garret window, and
+     called out: 'How is Johnson?' Springthorpe answered: 'He
+     is dead,' upon which his lordship insulted him, and
+     called him a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody
+     but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again assured that
+     he was dead, he desired that the people might be
+     dispersed, saying that he would surrender; yet, almost in
+     the same breath, he desired that the people might be let
+     in, and have some victuals and drink; but the issue was
+     that he went away again from the window, swearing that he
+     would not be taken.
+
+     "The people, however, still continued near the house, and
+     two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one,
+     Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a
+     blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but
+     Curtis, so far from being intimidated, marched boldly up
+     to him, and his lordship was so struck with the
+     determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that
+     he suffered him to seize him without making any
+     resistance. Yet the moment that he was in custody he
+     declared that he had killed a villain, and that he
+     gloried in the deed."
+
+The tragedy is now hastening to its close. The assassin was kept in
+custody at Ashby until a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful
+Murder" against him, when he was transferred to Leicester, and a
+fortnight later to London, making the journey in his own splendid
+equipage with six horses, and "dressed like a jockey, in a close
+riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt." He was lodged in
+the Round Tower of the Tower of London, where, with a couple of warders
+at his elbow night and day, with sentries posted outside his door, and
+another on the drawbridge, he passed the last weeks of his doomed life.
+
+In mid-April he was duly tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of
+Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to
+prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
+dissentient voice, pronounced "Guilty," and sentenced to be "hanged by
+the neck until he was dead," when his body should be handed over to the
+surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed--pitiful salve to his
+pride--that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
+his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
+course.
+
+One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
+other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
+o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey--the
+most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
+a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
+as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
+horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.
+
+Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
+of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
+procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
+spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
+journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
+of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_,
+
+     "of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
+     silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
+     after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
+     perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
+     but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
+     then began in the following order: A very large body of
+     constables of the county of Middlesex, preceded by one of
+     the high constables; a party of horse grenadiers, and a
+     party of foot; Mr Sheriff Errington, in his chariot,
+     accompanied by his under-Sheriff, Mr Jackson; the landau
+     escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers and
+     foot; Mr Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which was
+     Under-Sheriff Mr Nichols; a mourning-coach and six, with
+     some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
+     six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
+     from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.
+
+     "The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
+     hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
+     whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
+     though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
+     saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
+     through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
+     death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
+     the King, begging that he might suffer where his
+     ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered--namely, on
+     Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
+     obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
+     part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
+     and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
+     the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
+     As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
+     particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
+     and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did."
+
+At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
+handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
+muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
+amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
+exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
+coin in his hand.
+
+Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, not even a struggle marking the moment when life left him.
+After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
+Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
+exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
+resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
+Church.
+
+Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
+the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
+mad beyond all doubt, and "knew not what he did"; and in the eyes of all
+charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
+remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
+two centuries ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A GHOSTLY VISITANT
+
+
+There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more
+tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting
+climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly
+visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this
+singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear
+and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson
+declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I
+am willing to believe it."
+
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished
+poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of
+Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the
+county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his
+clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute
+age.
+
+     "Of his morals," Sir Bernard Burke says, "we may judge by
+     the fact of his having died the victim of the coarsest
+     debauchery, and leaving behind him a diary more
+     disgustingly licentious than the pages of Aratine
+     himself."
+
+William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had
+his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his _Diaboliad_ "to the
+worst man in His Majesty's Dominions," and when he penned those terrible
+lines:--
+
+    "Have I not tasted every villain's part?
+     Have I not broke a noble parent's heart?
+     Do I not daily boast how I betrayed
+     The tender widow and the virtuous maid?"
+
+From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse
+lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until
+that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, "I
+awoke, and behold I was a lord!"
+
+     "From the time when," Mr Stanley Makower writes,
+     "although no more than a youth of nineteen, his
+     engagement to General Warburton's daughter had been
+     broken off on the discovery of the vicious life he had
+     led in his travels in France and Italy, he had been a
+     source of shame and trouble to his family.... To measure
+     the depths of Lyttelton's vices, it is necessary to read
+     his own letters, in which the literary style is as
+     perfect as the fearless admission of fault is
+     bewildering."
+
+Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the
+brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.
+
+With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of
+person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
+Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
+was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
+boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
+literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
+have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
+statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
+and high position in the arena of politics.
+
+Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
+Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
+to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
+itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
+plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
+the pleasure he loved.
+
+Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
+still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
+nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
+pleasure.
+
+And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
+of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
+his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
+London home.
+
+     "He found," to quote the words of his lordship's
+     stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
+     on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
+     cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
+     I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
+     two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
+     of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
+     Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
+     said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
+     their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
+     gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'"
+
+How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
+would be lying among the "vulgar fellows" who die in their youth at
+five-and-thirty!
+
+And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
+for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
+of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp--the speech of a man in
+the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the
+spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were
+followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely
+killing him.
+
+It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord
+Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful
+life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a
+fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party,
+including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host
+could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his
+depraved tastes, Lord Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination--a
+wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.
+
+During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following
+incident--which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events
+that followed--took place.
+
+     "Lord Lyttelton," to quote Sir Digby Neave, "had come to
+     Pit Place in very precarious health, and was ordered not
+     to take any but the gentlest exercise. As he was walking
+     in the conservatory with Lady Affleck and the Misses
+     Affleck, a robin perched on an orange-tree close to them.
+     Lord Lyttelton attempted to catch it, but failing, and
+     being laughed at by the ladies, he said he would catch it
+     even if it was the death of him. He succeeded, but he put
+     himself in a great heat by the exertion. He gave the bird
+     to Lady Affleck, who walked about with it in her hand."
+
+On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so
+pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what
+was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the
+following startling statement:--"Last night," he said, "after I had been
+lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping
+of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about
+my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these
+strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in
+white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking
+towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for death, for I
+had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I
+enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three
+days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'"
+
+Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his
+guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer
+him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the
+despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction
+that he was a doomed man. "You will see," was all the answer he would
+vouchsafe, "I shall die at midnight on Saturday."
+
+But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to
+which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton
+did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the
+preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he
+was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day--a speech which
+should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He
+spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences,
+and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as
+full of confidence as of his subject.
+
+Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
+eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
+his hearers.
+
+     "Cast your eyes for a moment," he declared, amid
+     impressive silence, "on the state of the Empire.
+     America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
+     us as a commercial and maritime people--lost--for ever
+     lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
+     part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
+     her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
+     Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
+     hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
+     world for the preservation of freedom.'"
+
+It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
+the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," Lord Lyttelton felt that he
+had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
+laurels of the patriot and the orator.
+
+On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
+James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, "with the idleness of one who has
+never known what occupation means."
+
+"Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
+you such fine compliments on your speech?" he asked.
+
+Lyttelton smiled faintly. "No, it was not of that I was thinking," he
+answered. "Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
+majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
+minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
+lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
+of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
+thinking--of death."
+
+Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the story of Lyttelton's
+dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
+of uneasiness.
+
+"No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have," continued
+Lyttelton. "But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
+nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
+thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
+true that I have not more than three days to live--"
+
+"You take the thing too seriously," interposed his cousin.
+
+"Join me at Pit Place to-morrow," said Lyttelton. "Then you shall see if
+I take it too seriously."
+
+During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
+boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
+the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
+and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"
+
+During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
+at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
+high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
+"Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
+hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
+silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.
+
+As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
+but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
+to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
+passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
+retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
+knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
+house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to
+deceive him into comfort."
+
+Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
+curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
+mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
+fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
+to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
+that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
+straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
+to go--half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve--and nothing
+happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
+watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
+laughter--discordant, jubilant, defiant.
+
+"This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find," he said to his
+valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. "And
+now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer." The valet proceeded to
+mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
+at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. "You dirty fellow!" his
+lordship exclaimed. "Go down and fetch a spoon."
+
+When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror,
+his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
+He ran downstairs again, shouting, "Help! Help! My lord is dying!" The
+alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
+host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
+watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
+died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
+of three nights previously.
+
+Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
+statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
+would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
+to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
+say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
+former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
+question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
+remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
+exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
+three days before the event.
+
+Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
+was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
+Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
+often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
+his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
+come and inform you."
+
+The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
+Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
+the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
+lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
+his house at Dartford, in Kent.
+
+When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's "Illustrations of Human
+Life," he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
+twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
+in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
+to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
+Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
+the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
+chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
+occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
+Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find--his slippers.
+The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
+egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
+out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
+there, however.
+
+Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
+strictly searched. _The door was locked on the inside_, yet no Lord
+Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
+servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not arrived. The man answered:
+"No, sir." "You may depend upon it," said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
+mystified and out of humour, "that he is somewhere in the house. He was
+here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
+tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
+the inn if he likes."
+
+After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
+Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
+too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
+following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
+night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
+midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
+ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
+swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
+"he was not himself or a man again for three years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
+recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
+Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
+while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
+bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
+this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
+dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
+or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
+least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.
+
+No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
+virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
+Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
+honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
+nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
+blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
+easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
+eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
+or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
+until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
+any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.
+
+And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
+herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
+which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
+indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
+succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
+favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
+contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.
+
+Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
+he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
+Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
+were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
+a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
+I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
+indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
+elastic conscience.
+
+As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
+honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in
+the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
+capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
+the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
+seek a fresh conquest.
+
+To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
+Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
+for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
+for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
+her charms, ensnared him with her _beauté de diable_, and then,
+satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.
+
+Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
+watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
+quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment--the shedding
+of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
+join her at a _petit souper_ at Spring Gardens, a favourite
+pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
+commenced when the _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted by the appearance of
+none other than the "invincible Jermyn," one of the handsomest and most
+notorious _roués_ of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
+most ardent lovers.
+
+Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
+Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
+invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
+what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
+dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
+brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
+flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
+his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
+Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
+of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
+his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
+climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
+marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
+in its sheath.
+
+Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
+before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
+friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
+satisfaction--a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
+who vowed he would "wipe the young puppy out." The duel took place in
+the "Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall," and proved to be of
+as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
+desired.
+
+On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:--
+
+     "Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
+     nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
+     Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, and the first
+     mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
+     Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
+     another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
+     could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
+     the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
+     But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
+     before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
+     Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
+     tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know."
+
+If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
+and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
+Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
+of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
+described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
+appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
+years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.
+
+The Court, as Pepys records, was "much concerned in this fray"; but it
+was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
+the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
+fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
+Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
+varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
+the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth and lower
+tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
+roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
+lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.
+
+Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
+brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
+day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
+practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
+heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
+himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
+well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
+merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
+painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
+the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an
+attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was
+crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were."
+
+Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
+jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
+enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
+have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
+a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
+as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
+the most foul-mouthed, evil-living man in London, whose very contact
+was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
+inveigled into his company and that of the "jolly blades," who were his
+boon companions; "but Lord!" the diarist says ingenuously, "their talk
+did make my heart ache!"
+
+That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a _liaison_ astonished even
+those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
+passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
+his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
+in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over "his lady's
+most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
+as much as he knew himself."
+
+Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
+of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
+he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
+from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
+most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
+was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
+man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
+libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
+any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
+with the bitterest invectives; "painted a frightful picture of her
+conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
+into defects." The Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
+vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
+begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
+him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
+brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.
+
+But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
+and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
+furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
+with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
+in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
+limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
+Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
+screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
+duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
+tells the following story:
+
+"Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
+Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
+Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
+Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
+mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
+and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
+and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
+through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his
+armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
+measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
+Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
+about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
+mistress."
+
+It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
+lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
+sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
+the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
+transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
+Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
+betrayal.
+
+From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
+his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
+of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
+his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
+and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
+crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
+execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
+the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
+storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
+flaunted their amour in the face of the world.
+
+Now that the Countess's husband had been removed from their path the
+shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
+must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
+and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
+opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
+to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
+enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
+Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
+distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
+witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
+who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,
+
+     "by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
+     out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
+     from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
+     Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
+     from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
+     murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
+     he was thought dead."
+
+The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
+Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
+himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
+his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
+of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
+retired into the obscurity in which alone he could feel safe from such
+a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
+unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
+favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
+of their lust and their triumphs.
+
+    "Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
+     The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"
+
+the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
+standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
+almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
+duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
+course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
+effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
+revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
+himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he
+
+     "found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
+     revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
+     than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
+     mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
+     Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."
+
+It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
+alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
+he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
+the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
+to enter into security to the King in the sum of £10,000 apiece. Thus
+ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
+Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
+his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
+friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.
+
+    "No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
+     No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+     There reft of health, of fortune, friends,
+     And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
+
+To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
+marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
+England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
+hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
+haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
+penitence.
+
+But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
+of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
+across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
+shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
+Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
+proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
+of wedding bells "Messalina's" history practically ended as far as the
+world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
+life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of her passion had now
+died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
+political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
+as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
+years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.
+
+Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
+herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
+young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
+of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
+if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
+man, whom William III. had called "the soul of honour," stood branded to
+the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
+to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.
+
+This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
+of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
+will, in the service of the devil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A PROFLIGATE PRINCE
+
+
+Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
+Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
+abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in
+spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
+Each brother had his amours--many of them highly discreditable; but for
+unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
+unenviable palm.
+
+Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
+solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
+placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
+soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
+left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
+was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
+whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
+aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.
+
+And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no woman was ever wooed
+with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.
+
+     "My dear Angel," he once wrote to her, "I got to bed
+     about ten. I then prayed for you, my dearest love, kissed
+     your dearest little hair, and lay down and dreamt of you,
+     had you ten thousand times in my arms, kissing you and
+     telling you how much I loved and adored you, and you
+     seemed pleased.... I have your heart, and it is warm at
+     my breast. I hope mine feels as easy to you. Thou joy of
+     my life, adieu!"
+
+In another letter he exclaims:
+
+     "Oh, my dearest soul ... your dear heart is so safe with
+     me and feels every motion mine does. How happy will that
+     day be to me that brings you back! I shall be unable to
+     speak for joy. My dearest soul, I send you ten thousand
+     kisses."
+
+So irrepressible was his passion that it burst the bounds of prose, and
+gushed forth in verses such as this:
+
+    "Hear, solemn Jove, and, conscious Venus, hear!
+     And thou, bright maid, believe me while I swear,
+     No time, no change, no future flame shall move
+     The well-placed basis of my lasting love."
+
+When the fair and frail Countess, in a fit of alarm, took refuge at
+Eaton Hall, her Royal lover followed her in disguise, installed himself
+at a neighbouring inn, and continued his intrigue under the very nose of
+her jealous husband, who at last was driven to sue for divorce. He won
+an easy verdict, and with it £10,000 damages--a bill which George III.
+himself had ultimately to pay. Within a few months the incorrigible Duke
+had another "dearest little angel" in his toils, and pursued his
+gallantries without a thought of the Countess he had left to her shame.
+
+Such was this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of
+his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771,
+at Brighton--a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded
+her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for fresh conquests.
+
+Anne Luttrell, as the widow had been known in her maiden days, was one
+of the three lovely daughters of Lord Irnham, in later years Earl of
+Carhampton, and a member of a family noted for the beauty of its women,
+and the wild, lawless living of its men. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell,
+was the most reckless swashbuckler and the deadliest duellist of his
+time--a man whose morals were as low as his temper and courage were
+high.
+
+At seventeen Anne had become the wife of Christopher Horton, a
+hard-drinking, fast-living Derbyshire squire, who left her a widow at
+twenty-two, in the prime of her beauty, and eager, as soon as decency
+permitted, to enter the matrimonial lists again.
+
+About this time Horace Walpole, who had a keen eye for female charms,
+describes her as
+
+     "extremely pretty, very well-made, with the most amorous
+     eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette
+     beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, and completely
+     mistress of all her passions and projects. Indeed,
+     eyelashes three-quarters of a yard shorter would have
+     served to conquer such a head as she has turned."
+
+In another portrait Walpole says:
+
+     "There was something so bewitching in her languishing
+     eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she
+     pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and
+     yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through
+     it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced
+     divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric
+     kind."
+
+Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious
+young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at
+Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit
+of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General
+Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his
+attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at
+the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to
+her grave plain "Mrs Smith" when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to
+boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.
+
+For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the
+Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside
+when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this
+she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours--after a
+period of coquetry and coy reluctance--were at his disposal; but the
+price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring--nothing less. And such was
+the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke--flinging scruples and
+fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, and
+were there made man and wife. The widow had caught her Prince and meant
+the world to know she was a Princess.
+
+For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing
+his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager
+Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more. But his Duchess
+was inexorable. She declined to play any longer the _rôle_ of "virtuous
+mistress" in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of
+the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the
+throne.
+
+Between his wife's tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the
+Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his
+exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to
+make the plunge--to break the news to the King. Had he but known how
+inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back
+to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by
+trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic
+the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged
+with danger and unrest. And when the quaking Duke presented himself
+before his brother as he was moodily walking in his palace garden,
+George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of
+worries.
+
+No sooner had the King read the ill-spelled, clumsily-worded note which
+the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
+flame. "You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!" he shouted, purple in
+face and hoarse with passion. "I tell you that woman shall never be a
+Royal Duchess--she shall never be anything." "What must I do, then?"
+gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. "Go abroad until I
+can decide what to do," thundered the King, waving his brother
+imperiously away.
+
+It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
+upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
+this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
+would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her--before
+her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
+Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
+Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
+world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
+smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
+through his Chamberlain that "there was no road between Cumberland House
+and Windsor Castle--that the Castle doors would be closed against any
+who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law."
+
+There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
+paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
+a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
+perfection her new and exalted _rôle_ of Princess. "No woman of her
+time," says Lord Hervey, "performed the honours of her drawing-room with
+such grace, affability, and dignity." And, in spite of George's frowns,
+the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
+Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
+was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in
+beauty, was received with open arms at the Castle, and drew to her court
+all the greatest in the land.
+
+She even made overtures to her rival and enemy, and proposed that they
+should appear together in the same box at the opera--an overture to
+which the Duchess of Gloucester retorted contemptuously: "Never! I would
+not smell at the same nosegay with her in public!"
+
+By sheer effrontery Duchess Anne at last forced her way into the Royal
+Court and public recognition as a member of George's family; and the
+fact that both the King and the Queen snubbed her mercilessly for her
+pains, detracted little from her triumph and gratification. What her
+Grace of Gloucester had won by submission and ingratiating arts, she had
+won by brazen defiance and importunity. But the goal, though so
+differently reached, was the same. Her triumph was complete.
+
+To her last day, however, she never forgave the King and Queen. While
+they had smiled on the sempstress's daughter, who had been guilty of
+precisely the same offence as herself--that of wedding a Royal Prince
+without the King's sanction--they had scorned her, a Luttrell, the
+daughter of a noble house; and terrible was the revenge she took. She
+deliberately set herself to debase the Prince of Wales--a youth whose
+natural tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him
+in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his
+passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he
+himself was a past-master--drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious
+profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would
+have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the
+hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the
+Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his Consort for their slights;
+and her shameless reward was when she witnessed their grief at the moral
+degradation of their eldest son.
+
+But even in the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell
+was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the
+social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was
+empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and
+flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family
+circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome
+stranger; and such homage as she received was conceded to her rank and
+not to herself. "Of all princesses," she once wrote to a friend, "I
+really think I am the most miserable."
+
+Her husband died at the age of forty-five, worn out with excesses,
+regretted by none, execrated by many. Of his father it had been written
+by way of epitaph:--
+
+    "He was alive and is dead,
+    And, as it is only Fred,
+    Why, there's no more to be said."
+
+Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand,
+would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of
+years--unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in
+name--harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of
+coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose
+failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the
+Duchess.
+
+The fate of Elizabeth--one of the "three beautiful Luttrells"--is among
+the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister
+died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and
+actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her
+liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower
+depths--was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the
+streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set
+her free from her fetters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS
+
+
+If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
+been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
+into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous"
+figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
+certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
+and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
+one of his most amiable characteristics.
+
+The Irish squire was a proud man--proud of his pretty and shiftless
+wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
+his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
+husbands--one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
+proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
+he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
+Marguerite, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and with no
+gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.
+
+But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
+waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
+though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
+neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
+and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
+Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as "Buck Power" and
+"Shiver-the-Frills"; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
+Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
+a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
+wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
+his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
+life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
+of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.
+
+Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
+day to dazzle the world as the "most gorgeous Lady Blessington."
+
+As with many another "ugly ducking" Marguerite Power's beauty was only
+dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
+long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
+flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
+other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
+had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
+charm--Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
+stationed at Clonmel. To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
+and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
+encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
+offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
+wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
+moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
+showed the utmost aversion. "I hate him," she protested in tears to her
+father, who supported his suit; "and I would rather die a hundred times
+than marry him."
+
+But "Beau Power" was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
+child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
+family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
+indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
+biggest scoundrel in Tipperary--a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and
+a father's ambition.
+
+[Illustration: MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON]
+
+The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
+followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
+young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
+Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
+from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
+days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.
+
+After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
+station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
+no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her
+home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
+almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
+left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
+the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
+to shield and care for her.
+
+How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
+must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
+at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
+England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
+though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
+scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
+We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
+struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
+in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
+her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,
+
+     "she received at her house only those whose age and
+     character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
+     others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
+     could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
+     Blessington, then a widower."
+
+Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
+charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
+at its close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
+as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
+during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
+this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
+ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
+and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy--or, as
+some say, in a drunken quarrel--had flung himself to his death through a
+window of his gaol.
+
+Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
+squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
+would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
+widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
+of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
+prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The "ugly
+duckling" had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
+happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
+radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.
+
+Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
+alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
+landlords, with a rent-roll of £30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
+extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
+for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous
+furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
+wife seems to have shared.
+
+When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
+revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of "crimson Genoa
+silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
+equal richness." But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
+childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
+her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
+months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
+_salon_ all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
+her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.
+
+Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
+his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
+worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
+of mind.
+
+Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
+yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
+and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
+retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
+have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
+d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
+Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
+charming a cavalier as this "Admirable Crichton" of Georgian days.
+
+     "Count d'Orsay," says Charles James Mathews, the famous
+     comedian, who knew him well, "was the beau-ideal of manly
+     dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
+     conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
+     handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
+     degree; highly educated, and of great literary
+     acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
+     mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
+     conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
+     instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
+     swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
+     horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age."
+
+Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
+Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
+its tragic close.
+
+From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
+with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
+spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
+sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
+From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
+ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
+received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
+lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, "fit for any
+queen." And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
+pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
+and its colonnade, "supporting a terrace covered with flowers"; its
+marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
+long gallery, "filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi."
+
+     "On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at
+     the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
+     and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
+     charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
+     gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
+     grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
+     tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
+     delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
+     rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
+     architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
+     oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
+     consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
+     the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
+     splendour."
+
+Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
+ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
+indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
+splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
+years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
+d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
+galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
+Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
+nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.
+
+From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
+her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
+her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
+daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
+few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
+protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
+London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
+for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
+Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
+even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
+thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.
+
+The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
+indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."
+
+     "The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
+     rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
+     exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
+     alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
+     living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
+     with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
+     and from the columns that support the frieze of the
+     recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
+     hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
+     the room opposite the fireplace--pale blue carpets,
+     silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."
+
+Her bath was of white marble; her _salle de bain_ was draped with white
+muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
+Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
+lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
+keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
+to the gilt consoles, marble-topped _chiffonières_, and _fauteuils_
+"richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
+curtains."
+
+This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
+lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
+before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
+in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
+years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
+of his £30,000 a year was an annual income of £600, which went to his
+illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of £2,000 a year
+was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
+future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
+for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
+contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
+with which he had always surrounded her.
+
+It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
+solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
+which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
+found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of
+Beauty" were an instantaneous success--they made a strong appeal to the
+flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
+Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
+fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
+glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
+travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.
+
+In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
+jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
+so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
+_fauteuil_ of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
+and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
+her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
+and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
+gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
+tassel, and his shower of ringlets.
+
+But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
+lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
+magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
+she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
+well advanced in the forties--and this she found at Gore House, in
+Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
+and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
+spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
+within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.
+
+Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
+who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
+hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
+finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
+commands to a Court-ball.
+
+"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
+interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
+moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
+men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
+without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
+Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
+hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
+hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
+greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
+or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
+than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
+never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
+dearly-loved and devoted son.
+
+Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below £4,000 a year, it
+was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
+this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
+reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
+D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
+mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
+incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _ménage_--until he found
+himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding £100,000,
+and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
+a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
+rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
+smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
+avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of
+flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
+resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
+safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
+had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
+magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.
+
+A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right
+Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were
+put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
+through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous--among
+them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
+goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
+effects brought absurdly low prices, realised £12,000--a smaller sum
+probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
+pictures.
+
+This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady
+Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
+auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
+grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She
+was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother--a true, loving mother to me."
+Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the
+Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
+designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
+graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A QUEEN OF COQUETTES
+
+
+The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
+calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
+Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
+Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
+crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
+of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
+lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
+sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
+boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH]
+
+And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under
+the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
+clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
+twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
+opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
+little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
+birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the
+restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
+splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
+of the Sandridge baby.
+
+If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
+live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
+counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
+Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
+come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
+country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
+management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
+man in the moon.
+
+His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
+Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
+when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
+accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
+a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
+John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
+and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
+Pole.
+
+Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
+little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
+loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
+as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
+when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
+York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
+splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.
+
+The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
+her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
+speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
+notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
+promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
+but the disdainful beauty dropped the _billets-doux_ on the floor for
+any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
+was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.
+
+James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
+gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
+in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
+after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
+hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
+raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
+Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
+pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
+sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
+of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.
+
+While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
+madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
+rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
+toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
+lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
+was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
+innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
+sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
+where a very different life awaited her.
+
+She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
+the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
+glimpse of it. Her more modest _rôle_ was to be playfellow and companion
+of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne--a shy, backward child, a
+few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
+eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
+education to her.
+
+To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
+Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
+country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
+passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
+romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
+between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
+playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.
+
+It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into
+young womanhood--little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
+infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character--an
+imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
+inflexible will within the circle of the Court.
+
+While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
+John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
+closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
+ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
+made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
+Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
+handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
+in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
+ten years' superiority in age.
+
+John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
+one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
+aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
+who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
+hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
+of his lands and a fine of £4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
+own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
+a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
+Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
+John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
+daughter Arabella.
+
+From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
+Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
+handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
+once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
+of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
+person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
+many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
+might not have been his without the asking.
+
+Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
+the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all
+Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
+what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
+net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
+love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
+conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
+trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
+singular spectacle--that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
+and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
+an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
+lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
+inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.
+
+One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities
+were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
+packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
+before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of £5,000
+with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an
+annuity of £500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
+foundation of his subsequent fortune."
+
+A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
+to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
+proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
+under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
+under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
+of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
+who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
+outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
+handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
+that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome
+Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
+of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
+Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
+thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
+had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
+the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.
+
+It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
+Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
+as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
+queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
+at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
+towers over meaner flowers. And--such are the strange ways of love--from
+that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
+power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
+bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
+graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
+life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic--never
+has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
+
+But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man--even by a
+lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
+romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
+battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
+and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
+She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
+Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
+man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
+amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his
+ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.
+
+Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
+have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
+years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
+indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
+soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
+handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
+recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
+and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
+for at least a smile or a look of kindness.
+
+     "Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite
+     indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
+     anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
+     conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
+     ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
+     know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."
+
+But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
+is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
+him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the
+headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
+vows, in his pain,
+
+     "by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
+     my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
+     could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess,"
+     he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if
+     she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
+     chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
+     drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
+     shall come."
+
+At last the iceberg thaws a little--though it is only to charge him with
+unkindness! She assumes the _rôle_ of virtue; and, with a woman's
+capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
+she herself has visited on him.
+
+     "Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy,
+     for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
+     am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."
+
+Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
+her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
+word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses _him_ of
+unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
+temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.
+
+     "That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if
+     cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would
+     be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
+     your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
+     until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
+     without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
+     come to me without any prejudice to your health."
+
+At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
+if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
+take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
+of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.
+
+But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
+was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
+on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
+for his ambitious purpose--one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
+friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
+unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
+no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
+alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
+love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
+penniless beauty.
+
+For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
+though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
+temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
+it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
+marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
+greatness!
+
+No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
+flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she
+raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love
+amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
+wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.
+
+     "As for seeing you," she wrote, "I am resolved I never
+     will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
+     for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
+     order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
+     surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
+     creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
+     shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
+     and give God thanks, though too late I see my error."
+
+Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
+for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
+shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
+divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
+man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
+Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
+done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
+battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
+negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
+solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
+came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.
+
+But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
+did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life--that he
+adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.
+
+     "I vow to God," he wrote, "you do so entirely possess my
+     thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
+     your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
+     that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
+     despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
+     you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
+     breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
+     you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
+     will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
+     adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
+     how I may deserve, though not have, your love."
+
+Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
+seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
+of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
+had merely written it to amuse himself, and to "make her think that he
+had an affection for her when she was assured he had none." At last,
+however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
+him that
+
+     "if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
+     so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
+     ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
+     be made ridiculous to the world."
+
+Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
+wrote:
+
+     "I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
+     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
+     better pleased with your happiness than my own,"
+
+she answered:
+
+     "If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
+     you say you have, you would find out some way to make
+     yourself happy--it is in your power. Therefore press me
+     no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
+     approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
+     consider who was the cause of it."
+
+At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
+veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these--"you
+would find out some way to make yourself happy--_it is in your power_."
+And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
+following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
+advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
+by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
+his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
+and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
+answering that she did it "that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
+hearing from you more!"
+
+Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
+to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
+in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought
+her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
+actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.
+
+     "Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
+     she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
+     would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
+     which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
+     my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
+     her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
+     she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
+     it, and not use me thus like a footman."
+
+In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
+innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
+deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
+poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.
+
+     "If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
+     enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
+     should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
+     However," she continued, "if you can be so well contented
+     never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
+     will believe you, though I have not other people."
+
+No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
+contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
+merciless manner she charges him with "being content never to see her."
+Although she had never uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
+for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
+less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
+or lover so patient under so much provocation?
+
+She further accused him of laughing at her when he was "at the Duke's
+side," to which he retorted "I was so far from that, that had it not
+been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who
+avoided _her_; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
+shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I
+would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."
+
+But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
+forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
+strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
+her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
+when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
+shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
+first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!
+
+Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
+Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
+portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
+lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
+could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
+to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
+re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
+wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
+eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of
+offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
+annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
+so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
+in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
+could sully her.
+
+Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
+Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
+preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
+won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
+rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
+was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
+in danger.
+
+Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
+daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
+unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
+Mitchelstown nursery--one of a dozen brothers and sisters--a wholesome,
+merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
+the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
+luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.
+
+Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
+Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
+thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
+Mary's senior--indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
+married man--had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
+children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
+"big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
+a young man of remarkable physical gifts--tall, of splendid figure, and
+strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
+of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
+young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
+He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
+dances--in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
+parents began to grow alarmed.
+
+One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
+weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
+blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the
+effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
+friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
+missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
+bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
+overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
+ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
+soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
+on her fate.
+
+From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
+description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
+handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
+In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
+large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
+Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
+no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
+deed--a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
+family of the girl he had abducted.
+
+When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
+infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
+from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
+deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
+restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
+this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
+runaway than her abductor.
+
+For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
+until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
+to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
+at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
+fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
+young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
+girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
+the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.
+
+"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the
+gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and
+handsome----" began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
+walked Fitzgerald himself. "Why," exclaimed the servant, as with
+startled eyes she looked at the intruder, "that's the very gentleman who
+visits the lady!"
+
+For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
+turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
+against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
+boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
+within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
+on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
+demanded a meeting on the following morning.
+
+The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
+Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
+alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
+surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
+dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
+placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
+man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
+remained uninjured.
+
+After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
+between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
+second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: "You are a ---- villain, and
+I will not hear a word you have to offer!" Once more the duellists took
+up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
+effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
+combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
+next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
+and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.
+
+Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
+lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
+at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
+Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
+vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
+Mary into his power.
+
+Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
+enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
+his plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
+literally "bargained without his host," who chanced to be an old trusted
+retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
+suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
+day and walked abroad at night.
+
+No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
+been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to
+communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
+"up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
+back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
+suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
+inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.
+
+Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
+of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
+from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
+Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
+Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
+spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
+newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
+room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
+he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
+voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.
+
+Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
+and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
+oaths, they broke in the door--and found themselves face to face with a
+brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
+stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
+at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
+combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
+play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
+last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
+head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
+fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
+daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.
+
+The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
+distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
+But wherever it travelled--from the shebeens of Connemara to the
+coffee-houses of Cheapside--it carried with it a wave of compassion for
+the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
+confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
+it had been done by some other hand than mine!"
+
+As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
+murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
+salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
+Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be
+brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
+the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
+rank--including that of trial by his Peers.
+
+In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
+took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
+appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
+Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
+small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
+procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
+of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.
+
+Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
+Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried
+"by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to
+Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of
+persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,"
+no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
+One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my
+honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
+congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.
+
+And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
+this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
+important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
+subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to
+join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
+her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
+she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
+is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
+made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
+mind.
+
+Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
+many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
+her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
+names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
+pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
+the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.
+
+Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
+produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express
+such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now,
+I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be
+Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
+lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
+complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
+became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
+no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
+had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT
+
+
+In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
+better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
+Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
+raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.
+
+From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
+in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
+on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
+succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
+years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
+business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
+Everything he touched seemed to "turn to gold"; before he had reached
+middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as "Rich Spencer"; and
+by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
+in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
+which a century earlier Stow had described as "very large and
+beautiful, and the highest at that time in London."
+
+Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
+had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
+stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
+When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
+Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
+which, to quote Sir Thomas More, "he lodged himself, and little by
+little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
+crowded and King Henry's left desolate"; and it was in one of its
+magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
+the Crown of England.
+
+Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
+has immortalised it in "Richard III."; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
+than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
+there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
+when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
+as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
+Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
+the historic and splendid home in which "Rich Spencer" dispensed
+hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.
+
+Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
+his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
+leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in Canonbury
+Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
+It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
+event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
+the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the
+Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
+who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
+to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
+failed is told by Papillon.
+
+     "Rich men," says this chronicler, "are commonly the prey
+     of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
+     spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
+     is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
+     Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
+     twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
+     which, if he had done, £50,000 ransom had not redeemed
+     him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
+     musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
+     left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
+     with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
+     hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
+     came always to his house. But by the providence of God--I
+     have this from a private record--Sir John, upon some
+     extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
+     night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
+     fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
+     to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
+     This," adds Papillon, "was a desperate attempt."
+
+But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
+still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
+she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
+of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
+she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
+city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
+window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
+her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had "the sweetest face I have seen
+in my City of London."
+
+That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
+suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
+inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
+England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
+coronet laid at her feet before she had well left her school-books. But
+to all these offers, dazzling enough to a merchant's daughter, Elizabeth
+turned a deaf, if dainty ear. "It is not me they want," she would
+laughingly say, "but my father's money. I shall live and die, like the
+good Queen, my namesake, a maid."
+
+And so has many another much-sought maiden said in the pride of an
+untouched heart; but to them as to her the "Prince Charming," before
+whom all her defences crumble, comes at last. In Elizabeth Spencer's
+case, the conquering prince was William, second Lord Compton, one of the
+handsomest, most accomplished and fascinating young men in London. In
+person, as in position, he was alike unimpeachable--an ideal suitor to
+win even the richest heiress in England; and it is little wonder that
+the heart of the tradesman's daughter began to flutter, and her pretty
+cheeks to flame when this gallant, whose conquests at the Royal Court
+itself were notorious, began to pay marked homage to her charms.
+
+That his reputation in the field of love was none of the best, that he
+was as prodigal as he was poor, mattered little to her--probably such
+defects made him all the more romantic in her eyes, and his attentions
+all the more welcome. To Sir John, however, who was even more jealous of
+his treasure than of all his gold, the young lord's reputation and,
+above all, his poverty were fatal flaws in any would-be son-in-law of
+his. As soon as he realised the danger he put every obstacle in the way
+of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of
+locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover.
+"If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank," he told him in
+no ambiguous terms; "and if your fortune matched your family, I should
+have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly,
+I would rather see my girl dead than wedded to such as you."
+
+To his daughter's tears and pleading he was equally obdurate. She might
+ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were
+half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he
+encouraged such folly as this. But Spencer's daughter, when she found
+conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong
+as her father's; she told him to his face that with or without his
+sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton. "I will marry him," she
+declared with flushed face and panting breast, "even if you make me a
+beggar." "And that, madam," the defied and furious father retorted, "I
+can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord
+Compton's wife ever have."
+
+For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John's anger;
+and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least,
+whatever others might follow, was at an end. But how little he knew his
+daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.
+
+One day, a few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker,
+carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he
+soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the
+garden, and giving him a respectful "good day." "A civil young man," Sir
+John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; "his face seems
+somehow familiar to me." And well might it be familiar; for the baker
+who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace,
+Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the
+merchant's only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this
+daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her
+parent.
+
+It was not long before Sir John's disillusionment came. His daughter
+was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her
+whereabouts. Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury
+against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had
+outwitted him. Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of
+the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to
+fail in execution. Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again--now
+becomingly penitent--she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife
+of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.
+
+To "Rich Spencer" the blow was crushing, humiliating. It was bad enough
+to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter;
+but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such
+undesirable hands was bitter beyond words. His home and his heart were
+alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would
+never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his
+should ever go into the Compton coffers.
+
+In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full
+year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend,
+at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he
+remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was
+prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his
+bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.
+
+"I have summoned you, Sir John," Her Majesty said, "to ask a great
+favour of you. I do not often stoop, as you know, to beg a favour of
+any man; nor should I now, did I not know that I have no more dutiful
+subject than yourself, and that to ask of you is to receive. I am
+interested in two young people who have had the misfortune to marry
+against the wishes of the lady's father, and who have thus forfeited his
+favour. And I wish you to give me and the youthful couple pleasure by
+taking his place and standing sponsor to their first child."
+
+To such a request made by his Sovereign Sir John could but give a
+delighted consent. He would do much more than this, he vowed, to give
+her a moment's gratification; and he not only attended the baptismal
+ceremony, but on the suggestion of the Queen, who was also present,
+allowed the child to bear his own Christian name. "More than this, your
+Majesty," he declared, "as I have now no child of my own, I will gladly
+adopt this infant as my heir."
+
+"Your goodness of heart, Sir John," Her Majesty answered, beaming with
+pleasure, "shall not go unrewarded; for the child you have now taken to
+your heart and made inheritor of your wealth is indeed of your own flesh
+and blood--the first-born son of your daughter, and my friend, Elizabeth
+Compton."
+
+Such was the dramatic plight into which "Rich Spencer's" loyalty and
+generosity had led him. He had innocently pledged himself to adopt as
+his heir, the son of the daughter he had disowned for ever. "And now,
+Sir John," continued the Queen, "that you have conceded so much to make
+me happy, will you not go one step farther and take your wilful and
+penitent daughter to your heart again?" What could the poor merchant do
+in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour
+what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older
+he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with
+her graceless husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, full of years, Sir John died in 1609, his obsequies were worthy of
+his wealth and fame. He was followed to his grave in St Helen's Church
+by a thousand mourners, clad in black gowns; and three hundred and
+twenty poor men, we are told, "had each a basket given them, containing
+a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle
+of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a
+black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen points, two red herrings, four
+white herrings, six sprats and two eggs"--a quaint and lavish symbol of
+his charity when alive.
+
+So enormous was the fortune he left, that it is said Lord Compton, on
+hearing its amount (£800,000) "became distracted, and so continued for a
+considerable length of time, either through the vehement apprehension of
+joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take up
+and dispense of it."
+
+That my Lady Compton, who a few years after her father's death blossomed
+into a Countess, proved a devoted and dutiful wife to her lord there is
+no reason to doubt; but that she had an adequate idea of her own
+importance and a determination to have her share of her father's
+money-bags is shown by the following letter, which is sufficiently
+remarkable to bear quotation in full.
+
+     "My sweet life,--Now that I have declared to you my mind
+     for the settling of your estate, I suppose that it were
+     best for me to bethink what allowance were best for me;
+     for, considering what care I have ever had of your
+     estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those which
+     both by the laws of God, nature, and civil policy, wit,
+     religion, government, and honesty, you, my dear, are
+     bound to, I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your
+     most kind and loving wife, the sum of one thousand pounds
+     per an., quarterly to be paid.
+
+     "Also, I would, besides that allowance for my apparel,
+     have six hundred pounds added yearly for the performance
+     of charitable works; these I would not neither be
+     accountable for. Also, I will have three horses for my
+     own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow; none
+     lend but I, none borrow but you. Also, I would have two
+     gentlewomen, lest one should be sick; also, believe that
+     it would be an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand
+     mumping alone, when God has blest their Lord and Lady
+     with a great estate. Also, when I ride hunting or
+     hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have
+     them attending, so for each of those said women I must
+     have a horse. Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen,
+     and will have two coaches; one lined with velvet to
+     myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my
+     women lined with sweet cloth, orelaid with gold; the
+     other with scarlet, and laced with watchet lace and
+     silver, with four good horses. Also, I will have two
+     coachmen, one for myself, the other for my women. Also,
+     whenever I travel, I will be allowed not only carroches
+     and spare horses for me and my women, but such carriages
+     as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my
+     things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor
+     theirs with washmaids.
+
+     "Also, laundresses, when I travel; I will have them sent
+     away with the carriages to see all safe, and the
+     chambermaids shall go before with the grooms, that the
+     chambers may be ready, sweet, and clean.
+
+     "Also, for that it is indecent for me to croud myself
+     with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him have
+     a convenient horse to attend me either in city or
+     country; and I must have four footmen; and my desire is
+     that you will defray the charges for me.
+
+     "And for myself, besides my yerely allowance, I would
+     have twenty gowns apparel, six of them excellent good
+     ones, eight of them for the country, and six others of
+     them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my
+     purse two thousand and two hundred pounds, and so you to
+     pay my debts. Also, I would have eight thousand pounds to
+     buy me jewels, and six thousand pounds for a pearl chain.
+
+     "Now seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you,
+     I pray you to find my children apparel, and their
+     schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their
+     wages.
+
+     "Also, I will have all my houses furnished, and all my
+     lodging-chambers to be suited with all such furniture as
+     is fit, as beds, stools, chairs, cushions, carpets,
+     silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings,
+     etc.; and so for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I
+     will have them delicately furnished with hangings, couch,
+     canopy, cushions, carpets, etc.
+
+     "Also, my desire is that you would pay your debts, build
+     up Ashby House and purchase lands and lend no money (as
+     you love God) to the Lord Chamberlain, which would have
+     all, perhaps your life from you; remember his son, my
+     Lord Wildan, what entertainments he gave me when you were
+     at the Tilt-yard. If you were dead, he said, he would be
+     a husband, a father, a brother, and said he would marry
+     me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little
+     wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely; also, he fed
+     me with untruths concerning the Charter-House; but that
+     is the least; he wished me much harm; you know how. God
+     keep you and me from him, and such as he is.
+
+     "So now I have declared to you my mind, what I would
+     have, and what I would not have; I pray you, when you be
+     Earl, to allow a thousand pounds more than now I desire
+     and double allowance.--Your loving wife, ELIZABETH COMPTON."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF
+
+
+In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once
+so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so
+tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of
+Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever
+has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.
+
+When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it
+was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
+and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
+leading _rôle_. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
+lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
+brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
+estates and a princely rent-roll.
+
+But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
+often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
+gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenviable
+reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
+were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness"
+was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
+was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
+roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
+tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
+manifested themselves in a dangerous form.
+
+While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
+from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
+or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
+was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
+bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for £13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
+which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
+was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
+and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
+of a hansom.
+
+But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
+Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of
+half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully
+embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged
+venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him,
+in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the
+Earl carried off the Grand Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to
+1867 the Marquess won over £60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings
+in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that
+he only spoke the truth when he boasted, "I could easily make £30,000 a
+year by backing other men's horses." Indeed on one race, Lecturer's
+Cesarewitch, he cleared £75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a
+racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.
+
+In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new
+deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his
+appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales
+himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed
+hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was
+regal in its prodigality.
+
+     "As he canters on to the course," we are told, "he
+     slackens speed as he passes through the line of
+     carriages, from which come shrill, plaintive cries, 'Dear
+     Lord Hastings, do come here for one second,' and others
+     to like purpose. Conveniently deaf to the voice of the
+     charmers, he rides straight into the horseman's circle,
+     and takes up his position on the heavy-betting side.
+     'They're laying odds on yours, my lord,' exclaims a
+     bookmaker. 'What odds?' blandly asks the owner. 'Well, my
+     lord, I'll take you six monkeys to four!' 'Put it down,'
+     is the brief response. 'And me, three hundred to two--and
+     me--and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
+     clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'--the
+     bets are booked as freely as offered. 'And now, my lord,
+     if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
+     thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
+     is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
+     genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
+     with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
+     four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
+     Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
+     and away they dash."
+
+Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
+fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose £50,000
+on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
+of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
+to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
+and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
+inroads on even his enormous resources.
+
+The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
+through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
+to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
+had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
+laid against him.
+
+Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
+story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
+Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
+who was passionately devoted to her, little dreaming that another had
+stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for
+escort, drove to Messrs Swan & Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but
+the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She
+entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord
+Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away
+while her _fiancé_ patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at
+the opposite side of the building.
+
+When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on
+him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace
+of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less
+than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His
+opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord
+Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and
+Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for
+once--and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950
+guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.
+
+At the time he little realised--nor did he much care--what a bargain he
+had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St
+Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them
+£300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred
+Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at
+having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds against Hermit
+so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and
+Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over £100,000.
+
+It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the
+longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a
+smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the
+course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he
+seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling
+this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, "Hermit fairly broke my
+heart. But I didn't show it, did I?"
+
+That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely
+needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of
+more than £100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was
+only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate
+of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised £300,000. When the doors of
+Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present
+themselves were his agents, who handed over £103,000 in settlement of
+all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored
+heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival
+had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was
+due.
+
+When next his lordship appeared on a race-course--it was at Ascot, a few
+months later--he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the
+bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, which must have
+taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this
+merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further
+disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first--at the
+Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park
+Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so
+much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great
+part of his Derby losses.
+
+When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the
+winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He
+uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to
+fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was
+helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. "Tell me how I stand,"
+asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The
+Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy,
+answered: "You have lost £23." And he, who could thus calmly calculate
+so trifling a loss, was £50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the
+Plate!
+
+He knew well that he was a ruined man--worse than this, unutterably
+galling to his proud spirit--he knew that he was a disgraced man. His
+vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not £50,000 in the world to
+pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face
+of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an
+English gentleman and a sportsman.
+
+He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters and hounds, and
+all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the
+wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful £10,000. His last sovereign was
+gone, and he was £40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he
+next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the
+echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero
+of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a
+defaulter!
+
+And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were
+being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of
+Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to
+suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was
+unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the
+Marquess stood to win £35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.
+
+The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in
+the columns of the _Times_; and although Lord Hastings denied that there
+was "one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses,
+correctly stated," and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the
+public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.
+
+So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and
+his good name that his health--undermined no doubt by excesses--broke
+down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among
+the northern seas in search of health; but no sea-breezes could bring
+back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man
+before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near
+its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt
+that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the
+last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster
+races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on
+crutches.
+
+The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the
+Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and
+straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been
+his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled
+from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal,
+and lovingly patted her glossy neck.
+
+Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his
+former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for
+life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but,
+almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up
+the struggle and drew his last breath--"leaving neither heir to his
+honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in
+spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a
+perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted his first pony another
+meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and
+been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.
+
+
+Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and
+loved as "Lord George," who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was
+the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won
+the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in
+his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too
+brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his
+own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win
+the coveted "blue riband," he sold every horse in his stables at a word,
+and abandoned the Turf in despair.
+
+     "Lord George Bentinck," wrote Thormanby, a few years ago,
+     "was the idol of the sportsmen of his own day. The
+     commanding personality of the man threw a spell over all
+     with whom he was brought into contact; they were
+     half-fascinated, half-awed--judgment and criticism
+     surrendered to admiration. There are still veterans left,
+     like old John Kent, who talk with bated breath of Lord
+     George as a superior being, a god-like man, a king of
+     men."
+
+From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the
+tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and
+brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and,
+like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting into hot
+water--and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such
+little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr
+exclaimed aloud: "If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself,
+Colonel, I will." Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: "Captain
+Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off."
+
+Such was the youth and such the man--gay, debonair, and popular to the
+highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman
+he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course
+being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have
+envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale
+of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he
+often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud
+numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his
+out-of-pocket expenses ran to £50,000 and more a year. To provide the
+money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of
+1843, for instance, he stood to win £150,000 on his horse Gaper, and
+actually pocketed £30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his
+net winnings on bets reached £100,000; and he thought nothing of staking
+his entire year's private income on a single race.
+
+One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him--some many
+times--but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby,
+always eluded his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty.
+So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness
+of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of
+pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.
+
+"I'll sell you the lot," he impulsively said to George Payne at
+Goodwood, "from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey),
+for £100,000. Yes or no?" Payne offered him £300 to have a few hours to
+think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next
+morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was
+sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: "I'll take the
+lot, Bentinck, at £10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on
+the course." "If you please," was Lord George's placid answer; and thus
+ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.
+
+And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of
+pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's
+Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his
+hand and had let it go!
+
+How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage
+in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:
+
+     "A few days before--it was the day after the Derby, May
+     25, 1848--the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the
+     library of the House of Commons. He was standing before
+     the bookshelves with a volume in his hand, and his
+     countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolution in
+     favour of the Colonial interest, after all his labours,
+     had been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd; and on
+     the 24th, his horse, Surplice, whom he had parted with
+     among the rest of the stud, had won that paramount and
+     Olympic stake, to gain which had been the object of his
+     life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
+     sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him
+     before a heart, which he knew at least could yield him
+     sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.
+
+     "'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what
+     have I sacrificed it?' he murmured. It was in vain to
+     offer solace.
+
+     "'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned.
+
+     "'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the Turf.'
+
+     "'It is the Blue Riband of the Turf,' he slowly repeated
+     to himself; and, sitting down at a table, buried himself
+     in a folio of statistics."
+
+Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found
+lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very
+morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in
+the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord
+Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on
+his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never
+made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about
+midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
+the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.
+
+What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
+to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
+"Died by the visitation of God--to wit, a spasm of the heart." Thus
+vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
+ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
+forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
+dazzling than his Turf fame.
+
+But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
+of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
+verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
+vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
+it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
+unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
+facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
+tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
+blow--it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
+one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
+although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
+doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
+perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
+it has been told.
+
+Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
+eligible _partis_ of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
+many an "affair of the heart." But not one of all the high-born ladies,
+who would have turned their backs on coronets to become "Lady George,"
+could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
+penniless girl, who could not even boast a "respectable" parentage.
+
+Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
+between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
+daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
+in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
+low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
+alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
+seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
+forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the
+Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth.
+It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley
+marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were
+illegitimate.
+
+It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is
+said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And
+little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her
+mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and
+refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.
+
+But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had
+enslaved. There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among
+them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder
+brother, and the future "eccentric Duke" of Portland, often referred to
+as "The Wizard of Welbeck." The Marquess and his younger brother had
+never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when
+they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden
+this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.
+
+It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was
+more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual
+relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the
+brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George,
+whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no
+physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant
+squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord
+George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused
+to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest,
+over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved
+fatal.
+
+This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that
+September day in 1848; of that "spasm of the heart" which, according to
+the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George
+Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long
+mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is
+explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke
+of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as
+to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother,
+however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could
+be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
+the world in sorrow and remorse?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WICKED BARON
+
+
+The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
+sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
+fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
+and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.
+
+Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
+fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
+Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
+Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
+man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
+was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
+with the stigma of eternal shame.
+
+From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
+low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
+he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
+women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
+each indulgence he was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
+murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.
+
+Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
+his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
+marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
+figures prominently--none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
+most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
+every man who came under the spell of her charms.
+
+Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
+passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
+Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
+their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
+in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
+be "as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar." Dr Doran describes her as
+"that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
+head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain"; although, with
+all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
+of being Congreve's mistress all the time.
+
+Describing her charms, another chronicler says:
+
+     "She was of a lovely height, with dark brown hair and
+     eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushing
+     complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an
+     involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face."
+
+Such, in the cold medium of print, was Mrs Bracegirdle when she became
+the central figure of a great tragedy, the horrors of which have sent a
+thrill down to our own time.
+
+Among Mrs Bracegirdle's many baffled wooers was Captain Richard Hill, a
+boon companion of Charles, Lord Mohun, and a man of unrestrained
+passion. To all the Captain's coarse advances the actress turned a
+contemptuous shoulder, until in his rage he swore that at any cost she
+should be his. There was, he was convinced, only one real obstacle to
+the success of his suit, Jack Montford, the handsomest actor of his day,
+to whom Mrs Bracegirdle was said to be very kind; and the furious
+Captain vowed: "I am resolved to have the blood of Montford, and to
+carry off his charmer by force if need be."
+
+Captain Hill made no concealment of his purpose. He mouthed his threats
+aloud at his favourite tavern in Covent Garden and elsewhere; and he
+found a willing helper in Lord Mohun, who was always ripe for any
+dastardly scheme; and, with Mohun's help, he carefully prepared his
+plans for both murder and abduction, for on both his heart was set.
+
+By lavish bribes the two conspirators engaged half a dozen soldiers to
+assist in their scheme; they arranged that a coach with two horses, and
+four others in reserve, should be in waiting at nine o'clock in Drury
+Lane, close to the theatre at which Mrs Bracegirdle made her appearance
+nightly; and, equipped with a formidable armoury of swords, daggers, and
+pistols, they repaired at the appointed time to the scene of action.
+
+For a full hour they waited, watching with lynx eyes the door from
+which the fair actress would emerge; but, as luck would have it, she was
+not playing that night. She was, in fact, at the moment supping at the
+house of a friend, Mrs Page, in Princes Street, close by; and they were
+on the point of proceeding there when the lady made her appearance, with
+her mother as companion and Mr Page and her brother for escort, on her
+way home to her lodgings in Howard Street across the Strand.
+
+At sight of their fair prey two of the soldiers rushed forward, snatched
+Mrs Bracegirdle from her mother's arm and dragged her, screaming and
+resisting, towards the coach in which Lord Mohun was sitting by his
+cases of pistols, and in which it was intended to carry her off to
+Totteridge. When her escort rushed to her rescue, Hill struck at the old
+lady with his sword; but the cries and sounds of scuffling attracted
+such a crowd that a change of plans became necessary.
+
+With consummate cleverness the adroit Captain now took each of the
+ladies by the arm and coolly conducted them himself out of the crowd to
+their lodgings, Mohun and the soldiers following ignominiously behind.
+Upon reaching Howard Street, the ladies safely indoors, the soldiers
+were dismissed, and Mohun and his ally, with drawn swords, paced up and
+down the street, vowing vengeance on the unhappy Montford, whom they
+considered the cause of all their troubles, and who, sooner or later,
+must pass through Howard Street on his way to his house in Norfolk
+Street adjoining.
+
+For two long hours they kept their bloodthirsty vigil, feeding the
+flames of hate with copious draughts of wine, which they procured from
+a neighbouring tavern. The lady had escaped them, but they would at
+least make sure of her lover, the handsome actor, who on the stroke of
+midnight turned the corner into Howard Street.
+
+Montford had, it appears, already heard of the frustrated attempt to
+carry off Mrs Bracegirdle, and that Mohun and Hill were keeping watch
+outside her lodgings; so that he was not unprepared for an unpleasant
+scene. Picture his amazement then when Lord Mohun advanced smilingly to
+meet him, and embraced him with a great show of affection. "I am not
+prepared for such cordiality," the actor said coldly, as he disengaged
+himself from the unwelcome embrace. "I should prefer to learn how you
+justify Captain Hill's abominable rudeness to a lady, or keeping company
+with such a scoundrel."
+
+At this moment the Captain, inflamed with drink, strolled insolently up
+to the pair, and, giving Montford a resounding box on the ear,
+exclaimed, "Here I am to justify myself. Draw, fellow!" But before
+Montford had time to recover from the blow and to unsheath his sword,
+Hill ran him through the body. Without a groan the wounded man sank to
+the ground. A cry of "Murder" arose; the watchmen rushed to the scene.
+But before they arrived Hill had made his escape; while Mohun, who at
+least had the courage of his race, submitted himself to arrest. His
+first question to the watchmen was, "Has Hill escaped?" And when he was
+assured that he had, he added: "I am glad of it! I should not care if I
+were hanged for him."
+
+Such was the story which sent a thrill of horror through London on the
+day following the tragedy, and which aroused a fury of anger against the
+cowardly assassins; for not only was Jack Montford a popular idol who
+had captured all hearts with his handsome face and figure, his clever
+acting and his unaffected personal charm, but his wife, who had been
+thus tragically widowed, was one of the most gifted and delightful women
+who ever adorned the stage.
+
+It was thus inevitable that Lord Mohun's trial by his Peers, which was
+opened on the 31st of January 1693, in Westminster Hall, and which was
+invested with all the pomp and ceremonial befitting such an occasion,
+should attract crowds of excited spectators, curious to see the
+principal actors in this sensational drama, and burning to see justice
+done to the noble instigator of the murder. The pent-up excitement
+culminated when Mrs Bracegirdle, looking more beautiful than ever in
+spite of her pallor and evidences of suffering, entered the witness-box;
+and every word of the story she told was listened to in a silence that
+was painful in its intensity.
+
+In answer to the Attorney-General's request that she should "give my
+lord an account of the whole of your knowledge of the attempt that was
+made upon you in Drury Lane, and what followed upon it," she said:
+
+     "'My lord, I was in Prince's Street at supper at Mr
+     Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home
+     with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach
+     by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was
+     drawn, and a great many men stood by it. Just as I came
+     to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and
+     pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to
+     them, and they knocked my mother down almost, for my
+     mother and my brother were with me.
+
+     "'My mother recovered and came and hung about my neck, so
+     that they could not get me into the coach, and Mr Page
+     went to call company to rescue me. Then Mr Hill came with
+     his drawn sword and struck at Mr Page and my mother; and
+     when they could not get me into the coach because company
+     came up, he said he would see me home, and he had me by
+     one hand and my mother by the other. And when we came
+     home he pulled Mr Page by the sleeve and said, "Sir, I
+     would speak with you."'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Pray, Mrs Bracegirdle, did you see
+     anybody in the coach when they pulled you to it?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, my Lord Mohun was in the coach;
+     and when they pulled me to the coach I saw my Lord Mohun
+     in it. As they led me along Drury Lane, my Lord Mohun
+     came out of the coach and followed us, and all the
+     soldiers followed them; but they were dismissed, and, as
+     I said, when we came to our lodgings, Mr Hill pulled Mr
+     Page by the sleeve and said he would speak with him.
+     Saith Mr Page, "Mr Hill, another time will do; to-morrow
+     will serve." With that, when I was within doors, Mr Page
+     was pulled into the house, and Mr Hill walked up and down
+     the street with his sword drawn. He had his sword drawn
+     when he came alone with me.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Did you observe him to say anything
+     whilst he was with you?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'As I was going down the hill he said,
+     as he held me, that he would be revenged, but he did not
+     say on whom. When I was in the house several persons went
+     to the door, and afterwards Mrs Browne (my landlady),
+     went to the door, and spoke to them, and asked them what
+     they stayed and waited there for. At last they said they
+     stayed to be revenged of Mr Montford; and then Mrs Browne
+     came in to me and told me of it.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Were my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill both
+     together when that was said, that they stayed to be
+     revenged of Mr Montford?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, they were. And when Mrs Browne
+     came in and told me, I sent my brother and my maid and
+     all the people we could out of the house to Mrs Montford
+     to desire her to send, if she knew where her husband was,
+     to tell him of it; and she did. And when they came
+     indoors again I went to the door, and the doors were
+     shut, and I listened to hear if they were there still;
+     and my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill were walking up and down
+     the street. By-and-bye the watch came up to them, and
+     when the watch came they said, "Gentlemen, why do you
+     walk with your swords drawn?" Says my Lord Mohun, "I am a
+     peer of England--touch me if you dare!" Then the watch
+     left them, and they went away; and a little after there
+     was a cry of "murder." And that is all I know, my lord.'
+
+When at the close of the case Lord Mohun was asked if he had anything to
+say in his defence, he answered:
+
+     "My lords, I hope it will be no disadvantage to me my not
+     summing up my evidence like a lawyer. I think I have
+     made it plainly appear that there never was any formal
+     quarrel or malice between Mr Montford and me. I have also
+     made appear the reason why we stayed so long in the
+     street, which was for Mr Hill to speak with Mrs
+     Bracegirdle and ask her pardon, and I stayed with him as
+     my friend. So plainly appeareth I had no hand in killing
+     Mr Montford, and upon the confidence of my own innocency
+     I surrendered myself to this honourable house, where I
+     know I shall have all the justice in the world."
+
+The trial, which lasted five days, resulted in a verdict of
+acquittal--sixty-nine peers voting Lord Mohun "Not Guilty," and fourteen
+finding him "Guilty."
+
+One would have thought that such a severe lesson and narrow escape would
+have given Mohun pause in his career of vice and crime. On the contrary,
+it seems merely to have whetted his appetite for similar adventures. He
+plunged into still deeper dissipation; one mad revel succeeded another;
+duel followed duel, all without provocation on any part but his own. He
+killed in cold blood two more men who had innocently provoked his
+enmity, "as if increase of appetite did grow by that it fed on," until
+he rightly became the most dreaded and hated man in all England, a man
+to whom a glance, a gesture, or a harmless word might mean death.
+
+But his evil days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died
+in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed
+Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known
+partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided
+that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there
+be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the
+fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled swordsman of his day?
+
+Mohun jumped at the vile suggestion, and lost no time in seeking the
+Duke and insulting him in public. His Grace, however, who knew the man's
+reputation only too well, treated the insult with the silence and
+contempt it deserved; whereupon Mohun, roused to fury by this studied
+slight, changed his _rôle_ to that of challenger. Thrice he sent his
+second, one Major-General Macartney, almost as big a scoundrel as
+himself, to the Duke's house in St James's Square; the fourth time a
+meeting was arranged for the following morning at the Ring, in Hyde
+Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night
+hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of
+pleasure.
+
+In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning--the morning of 15th
+November 1712--the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously
+at the Ring--in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the
+early morning hours a desolate part of the Park--and the preliminaries
+were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: "I am well
+assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you
+shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton,
+will entertain you." "I wish for no better partner," Macartney replied;
+"the Colonel may command me."
+
+A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords
+flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in
+lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on
+the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as
+grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the
+blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded
+in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the
+very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his
+opponent, but the others fought on--gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting,
+the strength ebbing with each thrust.
+
+At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword
+passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling
+forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into
+the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him
+in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it
+into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as
+fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland.
+
+Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen,
+he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed
+to his wounds--the "Dog Mohun," as Swift called him, lying in death but
+a few yards from his victim.
+
+     "I am infinitely concerned," Swift wrote the same day,
+     "for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man.
+     I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better."
+
+Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well
+earned his unenviable title, "The wicked Baron."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_
+
+
+The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a
+diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a
+half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour,
+and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her
+allurements and her shame.
+
+If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal
+in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged
+to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centuries of
+noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or
+remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that
+is known of this Queen of _intrigantes_ is that she had for father a
+worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in
+the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter
+part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and
+two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among
+his neighbours. It was at Brest that Evelyn enjoyed this hospitality
+for a brief period; and the diarist has nothing but what is good to say
+of the retired tradesman.
+
+But the worthy merchant had his hands full with one at least of his two
+daughters, who was developing dangerous fascinations, and with them a
+precocious knowledge of how to turn them to account. He was thankful to
+pack Louise off to a boarding-school, where she seems to have led her
+teachers such a dance that it became necessary to place her in stronger
+hands; and with this view the foolish father sent her to Paris, the last
+place in the world for such a charming and designing minx, and to the
+custody of a weak-willed aunt.
+
+Nothing could have suited Louise better than this change of arena for
+the exercise of her wilfulness and witchery. Before she had been many
+days in the French capital she was able to twist her aunt round her
+little finger--indeed her power of captivating was, to the end of her
+life, her chief dower--and to obtain all the freedom she wanted. And it
+was not long before her allurements won the admiration of the dissolute
+Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France, a man skilled in all the arts
+of love. The girl's bourgeois head was completely turned by the
+splendour of her first captive; and, to make him secure, she counted no
+sacrifice too great. Not, indeed, that she ever regarded her virtue as
+anything but the principal piece she intended to play on the chessboard
+of life.
+
+For a few years Louise revelled in the new life which the amorous Duc
+opened to her, and which only came to an end when the Admiral was
+despatched, in command of a fleet, against the Turks, an expedition from
+which he was fated never to return. Before he said good-bye, however,
+Louise took care to make the next step on her ladder of world-conquest
+secure. Through the Duc's influence she was appointed maid-of-honour to
+Madame, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., and sister to the second Charles of
+England, now restored to the throne of his fathers.
+
+We can well imagine that the wool merchant's daughter wasted no sighs on
+the lover she had lost. She had now a much wider and more splendid field
+at the Court of France, for the exploiting of her dangerous gifts and
+the indulgence of her ambition. That the new maid had no lack of lovers
+we may be sure; for though she was not richly dowered with beauty she
+always seems to have had a magnetic power over the hearts of men. We
+know, too, that she singled out for special favour, the Comte de Sault,
+the handsomest noble in France, a man skilled above all his fellows in
+the then moribund knightly exercises; and that her _liaison_ with the
+Comte, in a court where such intimacies were the fashion, added to,
+rather than detracted from, her social prestige.
+
+Such was the life of Louise de Querouaille up to the time when she made
+her first acquaintance with the land in which she was destined to crown
+her adventurous career, and to make herself at once the most dazzling
+and the most hated figure in England. At this time Louis' designs on
+Spain and Holland had received a rude check by the signing of an
+alliance between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces; and it
+became a matter of vital importance to detach England from a combination
+so fatal to his schemes. With this object he decided to send Henrietta,
+Duchess of Orleans, on a visit, ostensibly of affection, to her brother
+Charles II., charged with a secret mission to induce him by every
+artifice in her power to withdraw from the alliance.
+
+How Henrietta returned flushed with triumph from this iniquitous
+embassy, after ten days of high revelry at Dover, is well-known history.
+Charles, in response to his favourite sister's pleading and bribes, not
+only consented to desert his allies, but, as soon as he decently could,
+to follow in the steps of his brother, the Duke of York, to Rome; and in
+return for these evidences of friendship, Louis was gracious enough to
+promise him substantial aid and protection; and, further, to grant him a
+subsidy of £1,000,000 a year if he would take up arms with France
+against Holland.
+
+It is more to our purpose to know that among the gay galaxy of courtiers
+who accompanied Madame to England was Louise de Querouaille, who thus
+first set eyes on the King, in whose life-drama she was to play so
+brilliant and baleful a _rôle_; and that before Charles, with streaming
+eyes, said "good-bye" to his scheming sister, she had made excellent use
+of her opportunities to enslave this English "King of Hearts." So much
+at least was reported to Louis on the return of the embassy, when he
+was assured by Madame that, of all the beautiful women in her train, the
+only one to make any impression on her Royal brother was Louise de
+Querouaille.
+
+This information, no doubt, was in Louis' mind when, later, it became
+necessary to cement Charles's allegiance to his compact. Gold was always
+a potent lure to the "Merrie Monarch," whose purse was never deep enough
+for the demands made on it by his extravagance; but a still more
+seductive bait was a beautiful woman to add to his seraglio. The Duchess
+of Cleveland had now lost her youth and good looks; the incomparable
+Stuart's beauty had been fatally marred by small-pox. Of all the fair
+and frail women who had held Charles in thrall there was none left to
+dispute the palm with the French maid-of-honour except Nell Gwynn, the
+Drury Lane orange-girl, whose sauciness and vulgarity gave to the jaded
+Sybarite a piquant relish to her charms.
+
+Here was a splendid opportunity for Louis to complete the conquest of
+his vacillating cousin whose allegiance was so vital to his plans of
+aggrandisement. Louise should go to Whitehall to play the part of
+beautiful spy on Charles, and, by her favours, to make him a pliant tool
+in the hand of "le Roi Soleil."
+
+Charles, who was by no means loth to renew his Dover acquaintance with
+the bewitching maid-of-honour, sent a yacht to Dieppe to bring her to
+England, and charged no less a personage than the Duke of Buckingham to
+be her escort to Whitehall. The Duke, however, who was probably too much
+occupied with his own affairs of the heart, "totally forgot both the
+lady and his promise; and, leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe, to
+manage as best she could, passed over to England by way of Calais,"--a
+slight which the indignant Louise never forgave.
+
+Thus it was that the new favourite of the King made her journey across
+the Channel under the escort of the English Ambassador, and was given by
+him into the charge of Buckingham's political rival, Lord Arlington.
+"The Duke of Buckingham thus," to quote Bishop Burnet, "lost all merit
+he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his strange
+conduct threw into the hands of his enemies."
+
+The arrival of the "French spy," whose mission was well understood, was
+hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few
+stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent
+verses by St Evremond--efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded
+with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her
+without having even seen her was a matter of small concern--she was
+prepared for it. All she cared for was that Charles should give her a
+cordial welcome; and this he did with effusiveness and open arms. Apart
+from her character as ambassadress to his "dear brother" of France, she
+was a new and piquant stimulus to his sated appetite--a "dainty dish to
+set before a King."
+
+She was installed at Whitehall to the flourish of trumpets; was
+appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen, who frankly disliked and dreaded
+this new rival in her husband's accommodating affection; and at once
+assumed her position as chief of those women the King delighted to
+honour. And with such restraint and discretion did she conduct herself
+during these early days at Whitehall that she disarmed the jealousy of
+the Court ladies, while receiving the homage of their gallants.
+
+To Charles she was coyness itself--virtue personified. While smiling
+graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her
+attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she
+guard her favours that the French Ambassador began to show alarm.
+
+     "I believe," he wrote at this time, "that she has so got
+     round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to
+     our Sovereign lord and master, _if_ she only does her
+     duty."
+
+That Louise was fully conscious of her duty and meant to do it, was
+never really in question--but the time to unbend was not yet. It was no
+part of her clever strategy to drop like a ripe plum into Charles's
+mouth. _Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter._ She would be accounted all
+the greater prize for proving difficult to win.
+
+The psychical moment, she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited
+Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where,
+removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house
+freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the
+revels of which Euston was 183 the scene during a few intoxicating
+weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the
+merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, experts in gallantry,
+and his ladies, with most of whom an acquaintance with virtue was but a
+faded memory, it is no difficult matter to raise a corner of the curtain
+in imagination. One typical scene Forneron records thus:
+
+     "Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium
+     of October evenings in a country-house, got up a
+     burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the
+     bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest
+     ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the
+     retirement of the former into the nuptial chamber."
+
+It was precisely such a ceremony in which, a few years earlier, Charles
+had figured with _La belle Stuart_, while Lady Castlemaine looked on
+with laughter and applause.
+
+[Illustration: LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH]
+
+Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that
+Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed _maitresse en
+titre_ to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the
+confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of
+the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of
+Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool
+merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange
+for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war
+with Holland; to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother
+and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.
+
+Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the
+wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a
+double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of
+a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might
+her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London,
+throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his "petite
+Louise" had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed
+at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for
+when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was
+probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the
+throne.
+
+     "She has got the notion," wrote the French Ambassador,
+     "that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She
+     talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as
+     if they were mortal."
+
+But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to
+be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which,
+nominally £10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of
+£136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range
+of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal pardons
+and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably
+the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten
+gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with
+the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When
+Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:
+
+     "But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and
+     splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice
+     or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and
+     expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed
+     some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.
+
+     "Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for
+     design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of
+     the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some
+     pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of
+     the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes,
+     exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for
+     Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of
+     wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras,
+     etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides
+     some of his Majesty's best paintings!"
+
+Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise
+de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, "gutter-rival" of hers,
+Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's
+affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of
+French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a
+disconcerting ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful
+rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle
+in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
+Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court _salons_ and corridors, as if
+she were carrion.
+
+And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
+Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to "chuck
+Charles's royal chin," and to call him her "Charles the third," in
+unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
+favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
+all, was no better than herself.
+
+"The Duchess," she would say, "pretends to be a person of quality. She
+says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
+person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
+quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
+my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
+just as fond of me as he is of his French miss."
+
+But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
+gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
+progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
+the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
+possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
+providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise
+much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
+James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
+from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
+suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
+had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.
+
+After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
+declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
+concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
+promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
+become her crowning ambition to win the right to a _tabouret_ at the
+Court of Versailles--the highest privilege accorded to the old
+_noblesse_, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
+this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
+France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
+but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
+_tabouret_ went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
+the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
+would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
+commands he might lay upon her.
+
+His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
+by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
+Franche Comté, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
+discovered that for once his vaulting ambition had overleaped itself.
+The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
+sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
+Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
+paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
+Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
+popular rage against the "painted French spy" who was regarded, and
+perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
+enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.
+
+To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
+heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
+imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
+Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
+exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless
+beauty to complete her conquest of the amorous Sovereign--"the last
+conquest of her conquering eyes," as Waller wrote in his fulsome
+greeting of the new divinity of the Whitehall seraglio.
+
+For once Louise's indomitable courage showed signs of yielding. The
+whole armoury of fate seemed arrayed against her at this crisis in her
+life; even Louis, for whom she had striven so hard, began to distrust
+her powers and to show indifference to her. When Forneron paid her a
+visit at this time he found her in tears. "She opened her heart to him,
+in the presence of her two French maids, who stood by with downcast
+eyes. Tears rained down her cheeks; and her speech was broken with sobs
+and sighs." Never had this designing beauty been so near the verge of
+absolute ruin.
+
+It is not necessary perhaps to follow the Duchess through the period of
+her eclipse; to watch the weak-kneed Charles sink deeper and deeper into
+the morass of his disloyalty until, in return for a subsidy of
+£4,000,000, he offered to dissolve parliament and to make England the
+bond-slave of Louis's designs on Europe; or to see Louise, the chief
+instrument of all this ignominy, reach the climax of her disgrace and
+her peril when mobs besieged Whitehall, and clamoured that the "Jezebel"
+should be sent to the scaffold.
+
+It is sufficient for our purpose to know that through all this terrible
+time she steered her way with almost superhuman skill back to the
+sunshine of success and favour. Her life-long ambition was crowned when
+Louis gave her the d'Aubigny lands and, with them, the _tabouret_ which
+had so long dazzled her eyes and eluded her grasp. When the sky in
+England had at last cleared she paid a visit to her native land. For
+four ecstatic months the wool merchant's daughter made a triumphant
+progress through France, acclaimed and fêted as a Queen. At her castle
+of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
+to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
+her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
+visit to the Capucines in Paris her approach was heralded by a
+procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
+cross. "She was received," we are told, "as if she were a Queen, which
+quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour." To
+such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
+actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
+in France.
+
+On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
+reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
+favourite of the King, all his other mistresses--even the Queen herself
+being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
+did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
+himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
+England--_plus roi que le Roi_.
+
+Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
+more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
+The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
+Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
+which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
+of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
+she had was the rakish Philippe de Vendôme, grandson of Henri IV. and
+nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
+seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
+seems to have conducted an open and shameless intrigue with De
+Vendôme--a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
+for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
+despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
+her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
+withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
+written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
+by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
+was able to breathe again.
+
+Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
+the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
+courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
+light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
+was shocked at such scenes.
+
+     "I was told to-night," he writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won £15,400
+     in one night, and lost £25,000 in another night at play,
+     and has played £1000 and £1500 at a cast."
+
+The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,
+
+     "won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
+     and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above £8000, in doing
+     which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
+     satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
+     favour."
+
+But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
+them was on the night of 1st February 1685--the last Sunday Charles was
+permitted to spend on earth.
+
+     "The great courtiers," says Evelyn, "and other dissolute
+     persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
+     a bank of at least £2000 before them. The King, though
+     not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
+     occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
+     shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
+     Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
+     stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
+     glorious gallery. Six days after," he adds, "all was in
+     the dust."
+
+As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
+concern--for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
+to Louis, her paymaster--was that Charles should at least die an avowed
+Catholic.
+
+     "I found her," Barillon wrote to Louis, "overcome with
+     grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
+     changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
+     and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
+     to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
+     pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
+     there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
+     not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
+     his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
+     with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
+     conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
+     near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
+     his brother's soul.'"
+
+The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
+queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
+before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
+were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
+that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
+and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
+pension of £800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
+True, she was still able to claim her _tabouret_ at the Court of
+Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
+the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
+her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
+refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
+vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
+one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
+eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
+such havoc in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MERRY DUCHESS
+
+
+When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
+centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
+Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
+romantic and adventurous _rôle_ Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
+life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
+distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
+infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
+dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
+an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
+daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.
+
+As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
+she was long out of the nursery she vowed that "she would be a Duchess,"
+and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
+of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
+short frocks she was a finished coquette.
+
+Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
+precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
+his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
+where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
+the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
+of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
+now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
+appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.
+
+In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
+almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
+Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
+conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
+where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
+her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
+himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;
+but while, with tantalising coquetry, she kept them all dangling, one
+alone tempted her--that which was laid at her feet by the Duke of
+Hamilton, a gallant whose high rank was rivalled by his handsome face
+and figure, and his many courtly accomplishments.
+
+When the Duke asked her to be his wife she graciously consented, and her
+Duchess's coronet seemed assured thus early, with a prospect of
+happiness that does not always accompany it; for in this case she seems
+to have given her heart where she gave her hand. For a time the course
+of true love ran smoothly, and the maid-of-honour became a model of
+decorum as the affianced wife of the man she loved.
+
+But her dream of happiness was destined to be short-lived. An intriguing
+aunt, Mrs Hanmer, who had no love for the Hamiltons, set to work to dash
+the cup of happiness from her niece's lips. She intercepted the Duke's
+letters, poured into Elizabeth's ears poisonous stories of his
+infidelities and entanglements to account for his silence, and, when the
+poison began to show signs of working, whisked her niece away on a visit
+to the country-house of her cousin, Mr Merrill, at Lainston, where among
+her fellow-guests was a dashing young naval lieutenant, the Hon.
+Augustus Hervey, who was second heir to his father's Earldom of Bristol.
+
+The lieutenant, as was inevitable, perhaps, fell promptly under the
+spell of the maid-of-honour's charms, and made violent love to her,
+with, of course, Mrs Hanmer's whole-hearted connivance. The girl,
+blazing with resentment of the Duke's coldness, and his apparent
+indifference to her beauty and his vows, lent a willing ear to his
+pleadings, and within a few days had promised to be wife to a man whom,
+as she confessed later, she "almost hated."
+
+The wedding was, by mutual consent, to be secret, partly on account of
+the bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear
+of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in
+1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, and made its
+way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the
+light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and
+mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which
+was to lead to such dramatic developments.
+
+Forty-eight hours later the bridegroom had joined his ship at
+Portsmouth; and his bride's greatest joy, as she confessed, was when he
+had departed. Such a marriage, the fruit of pique and anger, boded ill
+for happiness. Frankly, the union was one long misery, broken by the
+intervals when the husband was away at sea, and accentuated during his,
+happily brief, visits to her. Two children were born to this
+ill-assorted pair, but both died young; and Elizabeth Hervey had
+abundant opportunity to follow her natural bent, by seeking
+forgetfulness in dissipation.
+
+In the full glow of her beauty, a wife who was no wife, she resumed her
+broken career of conquest. She made a tour of Europe, leaving a train of
+broken-hearted and languishing lovers behind her. At Berlin she brought
+Frederick the Great to his knees, and made an abject slave of him; she
+shocked the ladies of the Dresden Court by her laxity and the prodigal
+display of her charms, and by the same arts bewitched the men. She led,
+we are told, a life of shameless dissipation, which only her beauty and
+intellectual gifts redeemed from vulgar depravity. She had lovers in
+every capital she visited, and discarded them as lightly as so many
+playthings.
+
+On her return to England, so anxious was she to obliterate that fatal
+episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to
+Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page
+out of the marriage register.
+
+Meanwhile, the naval lieutenant had blossomed into an Earl, on his
+father's death; and when the new Earl, her husband, showed signs of
+failing health, and there was an early prospect of graduating as a
+wealthy dowager Countess, she saw the wisdom of making another journey
+to Lainston to replace the record of her marriage. Alas, for her
+scheming; the moribund Earl took a new lease of life, and the gilded
+dowagerhood became nebulous and remote again.
+
+But Elizabeth Chudleigh was not to be long baulked in her ambitious
+designs. Though her charms had grown too opulent and were faded--for she
+was now near her fiftieth birthday--she was able to count among her
+slaves the aged Duke of Kingston, an amiable and weak old gentleman of
+enormous wealth, and with one accommodating foot already "in the grave."
+
+Wife, or no wife, she now made up her mind to be a Duchess at last. She
+appealed to Lord Bristol, the husband from whom she had so long been
+estranged, to divorce her, even going so far as to offer to qualify for
+the divorce by an open and flagrant act of infidelity; but his lordship
+only shrugged a scornful shoulder. Still, not to be thwarted, she
+brought a suit of jactitation of marriage, and, by a lavish use of
+bribes and cajolery, got a sentence from the Ecclesiastical Court which
+at last set her free. Within a month she had blossomed into "the most
+high and _puissante_ Princess, the Duchess of Kingston," thus realising
+her childish ambition.
+
+For four and a half years the Duchess was a dignified pattern of all the
+virtues. The passions of youth had lost their fires; the scenes of
+revelry and coarse dissipation to which they had given birth were only a
+memory. She would yet die in the odour of sanctity, however tardy. But
+storms were brewing, and the Duke's death, in 1746, precipitated them,
+though not before she had had another fling with the riches he left to
+her.
+
+Throwing aside her widow's weeds, she flung herself again--old, obese,
+and faded as she was--into a round of dissipation which shocked and
+disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the
+"quality," until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she
+had brought on her head.
+
+She bought a magnificent yacht and sailed away to Rome, where Pope and
+Cardinal alike conspired to do her honour; and was only saved from
+eloping with a titled swindler by his arrest and later suicide in
+prison. It was while in Rome that news came to her that her late
+husband's heirs were planning a charge of bigamy against her, with a
+view to setting aside his will in her favour.
+
+Her exchequer was empty for the time; but, presenting herself before her
+banker, pistol in hand, she compelled him to provide her with funds to
+enable her to return to London--to find all arrangements already made
+for her trial in Westminster Hall on a charge of bigamy. Public opinion
+was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and
+lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy
+entitled, "A Trip to Calais." But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her
+fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of
+ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid
+equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene,
+smiling, contemptuous.
+
+It was of this period of her life that the following story is told. One
+day when driving in London her gorgeous carriage was brought to a halt
+by a coal-cart which was being unloaded in a narrow street. The Duchess
+was furious at the delay, and protruding her head and shoulders from the
+carriage and leaning her arms on the door, she cried out to the
+offending carter: "How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman of quality in
+the street?" "Woman of quality!" sneered the man. "Yes, fellow,"
+rejoined her Grace, "don't you see my arms upon my carriage?" "Indeed I
+do," he answered, "and a pair of d---- coarse arms they are, too!"
+
+Seldom has a trial excited such widespread excitement and interest.
+
+     "Everybody," Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir
+     Horace Mann, "is on the quest for tickets for her Grace
+     of Kingston's trial. I am persuaded that her impudence
+     will operate in some singular manner; probably she will
+     appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster
+     Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when
+     she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil
+     to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce,
+     novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think
+     cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of
+     Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles
+     the waters."
+
+But if Walpole resisted the temptation to witness a scene so piquant and
+remarkable, hundreds of the highest in the land, including Queen
+Charlotte herself, the Prince of Wales and many another Royal personage,
+ambassadors and statesmen, flocked to Westminster to see the notorious
+Duchess on her trial on the charge of bigamy. And the vast Hall was
+packed with a curious and expectant crowd when her Grace made her
+stately entry with a retinue of _femmes de chambre_, her doctor,
+apothecary, and secretary, and proceeded to her seat, in front of her
+six bewigged Counsel, with the dignified step and haughty mien of an
+Empress.
+
+Hannah More, who was present at the trial, says that hardly a trace of
+her once enchanting beauty was visible; and that, had it not been for
+her white face, "she might easily have been taken for a bundle of
+bombasin."
+
+The trial lasted several days, during the whole of which the Duchess
+conducted herself with remarkable dignity and composure, in face of the
+damning array of evidence that was brought against her--the evidence of
+a maid who had witnessed her midnight marriage in Lainston Church; of
+the widow of the parson who officiated at the nuptials; and of Serjeant
+Hawkins, who authenticated the birth of her first child by Augustus
+Hervey.
+
+     "The scene opened on Wednesday with all its pomp," wrote
+     Walpole, who although not present seems to have followed
+     the trial with the keenest interest, "and the
+     doubly-noble prisoner went through her part with
+     universal admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious
+     folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her conduct
+     was decent, and even seemed natural. Her dress was
+     entirely black and plain; her attendants not too
+     numerous; her dismay at first perfectly unaffected. A few
+     tears balanced cheerfulness enough, and her presence of
+     mind and attention never deserted her. This rational
+     behaviour and the pleadings of her Counsel, who contended
+     for the finality of her Ecclesiastical Court's sentence
+     against a second trial, carried her triumphantly through
+     the first day, and turned the stream much in her favour."
+
+The following day proved a much more severe test to her Grace's
+composure; and no sooner had the Court risen than "she had to be
+blooded, and fell into a great passion of tears." And each succeeding
+day added to the tension and anxieties which she struggled so bravely to
+conceal.
+
+On the third day of the trial Walpole says:
+
+     "The plot thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges
+     were called on for their opinions, and _una voce_
+     dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court. The
+     Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 'Life and
+     Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, _alias_ Hervey,
+     _alias_ the most high and _puissante_ Princess, the
+     Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a
+     front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the
+     first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present
+     at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was
+     benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her
+     dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded
+     enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two
+     babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first
+     nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist
+     and become Earl of Bristol."
+
+Three days later Horace Walpole concludes his narrative of the trial,
+which we are afraid his antipathy to the adventurous Duchess has
+coloured a little too vividly:
+
+     "The wisdom of the land," he writes, "has been exerted
+     for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and
+     yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess
+     to convert herself into a Duchess. After a pretty
+     defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she herself
+     had written and pronounced very well), the sages, in
+     spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished a hot iron)
+     dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the
+     fees, all voting her guilty; but the Duke of Newcastle,
+     her neighbour in the country, softening his vote by
+     adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.' So ends the
+     solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not
+     intend to leave her that title.... I am glad to have done
+     with her."
+
+A few days later, in spite of a writ, _ne exeat regno_, which had been
+issued against her, she was back in France, travelling in state as
+"Madame la Duchesse de Kingston." From Calais she made her magnificent
+progress to Rome, where Pope and Cardinals vied in doing honour to so
+exalted and charming a lady, and entertained her as regally as if she
+had been a Queen. Returning to Calais she installed herself in a
+palatial house where she dispensed a lavish hospitality, and flung her
+gold about with prodigal hands.
+
+But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
+cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
+Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
+balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
+continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
+Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
+entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
+torchlight.
+
+Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
+in Paris, and the château of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
+alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
+Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
+by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
+of her jewels to her "dear friend," the Russian Empress; a large diamond
+to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
+necklace and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
+that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
+bore the same title.
+
+But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
+close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
+sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
+She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
+dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. "At your peril, disobey
+me!" she said to her protesting attendants. "I _will_ get up!" She got
+up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
+drained glass after glass of Madeira. "I will lie down on the couch,"
+she then said. "I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
+again."
+
+From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
+felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
+fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
+life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
+pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
+found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
+indulgence of her appetites were "all vanity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER
+
+
+If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
+whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen
+a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from
+Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of
+heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.
+
+There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's
+blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and
+philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother,
+the lovely and frail Louise Renée de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
+the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women--the Duchesses of
+Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin--who spent their days in "open
+dalliance" with the "Merrie Monarch," and their nights at the
+basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.
+
+As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast--the
+mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our
+Peerage. One day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing
+cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his
+heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord
+Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful
+Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery;
+a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were
+immediately to be made husband and wife.
+
+At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride
+the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going
+to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of
+"honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and
+within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were
+separated--Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his
+bride to her nursery toys.
+
+Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour
+round the world--a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means
+eager to renew his acquaintance with the "ugly duckling" who was his
+wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a
+vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no
+sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never
+yet had had power to do.
+
+Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. "You must
+indeed be a stranger to London," was the answer, "if you do not know
+the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!" Lady March! Could that
+exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
+married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
+introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
+indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
+his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
+the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
+without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
+the grave.
+
+Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
+a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
+the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
+mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.
+
+One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
+nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
+George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
+pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: "How do
+you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+George was so delighted with the child's _naïveté_ that he took her up
+in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
+had promised to come and see him.
+
+And how the King and his "little sweetheart," as he called her, enjoyed
+these visits! and the merry romps they had together!
+
+     "On one occasion," says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
+     of much later days), "after a romp with my mother, the
+     King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
+     squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
+     to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
+     that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
+     begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
+     was quite delighted."
+
+But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
+her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
+to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
+years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
+sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
+little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
+years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
+embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
+disgust: "Pooh! she has grown too stupid!"
+
+But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
+and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend--none other
+than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
+little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
+the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
+conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
+her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.
+
+Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
+some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
+Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
+Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
+House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:
+
+     "Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
+     When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
+     on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
+     lovely and so expressive."
+
+And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
+her:
+
+     "Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
+     saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
+     hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
+     sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
+     fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks."
+
+Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
+seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it--an
+indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
+One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
+of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
+Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not summon up courage to declare
+his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
+Coronation, "Ah!" he exclaimed with a sigh, "there will be no Coronation
+until there is a Queen." "But why, sir?" asked Lady Susan in surprise.
+"They want me to have a foreign Queen," George answered, "but I prefer
+an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
+world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?"
+
+A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: "Has your
+friend given you my message?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you think of it?
+Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
+do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
+downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
+"nothing comes of nothing."
+
+Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
+small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
+spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
+already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
+Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
+passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
+shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
+her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That
+will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"
+
+The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the
+young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
+passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
+surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
+to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
+to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
+unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
+and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
+Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.
+
+Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
+to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
+extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
+Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted
+girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears."
+But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
+the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
+such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
+brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.
+
+If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
+George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
+attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
+rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
+rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.
+
+Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal lover for some days
+she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
+the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
+King that she "thought nothing" of his advances, had developed into the
+veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
+strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
+her own defeat.
+
+That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
+Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
+might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
+against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
+despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
+fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
+surrender of his liberty there was no escape.
+
+Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
+quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
+favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
+Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
+was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
+life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
+the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow--to her
+vanity, if not to her heart. It was a "bolt from the blue," for which
+she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.
+
+     "I shall take care," she wrote to her friend, Lady
+     Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, "I shall
+     take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
+     if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
+     cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
+     what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
+     message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
+     not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
+     with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
+     not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
+     believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
+     will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
+     thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
+     shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
+     much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
+     can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
+     his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
+     as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
+     time of it."
+
+A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
+Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
+consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
+of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
+retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
+no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
+compared with his ill-favoured bride, was "as a queenly lily to a
+dandelion."
+
+The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
+Sarah's revenge, and of which her son tells the following story. Among
+the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
+half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
+adherents.
+
+     "Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
+     he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
+     knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
+     and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
+     sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
+     and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
+     know he always loved Pretenders.'"
+
+But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
+of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
+was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
+the score; but to one and all--including, as Walpole records, Lord
+Errol--she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
+fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
+of a mere Baronet--Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
+majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
+Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
+circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.
+
+More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
+baronet-husband.
+
+     "And who the d----," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
+     Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
+     house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near
+     Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
+     £2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
+     would not be happy?"
+
+And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
+silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
+idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
+Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:
+
+     "Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
+     like my own and your description of yours, from which I
+     reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
+     me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
+     single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
+     happiest of beings."
+
+It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
+she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
+flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
+rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
+resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
+He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!
+
+And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
+not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
+handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
+baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
+with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
+into a _liaison_ with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
+termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
+nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.
+
+Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
+intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
+lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
+the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish
+paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
+After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
+to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate--he to travel
+abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
+brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
+(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
+isolation.
+
+The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
+night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
+chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
+that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
+remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
+bright days were still in store for her--a happy and honourable
+wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
+honour.
+
+It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
+brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were
+few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
+Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features."
+When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
+he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
+but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
+he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
+years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
+of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
+not fit to be his wife.
+
+     "He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I _do_ love him;
+     and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
+     that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
+     degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
+     marrying me."
+
+Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
+proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
+day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
+to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
+their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
+sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
+their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
+generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
+was the historian of the Peninsular War.
+
+When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
+Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.
+
+     "How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the
+     gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
+     solace into a woman's darkened heart."
+
+But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
+years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
+gallant boys.
+
+To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
+that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
+even look on the sons she loved.
+
+A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
+life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
+years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
+Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
+As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
+of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
+his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
+overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
+church.
+
+Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
+of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
+out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
+the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a
+dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
+gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
+lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
+eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows,
+though they carried a crown with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM
+
+
+Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
+full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
+daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
+beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
+and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
+Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
+sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
+had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.
+
+Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
+on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
+life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
+could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
+womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
+and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
+Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
+the Earl of Galloway.
+
+As for Susanna, the loveliest of the "three Graces"--"Scotland's
+fairest daughter," to quote a chronicler of the time--she counted her
+high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
+long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
+luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.
+
+It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
+stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest lass and bonniest lad" in
+all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
+wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
+chapter of romance.
+
+For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
+happy.
+
+     "I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
+     "that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
+     to crowd my happiness into."
+
+Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.
+
+One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
+the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
+his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
+Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.
+
+After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
+of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
+continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
+advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.
+
+From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
+Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
+jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
+the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
+leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
+from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
+unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.
+
+Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
+the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
+horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
+roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
+with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
+drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
+to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
+antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
+entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
+dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
+tavern, where he had drunk "not wisely, but too well."
+
+Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
+beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
+best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.
+
+As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
+of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
+That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
+received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
+entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
+Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
+the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.
+
+The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
+beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
+cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
+with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
+them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
+in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
+that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
+and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
+make more lovely still.
+
+Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
+dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
+model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
+passion were by no means dead in her; and to this "eternal feminine" we
+must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
+her story.
+
+Among the Countess's many servants was one George Forbes, a young and
+strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
+late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
+with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
+was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
+liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
+that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
+promoted him to the charge of her stables--a proof of confidence which
+no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
+him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
+his head.
+
+One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
+to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
+love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
+wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested--"But my
+lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
+ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on."
+"You must not say that," the Countess replied. "You are more to me than
+rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
+you have it in your power to bestow."
+
+In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced,
+what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the
+consequences of such an ill-assorted union? And thus strangely and
+romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of
+Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the
+altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.
+
+What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.
+The Countess was disowned by her noble relatives; her friends with one
+consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the
+constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape
+with her low-born husband to the Continent.
+
+Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred
+contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility;
+he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she
+had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for
+which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child--the
+very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could
+not bear--was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared
+for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned,
+she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after
+nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful
+friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as
+any that has fallen to the lot of woman.
+
+And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains,
+and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen
+convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she
+learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice
+to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
+memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
+father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
+from her--if, indeed, they knew themselves.
+
+One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
+sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
+letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
+was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
+convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
+the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
+(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
+long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
+father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
+of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
+where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
+some years.
+
+At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
+conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
+sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
+the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
+stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
+dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
+unwelcome.
+
+Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
+ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
+bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
+to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
+slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
+possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
+took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
+broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
+oppression she had left for ever.
+
+For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
+through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
+humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
+bread from door to door.
+
+At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
+fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
+farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but
+the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer
+Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last
+the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open
+arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially
+invited to make her home with them.
+
+The rest of Emilia's strange life-story can be told in few words. After
+a few years of peaceful and happy life in the hospitable farmhouse, she
+married the farmer's only son, an honest and worthy young fellow who
+loved her dearly. She became the mother of many children, who in their
+humble life knew nothing of their high-placed cousins, the Dukes and
+Earls of another world than theirs.
+
+When, in process of time, her husband died--many of her children had
+died young, the rest were far from prosperous--Mrs Lauder retired to
+spend her last days in a small cottage at St Ninian's, near Stirling,
+where for a time she lived in the utmost poverty. Then, when her life
+was almost flickering out in destitution, a few of her great relatives
+condescended to acknowledge her existence. The Earls of Galloway and
+Dunmore, the Duke of Hamilton, and Mrs Stewart Mackenzie combined to
+provide her with an annuity of £100; and, thus secure against want, the
+old lady contrived to spin out the thread of her days a few years
+longer. Thus died, at the advanced age of eighty-five, eating the bread
+of charity, the woman who had in her veins the blood of Scotland's
+greatest men and her fairest women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A NOBLE VAGABOND
+
+
+The circle of the British Peerage has included many "vagabonds," some of
+whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any
+one of them all has had the _wanderlust_ in his veins to the same degree
+as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously
+ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago.
+
+It would have been strange if this blue-blooded "rolling-stone" had been
+a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric
+woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who dazzled England by her beauty and
+brilliant intellect, and amused it by her oddities in the days of the
+first two Georges. This grandson of the Duke of Kingston, and
+great-grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich was "his mother's
+boy"--with much of his mother's physical and mental charms, and more
+than her eccentricities, as his story abundantly proves.
+
+As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where
+his father, the Hon. Sydney Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and
+there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English
+child to be inoculated for the small-pox. Probably, too, it was his
+boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all
+things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.
+
+His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy
+was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled
+against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he
+threw down his Euclid and Cæsar and vanished as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in
+vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for
+his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be
+found anywhere.
+
+One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the
+lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his
+father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying
+fish. "That is the voice of young Montagu," he exclaimed, and promptly
+despatched his servant to bring the boy to him. The fish-seller
+innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head,
+and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.
+
+For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing
+that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.
+It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked to his
+master's shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice
+and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents
+and to school. Thus ignominiously ended Edward's first adventure, the
+precursor of a hundred others.
+
+He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he
+vanished again--this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the
+captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and
+consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into
+the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the
+vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the
+peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to
+drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by
+the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the
+prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof.
+
+For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his
+parents; but once more "hope told a flattering tale." For the third time
+he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor
+working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This
+time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble
+any more about his prodigal son, declaring that "he had made his bed and
+must lie on it."
+
+Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another
+mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought
+him again triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite
+clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home
+and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the
+restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that
+at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we
+find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar,
+who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of
+Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually
+developed into a pillar of the State!
+
+But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was
+destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep
+in debt that he vanished again--this time to escape from his creditors.
+He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed
+into the gambler and _roué_, dividing his time between the seductive
+poles of the gaming-table and fair women.
+
+His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check
+one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed
+by the entry of a _posse_ of officials into his room, armed with a
+warrant for his imprisonment.
+
+     "On Sunday, the 31st of October 1751," Mr Montagu
+     records, "when it was near one in the morning, as I was
+     undressed and going to bed, I heard a person enter my
+     room; and upon turning round and seeing a man I did not
+     know, I asked him calmly _what he wanted_? His answer was
+     that _I must put on my clothes._ I began to expostulate
+     upon the motive of his apparition, when a commissary
+     instantly entered the room with a pretty numerous
+     attendance, and told me with great gravity that he was
+     come, by virtue of a warrant for my imprisonment, to
+     carry me to the Grand Chatelêt. I requested him again and
+     again to inform me of the crime laid to my charge; but
+     all his answer was, that _I must follow him_. I begged
+     him to give me leave to write to Lord Albemarle, the
+     English Ambassador, promising to obey the warrant if his
+     Excellency was not pleased to answer for my forthcoming.
+     But the Commissary refused me the use of pen and ink,
+     though he consented that I should send a verbal message
+     to his Excellency, telling me at the same time that he
+     would not wait the return of the messenger, because his
+     orders were to carry me instantly to prison. As
+     resistance under such circumstances must have been
+     unavailable, and might have been blameable, I obeyed the
+     warrant by following the Commissary, after ordering one
+     of my domestics to inform my Lord Albemarle of the
+     treatment I underwent.
+
+     "I was carried to the Chatelêt, where the jailors,
+     hardened by their profession, and brutal for their
+     profit, fastened upon me as upon one of those guilty
+     objects whom they lock up to be reserved for public
+     punishment; and though neither my looks nor my behaviour
+     betrayed the least symptom of guilt, yet I was treated as
+     a condemned criminal. I was thrown into prison, and
+     committed to a set of wretches who bore no character of
+     humanity but its form. My residence--to speak in the jail
+     dialect--was in the SECRET, which is no other than the
+     dungeon of the prison, where all the furniture was a
+     wretched mattress and a crazy chair. The weather was
+     cold, and I called for a fire; but I was told I could
+     have none. I was thirsty, and called for some wine and
+     water, or even a draught of water by itself, but was
+     denied it. All the favour I could obtain was a promise to
+     be waited on in the morning; and then was left by myself
+     under a hundred locks and bolts, with a bit of candle,
+     after finding that the words of my jailors were few,
+     their orders peremptory, and their favours unattainable.
+
+     "I continued in this dismal dungeon till the 2nd of
+     November, entirely ignorant of the crime I was accused
+     of; but at nine in the morning of that day, I was carried
+     before a magistrate, where I underwent an examination by
+     which I understood the heads of the charge against me,
+     and which I answered in a manner that ought to have
+     cleared my own innocence."
+
+The story of the charge and trial is a long one; but it can be briefly
+outlined as follows:--It seems that one, Abraham Paya, a Jew, who,
+disguised as "Mr Roberts," was staying with a Miss Rose who was not his
+wedded wife, accused Montagu and two of his friends, Mr Taafe and Lord
+Southwell, of making him drunk as a preliminary to inveigling him into
+play and winning 870 louis d'or from him.
+
+As the Jew, whom his losses had sobered, refused to pay, Montagu and his
+associates had compelled him by violence and threats to give them drafts
+for the sums owing to them. Then, knowing that payment would be refused,
+"Roberts" shook the dust of Paris off his feet, turned his back on lady
+and creditors alike, and ran away to Lyons. Whereupon, so said the
+complainant, Montagu and his fellow-thieves had ransacked his baggage
+(which he had foolishly left behind him), and appropriated all his money
+and jewels, to the value of many thousands of livres.
+
+To quote Mr Montagu again, the latter part of the charge was that Mr
+Taafe
+
+     "smashed all the trunks, portmanteaus and drawers
+     belonging to the complainant, from whence he took out in
+     one bag 400 louis d'or, and out of another, to the value
+     of 300 louis d'or in French and Portuguese silver; from
+     another bag, 1200 livres in crown pieces, a pair of
+     brilliant diamond buckles, for which the complainant paid
+     8020 livres to the Sieur Piérre; his own picture set
+     around with diamonds to the amount of 1200 livres ...
+     laces to the amount of 3000 livres, seven or eight
+     women's robes; two brilliant diamond rings, several gold
+     snuff-boxes, a travelling-chest containing his plate and
+     china, and divers other effects, all of which Mr Taafe
+     (one of Montagu's co-defendants) packed up in one box,
+     and, by the help of his footman, carried in a coach to
+     his own apartment. That afterwards Mr Taafe carried Miss
+     Rose and her sister in another coach to his lodgings,
+     where they remained three days, and then sent them to
+     London, under the care of one of his friends."
+
+Fortunately for Montagu, the verdict of the Court was in his favour;
+and, after such an unpleasant experience, he was glad to return to
+England, where, such an adept at quick-changing was he, that we soon
+find him a full-blown Member of Parliament for Bossinery, lightening his
+legislative labours by writing a learned treatise on the rise and fall
+of ancient Republics. Was there ever such a man? Duke's grandson,
+fish-hawker, common sailor, peasant, _roué_, gambler, Member of
+Parliament, scholar--all _rôles_ came equally easily to him; and many
+more just as varied were to follow. It was while thus wearing the halo
+of learning and high respectability that his father died, leaving him a
+substantial income, and a large estate in Yorkshire to his eldest son,
+if he should have one. And now we find him leaving his law-making and
+cultivating letters and science in Italy, further enriched by the guinea
+which was all his mother, Lady Mary, condescended to leave her vagrant
+son. The rest--an enormous property--went to his sister, the Countess of
+Bute.
+
+From Italy he went on a long tour through the East, where he seems to
+have played the _rôle_ of Lothario very effectually. At Alexandria (to
+give only one of his love adventures) he lost his fickle heart to the
+beautiful wife of the Danish Ambassador, whom, under various pretences,
+he induced to leave the coast clear by getting him to go to Holland. The
+husband thus safely out of the way, Montagu proceeded to dispose of him.
+He showed the lady a letter from Holland giving sad details of his
+sudden death, and consoled the bereaved "widow" so well that she
+consented to reward him with her hand and to accompany him to Syria.
+
+By the time the dead husband had returned to life Montagu was already
+weary of honeymooning, and was thankful to make his escape to Italy,
+free to woo, and, if necessary, to wed again.
+
+We next find this human chameleon at Venice, wearing a beard down to his
+waist, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and drinking water, and
+recounting his adventures to all who cared to hear them. He was an
+Armenian, and played the part to perfection--until he wearied of it, and
+found another to play. At this time he wrote:
+
+     "I have been a labourer in the fields of Switzerland and
+     Holland, and have not disdained the humble profession of
+     postillion and ploughman. I was a _petit maitre_ at
+     Paris, and an abbé at Rome. I put on, at Hamburg, the
+     Lutheran ruff, and with a triple chin and a formal
+     countenance I dealt about me the word of God so as to
+     excite the envy of the clergy. My fate was similar to
+     that of a guinea, which at one time is in the hands of a
+     Queen, and at another is in the fob of a greasy
+     Israelite."
+
+From land to land he wandered, assuming a fresh character in each, and
+thoroughly enjoying them all. During a two years' residence at Venice he
+was visited by the Duke of Hamilton and a Dr Moore, the latter of whom
+gives the following entertaining account of the visit.
+
+     "He met us," Dr Moore writes, "at the stairhead, and led
+     us through some apartments furnished in the Venetian
+     manner, into an inner room quite in a different style.
+     There were no chairs, but he desired us to seat
+     ourselves on a sofa, while he placed himself on a cushion
+     on the floor, with his legs crossed, in the Turkish
+     fashion. A young black slave sate by him; and a venerable
+     old man with a long beard served us with coffee. After
+     this collation, some aromatic gums were brought and burnt
+     in a little silver vessel. Mr Montagu held his nose over
+     the steam for some minutes, and snuffed up the perfume
+     with peculiar satisfaction; he afterwards endeavoured to
+     collect the smoke with his hands, spreading and rubbing
+     it carefully along his beard, which hung in hoary
+     ringlets to his girdle. This manner of perfuming the
+     beard seems more cleanly, and rather an improvement upon
+     that used by the Jews in ancient times.
+
+     "We had a great conversation with this venerable-looking
+     person, who is, to the last degree, acute, communicative,
+     and entertaining, and in whose discourse and manners are
+     blended the vivacity of a Frenchman with the gravity of a
+     Turk. We found him, however, wonderfully prejudiced in
+     favour of the Turkish characters and manners, which he
+     thinks infinitely preferable to the European, or those of
+     any other nation. He describes the Turks in general as a
+     people of great sense and integrity; the most hospitable,
+     generous, and the happiest of mankind. He talks of
+     returning as soon as possible to Egypt, which he paints
+     as a perfect paradise. Though Mr Montagu hardly ever
+     stirs abroad, he returned the Duke's visit, and as we
+     were not provided with cushions, he sate, while he
+     stayed, upon a sofa with his legs under him, as he had
+     done at his own house. This posture, by long habit, has
+     become the most agreeable to him, and he insists upon its
+     being by far the most natural and convenient; but,
+     indeed, he seems to cherish the same opinion with regard
+     to all customs which prevail among the Turks."
+
+It was during this interview that Mr Montagu declared: "I have never
+once been guilty of a small folly in the whole course of my
+life"--probably making the mental reservation that all his follies had
+been great ones. Thus this singular sprig of nobility drifted through
+his kaleidoscopic life, changing his religion as lightly as he changed
+from priest to ploughman, or from debauchee to Armenian storyteller.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever did was the publication of the
+following advertisement, the object of which was evidently to secure the
+large Yorkshire estate devised by his father to any son he might have:
+
+     "MATRIMONY.--A gentleman who hath filled two succeeding
+     seats in Parliament, is near sixty years of age, lives in
+     great splendour and hospitality, and from whom a
+     considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue,
+     hath no objection to marry any lady, provided the party
+     be of genteel birth, polished manners, and about to
+     become a mother. Letters directed to ---- Brecknock,
+     Esq., at Wills's Coffeehouse, facing the Admiralty, will
+     be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every
+     possible mark of respect."
+
+At this time Montagu was the father of three children--two sons (one a
+black boy of thirteen, who was his favourite companion) and a daughter;
+but they all lacked the sanction of the altar.
+
+A lady answering these delicate requirements was actually found, and
+Montagu would probably have graduated as a respectable husband and
+father of another man's child had not his vagabond career been cut
+tragically short. One day, when he was dining at Padua with Romney, the
+famous artist, a partridge-bone lodged in the old man's throat, and
+refused to budge. He was suffocating; his face grew purple--almost
+black. In terrified haste a priest was summoned to administer the last
+consolations of religion; but the dying man would have none of him. When
+he was asked in what faith he wished to leave the world, he gasped, "A
+good Mussulman, I hope." A few moments later Edward Wortley Montagu, who
+had played more parts on the world's stage than almost any other man who
+ever lived, was a corpse. This grandson of a Duke had begun his life of
+adventure as a fish-hawker, and ended it as "a good Mussulman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS
+
+
+Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
+third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
+Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
+coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
+allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
+the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.
+
+The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
+with one foot in the grave, when the "nightingale" of the London
+theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
+her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
+twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
+Channel.
+
+Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
+him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
+Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:
+
+     "I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
+     me an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed
+     through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
+     he had ended his domestic affairs through such
+     difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
+     of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
+     the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
+     (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
+     only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
+     since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
+     her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
+     of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
+     travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
+     has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
+     thing, persuade him to spare himself."
+
+Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
+for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
+Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
+his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
+more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
+the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.
+
+Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
+but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
+and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous _Beggar's Opera_ that pointed
+the way to three of them.
+
+Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
+Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
+might--indeed, he could not have failed to--have made the acquaintance
+of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
+destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
+dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
+Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
+favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
+coffee-house.
+
+She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
+with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
+drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
+all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
+take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
+her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
+her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in _The Orphan_. Her
+_début_ was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
+wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
+Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
+gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
+over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
+laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
+than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.
+
+Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
+_Beaux's Stratagem_ with brilliant success she was offered the part of
+Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
+the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
+doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
+intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
+filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
+painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.
+
+Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
+forth--"The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum." And the
+news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
+tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
+of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
+no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
+the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
+Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.
+
+As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
+opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
+cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
+Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.
+
+Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
+who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
+in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
+child the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her movements charmed
+all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
+and when only sixteen she made a brilliant _début_ as Polly, recalling
+all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.
+
+But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. "So
+pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
+the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
+that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage." It is little wonder
+that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
+personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
+fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
+brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
+her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.
+
+Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
+London was losing its head over still another "Polly Peachum"--Catherine
+Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
+Stephens, who like her predecessors in the _rôle_, sang divinely even as
+a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
+fame at a bound, as Mandano in _Artaxerxes_. One triumph succeeded
+another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
+_Beggar's Opera_.
+
+Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
+too much wedded to her art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
+even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
+verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
+became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
+The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
+her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
+a year of their nuptial-day.
+
+Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet--and before--many an actress
+has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
+who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
+the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
+potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
+premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
+Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
+gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
+possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
+girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
+make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
+Bickerstaff's _Love in a Village._
+
+So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
+made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in _She Stoops to
+Conquer_; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
+of theatre-going London; while her refinement, at that time by no means
+common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
+circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
+sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
+his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
+statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
+fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
+Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
+of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
+at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
+persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
+placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
+Grosvenor Square house.
+
+For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
+splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
+George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
+blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
+to-day.
+
+While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
+beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
+Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
+girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
+buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
+of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing
+with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
+Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
+won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
+a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
+London and to a wider sphere of activity.
+
+From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:
+
+     "There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
+     the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
+     genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
+     make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
+     juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
+     subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
+     very long family, to which I have given a decided
+     negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
+     seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
+     is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
+     the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
+     forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
+     companions."
+
+And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
+gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
+discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
+ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
+the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
+firmament of the drama, winning as much popularity off as on the stage,
+before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
+sought it--Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
+distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as "my Lady," and to
+see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
+the second Earl of Listowel.
+
+Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
+another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
+Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
+cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
+at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
+actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
+Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
+flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
+it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
+theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.
+
+Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
+time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
+to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in _The Provoked
+Husband_; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
+been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
+not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
+beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, "combined the stateliness
+of Juno with the gentler and beauty of a Venus," made her a Queen of
+Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
+left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
+blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
+Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
+stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
+record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
+had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
+nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
+enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS]
+
+For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
+with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
+theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
+the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in _The Rivals_, to her farewell
+appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
+career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
+chronicler,
+
+     She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
+     her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
+     fascinations.
+
+That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
+army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
+a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
+money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
+had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
+though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.
+
+Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
+have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
+used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
+into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
+generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
+was too good.
+
+One day--it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale--Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
+came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
+diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
+Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
+its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: "How happy I should be with such
+a splendid piece of jewellery!" "What is it worth?" enquired her
+husband. "I could not possibly part with it for less than £15,000," the
+jeweller replied. "Bring me a pen and ink," was the only remark of the
+doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
+delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.
+
+    Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.
+
+And this devotion--idolatry almost--lasted as long as life itself,
+reaching its climax in his will, in which he left his actress-wife
+every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to £900,000, "for her
+sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
+deduction of a single legacy to any other person."
+
+That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
+of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
+retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
+Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
+Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
+her one June day in 1827.
+
+For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
+her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
+charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
+alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
+home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
+Queens.
+
+     "The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory," Mr
+     Howitt records, "her splendid fêtes to Royalty, in some
+     of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
+     bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
+     trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
+     music."
+
+When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
+proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
+she possessed, a fortune now swollen to £1,800,000, to Miss Angela
+Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
+a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
+proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
+vast wealth.
+
+Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
+stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
+Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
+into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A PEASANT COUNTESS
+
+
+In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
+traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
+which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
+the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
+under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
+was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
+of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.
+
+He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
+thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
+twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
+village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
+pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
+storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
+handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the
+weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
+to offer him.
+
+"Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the
+best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
+out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few
+minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
+kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
+overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.
+
+Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
+of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
+travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
+proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
+the man he was thus "entertaining unawares," or all that was to come
+from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
+so entertaining.
+
+Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
+man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
+the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
+his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
+and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
+their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
+famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
+Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
+was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,
+
+     "he had four places of residence--his lodgings at Court,
+     his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
+     his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
+     to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
+     London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
+     without counting those who attended him in public.
+
+     "He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
+     tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
+     always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
+     Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
+     more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
+     royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
+     Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
+     cost between £1,000 and £2,000), the only wonder is that
+     his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
+     leave his son £25,000 in money and valuable effects,
+     besides £4,000 a year in landed estates."
+
+Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
+raised to Earldoms--of Exeter and Salisbury--on the same day.
+
+Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms--that of
+Exeter--and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
+although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
+his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
+the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
+married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon,
+who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
+far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
+liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
+months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.
+
+Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
+a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
+determined that if ever he took another wife she should be "a plain,
+homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
+her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
+Queen.'"
+
+Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
+knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
+"beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
+not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
+could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
+of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
+in vain.
+
+And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
+village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
+his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
+was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
+of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
+of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen summers,
+with a complexion of "cream and roses," with a wealth of brown hair, and
+lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
+good-looking stranger.
+
+No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
+responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
+following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
+showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
+and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
+a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
+spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
+pay well for the hospitality.
+
+The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
+pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
+they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
+were halcyon days for the world-weary man--delightful days of sketching
+in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
+spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
+the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
+Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
+butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
+outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
+heads in glory.
+
+To Sarah he was known as "Mr Jones"; and to her innocent mind it never
+occurred that he could be other than the painter he professed to be.
+The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
+pleasant man who always gave them a cheery "good-day," and gossiped with
+them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
+connected with him, all agreed. "Painter chaps" were notoriously poor,
+and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
+he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
+Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
+doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
+must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
+coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
+relieved of their valuables.
+
+Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
+village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
+house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr
+Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
+than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
+of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
+"beggar-maid," and happiness was at last within his grasp.
+
+When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
+good lady was indignant. "Marry Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What, to a fine
+gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!"
+
+But the farmer for once put his foot down. "Yes," he said, "he shall
+marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
+too, and plenty of money to keep her?" And thus it came to pass that one
+October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
+put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
+a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
+altar by her "highwayman" bridegroom.
+
+For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the
+fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh
+Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded,
+and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even
+appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while
+under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the
+village gossips, "quite the lady."
+
+One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this
+idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he
+had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the
+world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of
+peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the
+coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take
+them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the
+"baubles," and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had
+turned his back?
+
+The struggle between duty and inclination was long and bitter; but in
+the end duty carried the day. He would go to "Burghley House by Stamford
+Town," and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his
+wife he merely said: "To-morrow we must start on a journey to
+Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together," a
+proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see
+something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.
+
+At daybreak next morning "Mr Jones" said good-bye to his kind hosts and
+relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting
+his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant
+Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they
+rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to
+the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some
+modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure
+artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he
+not her hero, one of "Nature's gentlemen," and as such the equal of any
+man in the land?
+
+At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days,
+they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at
+sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, "Oh, what a
+beautiful house!" "Yes," answered her husband, reining in his horse to
+enjoy the view; "it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
+Sally, to be its mistress?" Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
+"Only fancy _me_," she said, "mistress of such a noble house! It's too
+funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
+live in it!" "I am so glad you like it, darling," answered her husband,
+as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; "for it
+is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you--well, you are my
+Countess--and my Queen."
+
+   "'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl--
+    'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'
+    She believed him wild, but his words were truth,
+    For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal."
+
+He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, "blow his horn with a
+lordly air"; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
+Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.
+
+   "Many a gallant gay domestic
+    Bow before him at the door;
+    And they speak in gentle murmur
+    When they answer to his call,
+    While he treads with footsteps firmer
+    Leading on from hall to hall.
+    And while now she wanders blindly,
+    Nor the meaning can divine,
+    Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+    'All of that is mine and thine.'"
+
+Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
+chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
+army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
+county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
+by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
+heroine.
+
+For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
+splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
+dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
+bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
+transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
+roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, "like a lily
+drooping, she bowed down her head and died," tenderly and lovingly
+nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
+with her.
+
+Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
+promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
+daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond--thus mingling the peasant blood
+of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the "Merrie Monarch,"--and survived
+until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable
+Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of
+Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic
+beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by "Mr
+Jones, the highwayman," when George the Third was King.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN
+
+
+When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was
+already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to
+kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke
+contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere
+squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than
+Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry
+VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with
+ill-gotten gold, and paid for his enterprise with his head when the
+eighth Henry set himself to the paying off of old scores. His father,
+the knight, was that John Dudley, King Henry's trusted friend and
+executor of his will, Admiral and Earl Marshal of England, whose
+splendid gifts and boundless ambition won a dukedom for him, and made
+him for a time more powerful than his King.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER]
+
+Such was the parentage of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's
+fifth son, who inherited, with his grandfather's scheming brain and
+plausible tongue, the ambition and love of splendour which made his
+father the most brilliant subject of two kings. And this great, if
+dangerous heritage was not long in manifesting itself in the young
+lordling, who was destined to add to his family's story a chapter more
+romantic and dazzling than that of which his father was the hero.
+
+As a boy in the schoolroom he was quick to show gifts of mind almost
+phenomenal in one so young. Latin and Italian, mathematics and abstruse
+sciences came as easily to this scion of the Dudleys as reading and
+arithmetic to less-dowered boys. And with this precocity of mind he
+developed physical graces and skill no less remarkable until, by the
+time he was well in his 'teens, few grown men could ride a horse, couch
+a lance, or speed an arrow with such skill as he.
+
+At the Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome
+boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
+promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
+still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
+Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
+who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
+precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
+accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
+the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
+as best man.
+
+Whether it was really a love-match or not is open to doubt, perhaps;
+for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
+bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
+exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
+XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
+knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
+was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
+to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
+wife.
+
+For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
+son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
+unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
+which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
+soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
+in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
+blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
+Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
+a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
+the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
+_entourage_.
+
+With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
+unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
+a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
+Edward, on his death-bed, to nominate as his successor; and
+Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
+insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
+scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
+his daring project failed is well-known history--how the Princess Mary
+on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
+intercept her; how she equally outwitted Northumberland and his army,
+and made her triumphant entry into London as Queen; and how her
+vengeance fell on those who had sought to snatch the crown from her.
+
+From the Duke and Lady Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had
+conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided
+ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband
+were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those
+who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious
+hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of
+their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll
+disconsolately on the Tower leads by way of melancholy exercise.
+
+Robert, it is said, found many of these hours of duress far from
+unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the
+Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the
+throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there
+were many sweet and stolen meetings between the fair young Princess and
+the captive knight, when bribed warders turned a blind eye on their
+dallying. And rumour even goes so far as to speak of secret nuptials,
+the fruits of which were, in late years, to bear such high names as my
+Lord of Essex and Francis Bacon.
+
+"Fairy tales," no doubt; but, stripped of such ornamental embellishment,
+there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that
+Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in
+whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should
+wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant to her
+hand.
+
+A year of such pleasantly-qualified captivity, and Robert Dudley was a
+free man again, sent to purge his treason, by a Queen, indulgent to his
+youth and it may be to his good looks, by wielding a sword in the war
+then raging between Spain and France; and here he acquitted himself so
+valiantly for Mary's Spanish allies that, on his return in 1558, covered
+with glory, the ban on the Dudleys was removed; and Robert and his
+brothers and sisters were restored to all the rank and rights their
+father's treason had forfeited.
+
+A few months later Queen Mary died; and when Elizabeth ascended the
+throne, Dudley's sun burst into splendour. The romance which had been
+cradled amidst the fearful joys of prison-meetings, was now to flourish
+under vastly-changed conditions. That the new Queen had lost her heart
+to the handsome and accomplished cavalier, whose prowess in war had set
+the seal on the favour won by his graces of person and mind and his
+ingratiating charm, there can be small doubt; and as little that Dudley,
+forgetful of the wife left to pine in solitude in her Norfolk home,
+returned the devotion of the lady, now his Sovereign, who had made his
+Tower prison a palace of delight.
+
+Nor did Elizabeth make any concealment of her passion. She was a Queen;
+and none should question her right to smile on any man, be he subject or
+king. Before she had been a year on the Throne, Dudley was proudly
+wearing the coveted Garter; was a Privy Councillor and Master of Her
+Majesty's horse. She gave him fat lands and monasteries to add to the
+large possessions with which her brother Edward had endowed his
+favourite; and wherever she went on her Royal progresses, Robert Dudley
+rode gallantly at her right hand, a King in all but name. And no Queen
+ever had more splendid escort.
+
+He was, indeed, a man after her own heart, the _beau ideal_ of a
+cavalier; a lover, like herself, of pomp and splendour, a past-master of
+the arts of pageantry and pleasure, and the owner of a tongue as skilled
+in the language of adroit flattery as in the use of honeyed words. Such
+was Robert Dudley who loved his Queen; and such the Queen who returned
+undisguised admiration for flattery, and love for love.
+
+That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's
+hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to
+press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her.
+Her hand was her own as much as her Crown--she would dispose of it as
+she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her
+people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as
+indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could
+afford to smile at them all--and she did.
+
+And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the
+Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in
+Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then,
+and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to
+wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it;
+and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for
+deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.
+
+One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice.
+Dudley's wife had been poisoned--by her husband, it was said with bated
+breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish
+Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that "Lord
+Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a
+staircase." And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While
+Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his
+devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a
+staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.
+
+How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the
+questions that passed fear-fully from mouth to mouth, from end to end
+of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on
+what must always remain more or less a mystery.
+
+This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart
+(for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose
+early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and
+suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was
+staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair
+at Abingdon. "As for me," she said, "I shall be quite happy alone. I
+have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are
+enjoying themselves, even if I cannot." Eagerly responsive to such a
+welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the
+hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy
+Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose
+suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing,
+and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants
+returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.
+
+Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either
+conclusion, and gave as their verdict "accidental death." That Amy
+Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret
+to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release
+death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting
+this plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley
+as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed
+one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her
+death.
+
+Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall
+succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose
+that Amy Robsart by her own act--wilful, at the dictate of a brain
+disordered by grief, or accidental--removed the barrier to her husband's
+passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not
+actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no
+pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.
+
+His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the
+unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent
+than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to
+claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in
+no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to
+distraction by her caprices. One moment she would "rap him on the
+knuckles," only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would
+flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection;
+the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing
+the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one
+Royal offer of marriage after another--now it was Philip, the Spanish
+King, now His Majesty of Sweden--canvassing their respective merits and
+charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured
+to ridicule his august rivals.
+
+She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a
+match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a
+worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long
+dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester
+was no unfit husband for her "Royal sister"; certainly a much more
+possible personage than "Sir Robert" could have been. But she never
+intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was
+relieved--though she affected to be angry--when news came that Mary had
+chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's
+gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her
+favour.
+
+If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and
+power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced
+her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a
+princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her
+deputy--to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in
+her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
+the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the "country squire."
+
+No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
+wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. "I am
+spoken of," she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, "as if I
+were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
+because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
+young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
+they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
+it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
+calumny will not fasten on me for ever."
+
+But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
+allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
+which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
+once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
+from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.
+
+To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
+indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
+gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
+to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
+cunningly-devised entertainments--from the splendid pageantry of her
+welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
+bear-baiting--all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
+most gorgeous of Queens had never known.
+
+Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
+affections of his Sovereign--a pre-eminence which was never seriously
+endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and transferred to other
+women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
+outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
+she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
+Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
+aroused. "If a man may flirt," she would mockingly say, "why not a
+woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?" And, of course, to this
+question there was no other answer for my lord than to "kiss and be
+friends," and to promise to be more discreet in the future.
+
+But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
+all his vows could not long be true even to his Queen. He lost his heart
+to the lovely wife of Lord Sheffield; and when her husband died
+conveniently and mysteriously (it was said that Leicester, with his
+doctor's help, removed him by a dose of poison) it was not long before
+he wedded her in secret, only just in time to make her child, whose
+name, "Robert Dudley," made no concealment of his parentage, legitimate.
+Before the child was many months old, however, the father was caught in
+the toils of another charmer, my Lady Essex, and after deserting his
+wife and, it is said, unsuccessfully trying to poison her, he made Lady
+Essex his Countess, in defiance of that secret wedding with Sheffield's
+widow.
+
+When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that
+attended it, reached the Queen's ears, her rage knew no bounds. She
+vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his
+head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was only when her
+anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and
+she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.
+
+It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her "sweet
+Robin" was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to
+resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies
+seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty
+and his love-making had ever done.
+
+These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed. When, in
+1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the
+struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the
+expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a
+quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and
+his fellow Princess-captive's side to give his sword its baptism of
+blood in Picardy. At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the
+great English Earl and friend of England's Queen was received with the
+rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.
+All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and
+before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at
+Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and
+insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land
+he had come to save.
+
+Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester's ambition to resist.
+Without troubling to consult his Sovereign at home he accepted the
+"throne" that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had
+elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news
+of his promotion. Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed
+by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had
+heard news of her favourite's presumption, and her Royal anger blazed
+into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without
+consulting her pleasure.
+
+She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the
+Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out
+the vials of her wrath on Leicester's head.
+
+     "How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been
+     used," she wrote, "you shall by the bearer understand. We
+     could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in
+     experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+     extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of
+     this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken
+     our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in
+     honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and
+     commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart,
+     you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey
+     and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you
+     to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will
+     answer the contrary at your uttermost peril."
+
+One can imagine Leicester's feelings on reading such words of Royal
+anger and reproach from the woman who had always shown such indulgence
+to him. His impulse was to resign his governorship forthwith, and to
+hasten back to London to beg forgiveness on his knees; but before he
+could give effect to this decision he had learned that Burghley had
+interceded for him with the Queen to such effect that, supported by a
+petition from the States-General, he was to be allowed to retain his
+office with Elizabeth's reluctant consent.
+
+A few months of rule, however, were sufficient to disillusionise the
+Dutchmen. Leicester proved as incapable to govern a country, as to lead
+an army. His arrogance, his outspoken contempt for his subjects, his
+incompetence and his capricious temper, so thoroughly disgusted the
+nation that had welcomed him with open arms, that he was asked to resign
+his office as unanimously as he had been invited to accept it; and in
+November of 1587, the Earl returned ignominiously to England, eager to
+repair his damaged credit by at least making peace with his Queen.
+
+To his delight he was received with as much cordiality as if he had done
+naught at all to earn his Lady's displeasure. Elizabeth had undoubtedly
+missed her favourite, her right-hand man. She had in fact become so
+accustomed to him that she could not be long happy unless he was at her
+side; and it was by her side that he rode and shared the acclamations
+with which her soldiers greeted her when she paid that historic visit to
+the camp at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada.
+
+But Leicester's adventurous life was now drifting to its close. His
+health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588,
+he left his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking
+healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many letters to
+the Queen.
+
+     "I most humbly beseech your Majesty," he wrote, "to
+     pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending
+     to know how my gracious Lady doth and what ease of her
+     late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this
+     world I do pray for is for her to have good health and
+     long life. For my own poor case I continue still your
+     medicine, and find it amend much better than with any
+     other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find
+     perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my
+     wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation,
+     I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycott
+     this Thursday morning ready to take on my journey. By
+     your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant,--
+     R. LEYCESTER."
+
+But the Earl was not destined to reach the baths. His course was run. He
+got as far on his journey as Coventry; and there, on the 4th of
+September, he drew his last breath. Some said that his end was hastened
+by a dose of poison administered by his Countess, eager to pursue
+unchecked her intrigue with Christopher Blount; others that she
+accidentally gave him a draught from a bottle of poison which he had
+designed for her. But neither suspicion seems to have any evidence to
+support it.
+
+Thus perished, little past the prime of life, a man who more than any
+other of his day drained the cup of pride and pleasure, to find its
+dregs exceeding bitter to the taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TWO IRISH BEAUTIES
+
+
+In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high
+excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of
+Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
+man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
+to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
+pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,
+
+     "They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
+     like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
+     other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
+     drawn over them."
+
+They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
+ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
+Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
+happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
+life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
+the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
+modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
+mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.
+
+To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
+first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
+statement of fact. The young "bloods" of the capital were their slaves
+to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
+gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
+with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
+is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
+hugged each in turn, declared that she "had never seen anything half so
+sweet"; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
+the majesty of their beauty.
+
+It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
+they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
+birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
+danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
+and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
+on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
+sight.
+
+     "With Betty as with Maria," says Mr Frankfort Moore, "the
+     art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
+     languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
+     movements of her feet and lithe body, and the curves
+     made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
+     everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the
+     coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her
+     movements--all the graces and charms inwoven that make up
+     the poem of the minuet--became visible by the art of that
+     exquisite girl, until all other dancers became
+     common-place by comparison."
+
+Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters
+were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests
+they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried
+away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot,
+appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected
+their rescue.
+
+But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs
+Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in
+their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl--certainly not an
+Irish squire or impoverished lord--was a fitting match for her
+daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with
+their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across
+the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.
+
+But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike
+in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly
+brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a
+pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes
+and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less
+radiant than her dashing sister.
+
+     "Each was," to quote another description, "divinely tall,
+     with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity
+     enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head.
+     Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with
+     their long, slender tapering fingers."
+
+All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in
+the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping
+lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory
+pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a
+gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.
+
+Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took
+London by storm, and who "made more noise than any of their predecessors
+since the days of Helen," in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was
+immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were
+the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house.
+Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision,
+and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one
+accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.
+
+Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad "they were beset by a
+curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters
+fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another
+occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from
+the mob." When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found
+themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand spectators, struggling
+to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the "hem of their
+garments."
+
+When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was
+at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at
+bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited
+Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were "lionising"
+the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the
+apartment known as the "Beauty Room," with the significant remark,
+"_These_ are the beauties, gentlemen."
+
+With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all
+the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were
+at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a
+coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted
+her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured
+wooer.
+
+Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, "a grave
+young lord" of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled
+himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria
+gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown
+into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:--
+
+     "On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to
+     Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite
+     beauty and of those accomplishments which will add Grace
+     and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the
+     ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat
+     at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials."
+
+Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was
+beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by
+the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's
+Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour
+which was readily granted to "the most beautiful woman in England,"
+Thus, on one occasion, we are told,
+
+     "from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange
+     procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone
+     to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front
+     marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped
+     the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband
+     and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke,
+     while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!"
+
+One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of
+discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age,
+was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. "Are
+you not sorry," His Majesty enquired, "that there are to be no more
+masquerades?" "Indeed, no," was the answer. "I am quite weary of them
+and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really
+anxious to see, and that is a _coronation_!" This unflattering wish she
+was not destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish
+beauty by a fortnight.
+
+Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She
+spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and
+embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in
+adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which
+the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a
+wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching fête.
+The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots
+of the size of a shilling. "And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr
+Selwyn?" she archly asked. "Why," he replied, "you will look like change
+for a guinea."
+
+[Illustration: MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY]
+
+Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating
+period of her vanity.
+
+     "Yesterday after chapel," she writes, "the Duchess
+     brought home Lady Coventry to feast me--and a feast she
+     was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome,
+     notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month;
+     she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence
+     that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made
+     for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it
+     trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced
+     handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine
+     mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that
+     just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in
+     the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended;
+     frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied
+     with pink and green ribbon--a head-dress that would have
+     charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and
+     prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at
+     the corners, but fine for all that."
+
+Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by
+Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was
+splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom
+long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride
+consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of
+pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was
+doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and,
+with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last
+dregs.
+
+She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its
+decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave
+smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable
+end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the
+murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,
+
+     "The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and
+     most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement
+     of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what
+     surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but
+     one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been
+     ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She
+     was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of
+     eyes' with her former flame, Lord Bolingbroke, an
+     unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to
+     make her the victim of his passion."
+
+Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.
+
+     "Her levities," says a chronicler of the time, "were very
+     publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to
+     her which were greatly believed. However, they were never
+     brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped
+     with only a little private scandal, which generally falls
+     to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is
+     envied by the rest of her sex."
+
+During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in
+her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.
+
+     "Until the last few days," says Mr Horace Bleackley, "the
+     pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her
+     hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of
+     her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was
+     unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had
+     vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for
+     the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn,
+     permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken
+     cheeks."
+
+Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly
+realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on
+October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last
+homage to her in Pirton churchyard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger
+sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic
+conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the
+annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man
+who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had
+heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.
+The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very
+unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had
+drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he
+should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical
+wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful
+excesses.
+
+Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable
+rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade
+that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this
+jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of
+being introduced he was, Walpole says,
+
+     "making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my
+     Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at
+     pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank
+     nor his own cards, which were of £300 each. He soon lost
+     a thousand."
+
+Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom
+she was to marry--a man who, even in the thraldom of a violent love,
+could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed
+was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our
+entertaining gossip again,
+
+     "two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while
+     her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found
+     himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The
+     doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or
+     ring--the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At
+     last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain,
+     at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
+     The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty
+     has had its effect."
+
+If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should
+have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had
+achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen
+had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter
+would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was
+"debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person," he was her very
+slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her
+happy.
+
+Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have
+borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed,
+have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated
+farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her
+new _rôle_. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her
+curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,
+
+     "the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the
+     drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at
+     her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her
+     chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre
+     when it is known that she will be there."
+
+A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride
+to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal
+bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire
+route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds
+struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story
+had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When
+they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, "seven hundred people," we
+are told, "sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the
+Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning."
+
+Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
+that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
+strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
+cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
+could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.
+
+     "The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world
+     is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
+     sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the
+     Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
+     their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
+     table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
+     the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old
+     chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody,
+     either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
+     all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
+     guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
+     to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence--the
+     insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
+     is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
+     life."
+
+Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
+with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
+"dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and
+obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
+house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
+budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
+triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely
+treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
+glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
+could win a smile from the "darlint Duchess" who had brought so much
+glory to old Ireland.
+
+Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
+foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
+but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
+life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
+three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
+Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
+fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
+he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the
+only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John
+Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of
+Argyll; and she gave her hand to "handsome Jack" within twelve months of
+weeping over the grave of her first husband.
+
+     "It was a match," Walpole says, "that would not disgrace
+     Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in
+     some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most
+     pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they
+     could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English
+     weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life,
+     when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their
+     subjects and their sheep."
+
+It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her
+second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.
+Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her
+next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel
+Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of
+stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time
+her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.
+
+     "As she is not quite so charming as she was," says
+     Walpole, "I do not know whether it is not better to
+     change her title than to retain that which puts one in
+     mind of her beauty."
+
+But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social
+prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte;
+and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess
+Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband,
+George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of
+the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs
+of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon
+which the frightened young Princess remarked, "My dear Duchess, you may
+laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me." Her
+life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of
+roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the
+beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she
+contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually
+written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of
+its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though _I_
+wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."
+
+Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
+Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
+Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
+drawing-room and announced his name,
+
+     "the Duchess," he says, "who was sitting with her
+     daughter and some other ladies, took not the least
+     notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
+     coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
+     world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
+     had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
+     Duke."
+
+During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
+she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
+deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
+to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a
+Methodist." In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
+had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
+famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
+doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
+hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
+Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know
+nothing of Mr Boswell."
+
+The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
+Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
+of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
+years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
+behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.
+
+To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
+of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
+others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
+Argyll.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS
+
+
+A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate
+from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
+and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
+families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
+generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
+the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
+into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
+Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
+ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
+he was nothing of the sort.
+
+Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"
+Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the
+gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
+was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so
+much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the
+cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years
+the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
+and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
+pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
+remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
+throne.
+
+Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
+Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
+foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
+Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who
+combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
+vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
+rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
+was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
+Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
+estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
+one day inherit.
+
+It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
+had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
+evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
+of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
+Aberdeen and Panrnure, _cum multis aliis._ However this may be, we know
+that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to
+the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit lassie." The favoured suitor
+was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
+man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean
+understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her
+ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The Duchess of Buccleuch
+was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
+Jean Douglas, "a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
+saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her"; and, no doubt, the
+fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
+the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
+was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.
+
+The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
+Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court--a letter in which the
+Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
+a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
+that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
+humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
+which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
+that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
+however tempting.
+
+During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
+appears to have lived alone at Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
+she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
+and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
+hospitality--paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
+Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
+eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
+her. That the Duke, who is described as "a person of the most wretched
+intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
+unforgiving," was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
+which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
+Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
+ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
+especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon
+
+     "the poor Duke," to quote Woodrow, "who for many years
+     had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
+     persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
+     in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
+     stabbed him as he was sleeping."
+
+It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
+was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
+although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
+delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
+warrant to "confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
+and take possession of it," he was generous enough to make her a
+liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
+"they would heir his estate."
+
+Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
+Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
+enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
+unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
+insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
+"villain of the play," makes his appearance on the stage.
+
+Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
+repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
+then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
+later, to "captivate my heart at the first sight of her." She was,
+moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
+with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
+handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
+suitors; and the "Colonel," who had never won any army rank higher than
+that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
+for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
+gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
+opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
+cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him "one of the
+worst of men--a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain"--and his
+career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
+description.
+
+Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
+test--and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,
+
+     "very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
+     telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
+     came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
+     acknowledge it publicly if I chose. _Enfin_, I was
+     allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
+     months after she honoured me with her hand."
+
+Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
+some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
+least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
+hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors--a man broken
+in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
+defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
+would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
+manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
+union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
+furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
+of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
+withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
+nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, "appearing," we are told, "at least
+fifteen years younger than she really was"; and thus might well have
+looked for a eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
+add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
+brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
+had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
+the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
+favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
+small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.
+
+Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
+August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
+lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
+retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
+female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
+belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.
+
+From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
+to her man of business, Mr Haldane:--
+
+     "It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
+     the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
+     certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
+     never should have once thought of doing it; but since
+     this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
+     it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
+     backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
+     something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
+     therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
+     which has proved more happy than I could well have
+     expected."
+
+Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
+assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish "to do something for her
+family," which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
+Douglas lands--an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
+must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.
+
+Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
+Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liège, and many another Continental town appear
+in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
+Jean's _maitre d'hotel_, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
+every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
+and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
+flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
+succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
+shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to "lend to my Lady Jean, who
+is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
+remittances." Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
+admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
+learning from her lips that he is "the man alive I would choose to be
+most obliged by." Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
+keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
+about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
+addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
+while her husband stakes his golden louis on the green cloth and
+drinks costly wines.
+
+Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
+devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
+her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
+Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
+must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.
+
+     "I can assure your Grace," his lordship writes, "she does
+     great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
+     respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
+     acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
+     marks of an only brother to an only sister."
+
+This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
+Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
+present: "Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
+virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
+going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister--I believe
+she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
+woman in the world."
+
+At the very time--so inconsistent was this singular woman--that Lord
+Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
+brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
+Lady Wigton, she declared with tears that it was an "infamous story
+raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
+against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
+pension"; and she begged Lady Wigton "when she went to England to
+contradict it."
+
+But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
+supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
+wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
+she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
+had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
+escaping--_unless_ the birth of a child might soften her brother's
+heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
+years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
+critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
+coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
+to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
+than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
+hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
+and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
+years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make
+assurance doubly sure," in Lady Jean's case--heirs.
+
+As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
+order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
+since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where she was
+then living, were "as ignorant as brutes." And so to the French capital
+she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
+public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
+been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
+the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
+the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
+written by Mrs Hewit, "produced two lovely boys," one of whom was so
+weak and puny that the doctor "begged it might be sent to the country as
+soon as possible."
+
+So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
+such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
+trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
+mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
+begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
+the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
+imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
+in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
+wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
+contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
+would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.
+
+Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
+proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
+neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
+taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
+lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
+without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
+place.
+
+On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
+declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
+Brune, a nurse--but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
+them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
+made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
+infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
+spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.
+
+At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
+that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
+them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
+Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child--a puny infant,
+but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
+The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
+the country.
+
+It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
+Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
+the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
+Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
+Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
+the Colonel at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
+proved that a "foreign gentleman," exactly answering his description,
+had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
+peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?
+
+To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
+later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
+children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
+in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
+birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
+no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
+visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.
+
+On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
+that she had been blessed with "two boys," one of which she begged his
+permission to call by his name--a letter which only had the effect of
+rousing His Grace's "high passion and displeasure," with a threat to
+stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
+was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
+trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
+journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
+the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
+time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
+purchased from its parents in Paris by a "strange monsieur" who, if not
+the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it not strange that this
+late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
+robust brother, as the purchased child was?
+
+At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
+on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
+prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
+set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
+possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
+doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
+Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
+high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
+their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
+procured from the King a pension of £300 a year, which she sorely
+needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt "within
+the Rules" of the King's Bench.
+
+Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
+the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
+against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
+loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
+and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.
+
+To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
+have nothing to do either with his sister or the two "nunnery children"
+which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
+Jean only succeeded in getting deeper and deeper involved in debt,
+until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
+her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
+pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
+children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.
+
+One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,
+
+     "she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
+     through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
+     told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
+     children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
+     Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
+     acquainted his Grace."
+
+The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
+still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
+see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
+letter in which she begged "to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
+and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
+inflict what punishment you please upon me," he returned no answer.
+
+Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
+Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
+cried out in her deep distress: "O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
+could but have died for you!" This last blow of fate seems to have
+completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
+hopeless struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
+her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: "May God bless you, my dear
+son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
+despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
+as some of your ancestors." Then, but a few moments before drawing her
+last breath, she said to those around her: "As one who is soon to appear
+in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
+the two children were born of my body." Thus passed "beyond these
+voices" a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
+sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.
+
+Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
+her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
+motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
+protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
+man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
+his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," a lady of strong character who
+had long vowed that "she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry";
+and in Duchess "Peggy" Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
+gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
+many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the "brat" to perdition
+one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
+to her side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
+that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
+Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:
+
+     "DEAR JACK,--I have not had time till now to acquaint you
+     of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
+     brother Archie his whole estate."
+
+Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
+stilled in death.
+
+The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
+history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
+justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
+rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
+the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
+Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
+Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
+latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
+set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
+twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
+on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
+Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
+detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
+Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
+judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.
+
+     "The judges," we are told, "took up no less than eight
+     days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
+     last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
+     solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs."
+
+Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
+the grave, declaring, just before his death:
+
+     "I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
+     Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
+     in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
+     Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
+     were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
+     Archibald is the only one in life now."
+
+But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
+appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
+reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.
+
+Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
+and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
+position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
+although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
+in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
+to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
+laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS
+
+
+For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of
+antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to
+lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their
+haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their
+family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and
+ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to
+be distinguished as "Black Schulenburgs" and "White Schulenburgs," as
+our own Douglases were "black" and "red."
+
+But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the
+family name to such an eminence--a bad eminence--as one of its plainest
+daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full,
+imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a Duchess of
+England, but to be "as much a Queen as ever there was in England."
+
+Fräulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der
+Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day,
+were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.
+The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by
+common consent, the "ugly duckling" of the family--abnormally tall,
+angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany
+equipped for conquest in the field of love.
+
+When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad
+to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence
+procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of
+Hanover. At any rate she was provided for--an important matter, for the
+Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud--and she was too
+unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often
+happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes
+on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in
+love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust
+of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To
+George--an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose
+morals--the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of
+beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and
+before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed
+mistress--one of many.
+
+"Just look at that mawkin," the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady
+Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, "and think of her
+being my son's mistress!" But to any other than his mother, George's
+taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross
+appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife
+possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness
+of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von
+Kielmansegg--who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way--a
+lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.
+
+She had, he recalls,
+
+     "two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two
+     lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with
+     crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not
+     distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part
+     of it restrained by stays. No wonder," he adds, "that a
+     child dreaded such an ogress!"
+
+Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
+of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
+English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these
+ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his
+time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted
+wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with Königsmarck, which
+was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment
+in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's
+Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.
+
+To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of
+her--a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the
+tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered
+enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded,
+self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She
+moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she
+was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while
+she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal
+lover--daughters who were called her "nieces," although the fiction
+deceived nobody--and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to
+her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.
+
+Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of
+Queen Anne made "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover,
+rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland." The sluggish
+sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned
+to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such
+reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks
+the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new
+and exalted _rôle_--and finally they succeeded.
+
+But even then he had not counted on the "fair" Ehrengard. She refused
+point-blank to go with him to that "odious England," where chopping off
+heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was quite happy in Hanover,
+and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace
+gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to
+the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert
+them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to
+England.
+
+Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind. If her great rival
+would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day's start, she
+raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with
+open arms. The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick "that
+Kielmansegg woman" had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and,
+taking her "nieces" with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal
+lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of
+embarking for England.
+
+George was now happy and reconciled to his fate, for his retinue was
+complete. And what a retinue! When the King landed at Greenwich with his
+grotesque assortment of Ministers, his hideous Turks, his two
+mistresses--one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat--and
+his "nieces," the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted
+the "menagerie" with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed
+Schulenburg the "Maypole," and Kielmansegg the "Elephant," and pursued
+the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults.
+
+"Goot peoples, vy you abuse us?" asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt
+head and shoulders through the carriage window. "Ve only gom for all
+your goots." "And for all our chattels, too, ---- you!" came the
+stinging retort from a wag in the crowd.
+
+But Schulenburg soon realised that she could afford to smile and shrug
+her scraggy shoulders at the insolence of those "horrid Engleesh." She
+found herself in a land of Goshen, where there were many rich plums to
+be gathered by far-reaching and unscrupulous hands such as hers. If she
+could not love the enemy, she could at least plunder them; and this she
+set to work to do with a good will, while the plastic George looked on
+and smiled encouragement. There were pensions, appointments,
+patents--boons of all kinds to be trafficked in; and who had a greater
+right to act as intermediary than herself, the King's _chère amie_ and
+right hand?
+
+She sold everything that was saleable. As Walpole says, "She would have
+sold the King's honour at a shilling advance to the best bidder." From
+Bolingbroke's family she took £20,000 in three sums--one for a Peerage,
+another for a pardon, and the third for a fat post in the Customs. Gold
+poured in a ceaseless and glittering stream into her coffers. She
+refused no bribe--if it was big enough--and was ready to sell anything,
+from a Dukedom to a Bishopric, if her price was forthcoming. She made
+George procure her a pension of £7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
+long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
+she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.
+
+Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
+coronets--and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
+Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
+not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
+George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
+Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
+induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess--of Eberstein.
+Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
+graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
+who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
+woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
+of less degree. She might be a "maypole"--hated and unattractive--but at
+least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
+beauties of her "Consort's" Court.
+
+When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
+splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
+witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
+Company, whether its object was to "carry on a thing that will turn to
+the advantage of the concerned," "the breeding and providing for natural
+children," or "for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
+silk-worms."
+
+Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
+and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
+her exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
+and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
+that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
+played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
+harm her. Only one of her many puppets--Knight, the Treasurer of the
+South Sea Company--could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
+arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
+sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
+too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
+Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
+the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.
+While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in
+solitude in distant Ahlden, the German "Maypole" was Queen in all but
+name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if
+iron hand. It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of
+George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than
+the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain
+that this "old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess" was more England's
+Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.
+
+She was present at every consultation between the King and his
+Ministers--indeed the conferences were invariably held in her own
+apartments, every day from five till eight. She understood and humoured
+every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent
+even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while
+she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an
+extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every
+Sunday. The only rival she had ever feared--and hated--Madame
+Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington
+was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling
+her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.
+
+When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia
+Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was
+the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been
+loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in
+the Palace of Osnabrück, in which he had drawn his first breath
+sixty-seven years earlier.
+
+A French fortune-teller had warned him that "he would not survive his
+wife a year"; and, as he neared Osnabrück, the home of his brother, the
+Prince Bishop, his fatal illness overtook him.
+
+     "When he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic;
+     his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung
+     out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life
+     by continually crying out, as well as he could
+     articulate, 'Osnabrück!' 'Osnabrück!'"
+
+As night fell the sweating horses galloped into Osnabrück; an hour
+later George died in his brother's arms, less than twelve months after
+his wife had drawn her last breath in her fortress-prison of Ahlden.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was disconsolate.
+
+     "She beat her breasts and tore her hair, and, separating
+     herself from the English ladies in her train, took the
+     road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion
+     about three months."
+
+Returning to England, to the only solace left to her--her
+money-bags--she spent the last seventeen years of her life alternating
+between her villas at Twickenham and Isleworth. George had promised her
+that if she survived him, and if it were possible, he would revisit her
+from the spirit world.
+
+     "When," to quote Walpole again, "one day a large raven
+     flew into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth,
+     she was persuaded that it was the soul of the departed
+     monarch, and received and treated it with all the respect
+     and tenderness of duty, till the Royal bird or she took
+     their last flight."
+
+Thus, shorn of all her powers and splendour, in obscurity, and hoarding
+her ill-gotten gold, died the most remarkable woman who has ever figured
+in the British Peerage. Her vast fortune was divided between her two
+"nieces," one of whom, created by her father, George, Countess of
+Walsingham, became the wife of that polished courtier and heartless man
+of the world, Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES
+
+
+Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of
+our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of
+volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of
+the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance
+in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often
+reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees
+flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying
+from view the humble roots from which they derive their lordly growth.
+
+Although Cobden's assertion that "the British aristocracy was cradled
+behind city counters" errs on the side of exaggeration, there is no
+doubt that in the veins of scores of the proudest English peers runs the
+blood of ancestors who served customers in City shops.
+
+When, a couple of centuries ago, John Baring, son of the Bremen Lutheran
+parson, Dr Franz Baring, opened his small cloth manufactory on the
+outskirts of Exeter, his most extravagant ambition was to build up a
+business which he could hand over to his sons, and to provide a few
+comforts for his old age; if any one had told him that he was laying the
+foundations of four families which should hold their heads proudly among
+the highest in the land he would no doubt have laughed aloud.
+
+Yet John Baring lived to see his only daughter wedded to John Dunning,
+who made a Baroness of her. Of his four sons, Francis was created a
+Baronet by William Pitt, and found a wife in the cousin and co-heir of
+his Grace of Canterbury. The second son of this union, Alexander, was
+raised to the Peerage as Baron Ashburton, won a millionaire bride in the
+daughter of Senator Bingham, of Philadelphia, and, from the immense
+scale of his financial operations, was ranked by the Duc de Richelieu as
+"one of the six great powers of Europe"--England, France, Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia being the other five. Sir Francis's eldest
+grandson, after serving in the exalted offices of Chancellor of the
+Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, was created Baron Northbrook,
+a peerage which his son raised to an earldom; a second grandson
+qualified for a coronet as Baron Revelstoke; and a third is known to-day
+as Earl Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, with half an alphabet of high
+dignities after his name.
+
+At least three dukes (Northumberland, Leeds, and Bedford) count among
+their forefathers many a humble tradesman. Glancing down the pedigree of
+his Grace of Northumberland, we find among his direct ancestors such
+names as these, William le Smythesonne, of Thornton Watlous, husbandman;
+William Smitheson, of Newsham, husbandman; Ralph Smithson, tenant
+farmer; and Anthony Smithson, yeoman. It was this Anthony whose son,
+Hugh, left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and
+William Robinson, London haberdashers, and thus to take the first step
+of that successful career which made him a Baronet and a man of wealth.
+From Hugh, the London 'prentice sprang in the fourth generation, that
+other Hugh who won the hand of Lady Elizabeth Seymour, and with it the
+vast estates and historic name of Percy.
+
+Some years before Hugh Smithson, the farmer's son, set foot in London
+streets, Edward Osborne left the modest family roof at Ashford, in Kent,
+to serve his apprenticeship to, and sit at the board of, William Hewitt,
+a merchant of Philpot Lane, who shortly after moved his belongings to a
+more fashionable home on London Bridge. One day it chanced that while
+his only daughter, the fair "Mistress Anne," was hanging her favourite
+bird outside the parlour window she lost her balance and fell into the
+river, then racing in high tide under the arches of the bridge.
+Fortunately for Mistress Anne the young apprentice saw the accident;
+quick as thought he threw off his shoes and surcoat, and, plunging into
+the swollen waters, caught the maiden by her hair as she was being swept
+away, and with difficulty dragged her to a passing barge, on which both
+found safety.
+
+There was only one proper sequence to this romantic incident; Mistress
+Anne lost her heart to her gallant rescuer, the grateful parents smiled
+on his wooing, and one fine August morning, not many months later, the
+wedding-bells of St Magnus Church were spreading far and wide the news
+that young Osborne had found a bride in one of the fairest and richest
+heiresses of London town. In due time Osborne became, as his
+father-in-law had been before him, Lord Mayor of London; the son of this
+romantic alliance was knighted for prowess in battle; Edward Osborne's
+grandson was made a Baronet; and his great-grandson, Sir Thomas, added
+to the family dignities by becoming in turn, Baron, Viscount, Earl and
+Marquis, and, finally, Duke of Leeds. Thus only two generations
+separated the 'prentice lad of Philpot Lane from his descendant of the
+strawberry-leaves, the first of a long and still unbroken line of
+English dukes, whose blood has mingled with that of many noble families.
+
+The noble house of Ripon has its origin in Yorkshire tradesmen who
+carried on business in York, some of whom were Lord Mayors of that city
+two or three centuries ago. These early Robinsons added to their fortune
+and enriched their blood by alliances with some of the oldest families
+in the north of England--such as the Metcalfes of Nappa and the
+Redmaynes of Fulford--and slowly but surely laid the foundation of one
+of the wealthiest and most distinguished of great English houses. For
+four generations the head of the family was a Cabinet Minister, while
+one of them was Prime Minister of England.
+
+The Marquises of Bath derive descent from one John o' th' Inne, who
+was, probably, a worthy publican of Church Stretton, and who was
+descended in the seventh generation from William de Bottefeld, an
+under-forester of Shropshire in the thirteenth century; while, through
+his mother, the late Marquis of Salisbury derived a strain of 'prentice
+blood from Sir Christopher Gascoigne, the first Lord Mayor of London to
+live in the Mansion House.
+
+Until a few years ago there might be seen in the main street of the
+village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
+better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
+It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
+husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
+far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
+and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
+way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as "My lord," in his
+character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
+boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
+Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
+Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
+kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
+Appletrewick.
+
+The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
+his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
+mercer, and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
+we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
+whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.
+
+The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
+names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
+a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
+was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
+centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
+ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
+Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
+daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.
+
+The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
+poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
+a fortune as a London jeweller.
+
+In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
+citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
+himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
+tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
+accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
+anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
+they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
+George III. departed for once from his rule never to raise a man of
+business to the Peerage, by converting Robert Smith into Baron
+Carrington. His successor abandoned the patronymic Smith for his
+title-name; and the present-day representative of John Smith, the
+Nottingham draper is Charles Robert Wynn Carrington, first Earl
+Carrington, P.C., G.C.M.G., and joint Hereditary Lord Chamberlain of
+England.
+
+When William Capel left the humble paternal roof at Stoke Nayland, in
+Suffolk, to see what fortune and a brave heart could do for him in
+London, it certainly never occurred to him that his name would be handed
+down through the centuries by a line of Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
+Fortune had indeed strange experiences in store for the Suffolk youth;
+for, while she made a Knight and Lord Mayor of him, she consigned him on
+a life sentence to the Tower for resisting the extortions of the
+mercenary Henry VII. Sir William's son won his knightly spurs on French
+battlefields, wedded a daughter of the ancient house of Roos of Belvoir,
+and became the ancester of the Barons Capel, Viscounts Malden, and Earls
+of Essex.
+
+The Earls of Radnor owe their rank and wealth to the enterprise which
+led young Laurence des Bouveries from his native Flanders to a
+commercial life at Canterbury in the days of Queen Bess. From this
+humble Flemish apprentice sprang a line of Turkey merchants, each of
+whom in turn added his contribution to the family dignities and riches,
+until Sir Jacob, the third Baronet, blossomed into a double-barrelled
+peer as Lord Longford and Viscount Folkestone. Not the least, by any
+means, of the descendants of Laurence des Bouveries was Canon Pusey,
+the great theologian, who was grandson of the first Lord Folkestone.
+
+Lord Harewood springs from a stock of merchants who accumulated great
+wealth in the eighteenth century; and Lord Jersey owes much of his
+riches to Francis Child, the industrious apprentice who, in Stuart days,
+married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, the goldsmith, who
+lived one door west of Temple Bar.
+
+Other peers who count London apprentices among their ancestors are Lord
+Aveland and Viscount Downe, both descendants of Gilbert Heathcote, whose
+commercial success was crowned by the Lord Mayoralty in 1711; the
+Marquis of Bath, a descendant of Lord Mayor Heyward, whose sixteen
+children are all portrayed in his monument in St Alphege Church, London
+Wall; and also of Richard Gresham, mercer, who waxed rich from the
+spoils of the monasteries, and whose son was founder of the Royal
+Exchange. The Earl of Eldon owes his existence to that runaway exploit
+which linked the lives of John Scott, the Newcastle tradesman's son, and
+Miss Surtees, the banker's daughter.
+
+If George III. during his lengthy reign only raised one business man to
+the Peerage, later years have provided a very liberal crop of coroneted
+men of commerce. To mention but a few of them, banking has been
+honoured--and the Peerage also--by the baronies granted to Lords
+Aldenham and Avebury; Lords Hindlip, Burton, Iveagh, and Ardilaun owe
+their wealth and rank to successful brewing; Baron Overtoun was
+proprietor of large chemical works; Lord Allerton's riches have been
+drawn from his tan-pits; Lord Armstrong's millions come from the
+far-famed Elswick engine-works at Newcastle; and Lord Masham's from his
+mills at Manningham. The Viscounty of Hambleden has sprung from a modest
+news-shop in the Strand; the Barony of Burnham was cradled in a
+newspaper office; and Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona were shepherd
+boys seventy years or more ago, before they found their way through
+commerce to the Roll of Peers.
+
+Although these lowly origins are as firmly established as Holy Writ, and
+are in most cases as well known to the noble families who trace rank and
+riches from them as to the expert in genealogy, they are often as
+carefully excluded from the family tree as the poor and undesirable
+relation from the doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage
+extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted
+blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families
+strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some
+obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in
+many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their own
+pedigrees.
+
+"What are pedigrees worth?" asks Professor Freeman. "I turn over a
+'Peerage' or other book of genealogy, and I find that, when a pedigree
+professes to be traced back to the times of which I know most in detail,
+it is all but invariably false. As a rule it is not only false, but
+impossible. The historical circumstances, when any are introduced, are
+for the most part not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
+which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood."
+
+This scathing criticism refers to pedigrees which profess to be based on
+existing records; what shall we say, then, of those family trees which
+have their ambitious roots in the dark centuries which no ray of
+genealogical light can possibly pierce? Take, for instance, that amazing
+pedigree of the Lyte family of Lytes Cary, at the head of which is
+"Leitus (one of the five captains of Beotia that went to Troye)," whose
+ancestors came to England first with Brute, "the most noble founder of
+the Britons." (It is only fair to say that the present representative of
+this really ancient family, Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte, an expert genealogist,
+turns his back resolutely on the Beotian captain, and even on Brute
+himself, and generally lops his family tree in a merciless but most
+salutary fashion.)
+
+The College of Arms, among many amazing pedigrees, treasures one of a
+family "whose present representative is sixty-seventh in descent in an
+unbroken male line from Belinus the Great (Beli Mawr), King of Britain,"
+which actually exhibits the arms of Beli, who, poor man, died long
+centuries before heraldry was even cradled.
+
+Of families who derive descent from Charlemagne the name is legion; but
+even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity
+compared with others which have at their head no other progenitor than
+Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum
+roll, twenty-one feet long, of pedigrees, some of which "are traced back
+to 'Adam, Son of God,' without any conscious sense of the incongruous";
+and these records, we must remember, are in the hand of "a man
+thoroughly trustworthy as to the matters of his own time." There is in
+the College of Arms a similar family tree which commences boldly with
+Adam and the Garden of Eden; and an authority on Welsh pedigrees
+declares,
+
+     "A Welshman whose family was in any position in the
+     sixteenth century can, as a rule, without much trouble
+     find a pedigree thence to Adam; an Englishman who is
+     unable to do the same has a natural tendency to regard
+     all Welsh pedigrees with distrust, not to say contempt."
+
+Mr Horace Round gives some startling examples of flagrant dishonesty,
+where forgery is only one of the implements used. Take, for example,
+that shameful story of the "Shipway frauds," which is thus referred to
+by a clergyman of the parish.
+
+     "In the fall of 1896, by an elaborate system of impudent
+     frauds, an unscrupulous attempt was made to claim these
+     monuments for one who was an entire stranger to the
+     parish. An agent from London was employed in a search for
+     a pedigree. He, by fraudulent means, concocted a very
+     plausible story. Genealogies were manufactured, tombs
+     were desecrated, registers were falsified, wills were
+     forged--in a word, various outrages were committed, with
+     many sacred things in this parish and elsewhere. These
+     two figures, as part of the pedigree, were deposited in a
+     niche in the chantry; on either side were huge brass
+     tablets on which were engraven various untruthful and
+     unfounded statements."
+
+In another case Hughenden Church was desecrated to gratify the vanity of
+a family of Wellesbourne, anxious to trace their descent from the
+Montforts.
+
+     "They caused a monumental effigy of an imaginary ancestor
+     to be carved in the style of the thirteenth century
+     ...they adapted the plate-armour effigy to their purpose
+     by cutting similar arms on the skirts, and they had three
+     rude effigies fabricated by way of filling up the gaps
+     between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries."
+
+To give but two more out of many cases of similar imposture, the
+Deardens, many years ago, actually had a family chapel constructed in
+Rochdale Church with sham effigies, slabs, and brasses to the memory of
+wholly fictitious ancestors; while in two Scottish churches altar-tombs
+were placed to the memory of successive apocryphal lairds of Coulthart.
+Such are the lengths to which a craze for ancestry has carried some
+unprincipled persons; and there is no doubt that the arts of the forger
+are still enlisted in the service of people who crave long descent and
+do not scruple as to the methods by which they attain it.
+
+Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such
+extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather
+amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and
+obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or
+at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons
+(a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the
+baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in
+Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century." The first Cooper was not,
+as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of
+that name--no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one
+of whom was "Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King"; Pindar,
+the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
+the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are "probably descended from
+William, a Norman of distinction"; while at least one family of Brownes
+springs lineally from "Turulph, a companion of Rollo," founder of the
+Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
+that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from _Smeeth_, "a level
+plain"; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
+certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.
+
+Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:
+
+     "a particle which has been all but unknown in England
+     since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
+     has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
+     character which the French nation have chosen to assign
+     to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
+     restorations in the modern Gothic manner."
+
+It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
+surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
+De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.
+
+This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
+the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
+it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
+accepted with a quite childlike credence:
+
+     "This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
+     train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
+     flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
+     from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
+     Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
+     patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
+     the famous Dane...."
+
+And again:
+
+     "The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (_sic_) of
+     Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins."
+
+This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
+attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
+actually named "Hugh Lupus" at the baptismal font, while his younger
+brother was labelled Richard "de Aquila"; and yet it is an indisputable
+fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
+Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
+who has no more traceable connection with Rollo than with the Man in
+the Moon.
+
+The Ducal House of Fife, we are told, "derives from Fyfe Macduff, a
+chief of great wealth and power, who lived about the year 834, and
+afforded to Kenneth II., King of Scotland, strong aid against his
+enemies, the Picts." The present Duke, however, has the good sense to
+disclaim any hereditary connection with the old Earls of Fife, and to
+place at the top of his family tree one Adam Duff, who laid the
+foundation of the family prosperity in the seventeenth century. The
+Spencers, it is claimed, spring lineally from the old baronial
+Despencers, "being a branche issueing from the ancient family and
+chieffe of the Spencers, of which sometymes were the Earles of
+Winchester and Glocester, and Barons of Glamorgan and Morgannocke."
+This, no doubt, is a very distinguished origin; but, alas! the earliest
+provable ancestors of this "noble" family were respectable and
+well-to-do Warwickshire graziers, and the first authentic title on the
+true pedigree is the knighthood conferred on John Spencer in 1519, less
+than four centuries ago. Similarly the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, are
+said to be derived from one Hugh de Russell, or Rossel (who took that
+name from his estate in Normandy), one of the Conqueror's attendant
+barons on his invasion of England. Here, again, facts fail lamentably to
+support the descent claimed, since the earliest known progenitor of this
+"great house" was that Henry Russell who was sent to Parliament to
+represent Weymouth in the fifteenth century, and whose great-grandson
+blossomed into the first Earl of Bedford. (It may, perhaps, be well to
+state that, although the pedigrees here criticised are those that have
+been or are widely accepted, they are not necessarily approved by the
+families whose descent they profess to give.)
+
+Another Norman ancestor who must go overboard is the alleged founder of
+the "noble" house of Bolingbroke--that "William de St John who came to
+England with the Conqueror as grand master of the artillery and
+supervisor of the wagons and carriages," since it can be positively
+shewn that the St John family first set foot in England a good many
+years after William I. was safely underground; and with this mythical
+William must also go that equally nebulous progenitor of the Fortescue
+family, "who" according to the venerable and almost uniform tradition,
+"landed in England with his master in the year 1066, and, protecting him
+with his shield from the blows of an assailant, was graciously dubbed
+'Fortescu,' the man of the stout shield." The Stourtons, so the
+"Peerages" say, were "of considerable rank before the Conquest, and
+dictated their own terms to the Conqueror"; but, as Canon Jackson, the
+learned antiquary, truly points out, "of this there is no evidence. The
+name is found, apparently for the first time, among Wiltshire
+landowners, in the reign of Edward I., when a Nicholas Stourton held one
+knight's fee under the Lovells of Castle Cary."
+
+The Duke of Norfolk has a family tree of very stately growth, and can
+well afford to repudiate a good many of the ancestors provided for him
+by "Peerage" editors. Certainly, if he ever read the following statement
+he must have smiled aloud:
+
+     "The Duke's proudest boast is that his name of Howard is
+     merely that of an ancestor, Hereward the Wake, whose
+     representative, Sir Hereward Wake, is still in
+     Northamptonshire."
+
+As a matter of fact, his Grace's earliest known ancestor was Sir William
+Howard, "who was a grown man and on the bench in 1293, whose real
+pedigree is very obscure"; and who, no doubt, would have laughed as
+heartily as his descendant of to-day at his imaginary derivation from
+the Conqueror's stubborn foe of the fens, Hereward the Wake.
+
+In the Fitzwilliam pedigree we encounter another nebulous knight of the
+Conqueror. "The Fitzwilliams," we are informed, "date so far back that
+their record is lost, but Sir William, a knight of the Conqueror's day,
+married the daughter of Sir John Elmley," and so on; and further, that
+at Milton Hall, Peterborough, one may actually look on an antique scarf
+which "was presented to a direct ancestor of the Fitzwilliams by William
+the Conqueror." The most skilled of our genealogists have sought in vain
+for an authentic trace of this gallant knight of Conquest days; and
+Professor Freeman does not hesitate to dismiss the story of his
+existence as "pure fable." But if Sir William of Normandy must fall from
+the family tree, his place is most creditably taken by Godric, a Saxon
+Thane, who, as a forefather, is at least as respectable as any Norman
+warrior in William's train.
+
+The house of Fitzgerald is credited with an ancestor, one Dominus Otho,
+"who is supposed to have been of the family of the Gherardini of
+Florence. This noble passed over into Normandy, and thence, in 1057,
+into England, where he became so great a favourite with Edward the
+Confessor that he excited the jealousy of the Saxon Thanes." Dominus
+Otho must too pass, with many another treasured ancestor, into the
+crowded genealogical land of the rejected; for the real founder of the
+Fitzgerald house was Walter, son of "Other," whose name is first met
+with in Domesday Book in 1086. The Otho story is shown to be "absolute
+fiction."
+
+In view of such examples of misplaced ingenuity exhibited by the makers
+of pedigrees for our noble families, one can almost read without a smile
+that
+
+     "there were Heneages at Hainton in the time of King Edwy;
+     they doubtless took part in the revolt which brought
+     Edgar to the throne, and it is not impossible that some
+     of them were in the train of Wulfhere, King of Mercia;"
+
+or that
+
+     "Lord Alington comes of a family of ancient lineage, one
+     of his ancestors being Sir Hildebrand de Alington, who
+     was marshal to William the Conqueror at the battle of
+     Hastings,"
+
+though we may know full well that the Sturt pedigree really begins in
+the seventeenth century, and that the earliest known Heneage lived and
+died some three centuries before.
+
+But "noble" families have no monopoly of misguided genealogy. "The
+immense majority of the pedigrees of the landed gentry," says a
+well-known officer of arms, "cannot, I fear, be characterised as
+otherwise than utterly worthless. The errors of the 'peerage' are as
+nothing to the fables which we encounter everywhere;" and the same may
+be said of many another collection of pedigrees which is a treasured
+possession in countless British homes.
+
+Some even justly famous men have not been proof against this insidious
+form of vanity and pretence. Edmund Spenser was ungenerous enough to
+"dismiss his known ancestry of small Lancashire gentry and plant himself
+modestly in the shadow of the newly discovered shield of arms of the
+noble house of Spencer, 'of which I meanest boast myself to be.'" And
+Lord Tennyson, whose ultimate ascertainable forefather was an eighteenth
+century Lincolnshire apothecary, was provided with a slightly
+differenced cadet's version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison, with whom
+he had no connection whatever.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Aberdeen, Earl of, 299
+  Affleck, Lady, 66
+  ----, Misses, 66
+  Alava, General, 44
+  Albemarle, Lord, 235
+  Aldenham, Lord, 333
+  Alexander, Emperor, 49
+  Alington, Lord, 343
+  ----, Sir Hildebrand, 343
+  Allerton, Lord, 334
+  Almack's, 45-49
+  Andrews, Mr, 71-73
+  Anglesey, Earl of, 165
+  Anne, of Austria, 2
+  ----, Princess, 113
+  ----, Queen, 331
+  Ardilaun, Lord, 333
+  Argyll, Duke of, 295
+  Arlington, Lady, 184
+  ----, Lord, 6, 182, 183
+  Armstrong, Lord, 334
+  Arran, Lord, 76
+  Ashburton, Lord, 327
+  Atholl, Duke of, 299
+  Avebury, Lord, 333
+  Aveland, Lord, 333
+  Aylesbury, Lady, 154
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 270
+  Barillon, 193
+  Baring, Alexander, 327
+  ----, Francis, Sir, 327
+  ----, Franz (Dr), 326
+  ----, John, 326-327
+  Barnard, Dr, 64
+  Bath, Marquess of, 330, 333
+  Beaconsfield, Lord, 159, 160
+  Beauchamp, Earl, 338
+  Beaufort, Duc de, 178, 179, 191
+  Becher, Sir William W., 251
+  Bedford, Duchess of, 46
+  ----, Dukes of, 340
+  Bentinck, Lord George, 156-164
+  Berkeley, Annie May, 162, 163
+  ----, Earl of, 162
+  Bilton, Miss Belle, 255
+  Bingham, Senator, 327
+  Blantyre, Lord, 1, 20, 305
+  Blessington, Countess of, 97, 100-109
+  ----, Earl of, 99-105
+  Blount, Christopher, 281
+  Boleyn, Godfrey, 330
+  Bolingbroke, Lord, 290, 321
+  Bolton, Duke of, 246
+  ----, Duchess of, 246
+  ----, Mary Catherine, 246, 247
+  Boothby, Brook, 46
+  Boswell, 296, 297, 298
+  Bottefeld, William de, 330
+  Bouveries, Laurence des, 332, 333
+  Bracegirdle, Mrs, 166-173
+  Bridges, Sir Thomas, 85
+  Bridgewater, Duke of, 295
+  Bristol, Earl of, 199, 204
+  Broke, Lord, 331
+  Brougham, Lord, 107
+  Browne, family, 338
+  Brunton, Louisa, 251, 252
+  Buccleuch, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 299
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 4-6, 36, 37, 80-85, 112, 181, 182
+  Buller, Lady Harriet, 48
+  Bunbury, Sir Thomas, 216-218
+  Burke, Sir Bernard, 62-63
+  Burleigh, Lord, 257, 258
+  Burney, Dr Charles, 22
+  Burnham, Barony, 334
+  Burrell, Mrs Drummond, 46
+  Burton, Lord, 333
+  Bute, Countess of, 238
+  Byron, Lord, 42-43, 45, 48, 102
+
+  Cadogan, Earl of, 208
+  Campbell, Colonel John, 295
+  Canning, 42
+  ----, Mrs, 35
+  Capel, William, 332
+  Cardigan, Earl of, 74
+  Carhampton, Earl of, 89
+  Carlingford, Lord, 7
+  Carnegie, James, 223-225
+  Caroline, Princess, 45
+  Carrington, Lords, 332
+  Castlemaine, Lady, 8-12, 14, 18, 115, 116, 184, 192
+  Castlereagh, Lady, 42
+  Catherine, Empress, 205
+  ----, Queen, 3, 10-12, 16
+  ----, the Great, 75
+  Cecil, Henry, (Earl of Exeter), 256-265
+  ----, Lord Thomas, 265
+  Chaffinch, Barbara (Countess of Jersey), 37
+  Charles I., 1
+  Charles II., 1-20, 75-84, 110, 112, 115, 116, 177-194, 207
+  Charlotte, Queen, 202, 214, 296
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 116, 291, 325
+  Child, Anne, 37-41
+  ----, Francis, 37
+  ----, Robert, 37-41
+  Christina, Queen of Sweden, 74
+  Chudleigh, Colonel, 195, 196
+  ----, Elizabeth, 195-206
+  Churchill, Arabella, 115
+  ----, John, 114-126
+  ----, Winston, 114, 120
+  Clarendon, Chancellor, 17
+  Cobden, 326
+  Cochrane, Lady Susanna, 222-227
+  Compton, Lady, 142-147
+  ----, Lord, 139-147
+  Congreve, 166
+  Conolly, Lady Louisa, 209
+  Coombe, William, 63
+  Cooper family, 338
+  Coutts, Thomas, 252-255
+  Coventry, Countess of, 287-290
+  ----, Earl of, 286
+  Cowper, Lady, 46
+  Cradock, Mr, 52
+  Craven, Earl of, 252, 330
+  ----, William, 330
+  Crawford, Lord, 306
+  Creevey, 43
+  Cromer, Earl, 327
+  Crosby, Sir John, 137
+  Cumberland, Duchess of, 91-95
+  ----, Duke of, 87-95, 286
+
+  Dalkeith, Earl of, 300
+  Dalrymple, Mr, 305
+  D'Arblay, Madame, 22
+  Darlington, Countess of, 324
+  Darnley, Lord, 275
+  Dashwood, Sir Samuel, 331
+  D'Aubigny, Duchesse, 184-194
+  Dearden family, 337
+  De Bathe, 338
+  De Beauchamp, 339
+  De Freville, 339
+  Delany, Mrs, 288
+  De Moleyns, 339
+  Denbigh, Earls of, 330
+  Derby, Earl of, 249
+  De Reti, Cardinal, 2
+  De Rodes, 339
+  De Trafford, 338
+  De Vere, 339
+  Devonshire, Duke of, 166
+  De Winton, 339
+  Dibdin, Charles, 22
+  Digby, Francis, 9
+  Dillon, Colonel, 77
+  Disraeli, 106, 159, 160
+  Doran, Dr, 166
+  D'Orsay, Count, 101-109
+  Dorset, Duke of, 166
+  Douglas, Archibald, 298-315
+  ----, Duke of, 299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312
+  ----, James, Marquess of, 299
+  ----, Jean (Lady), 298-315
+  ----, Sholto, 312
+  Downe, Viscount, 333
+  Dryden, 182
+  Dudley, Earls of, 331
+  ----, Edmond, 266
+  ----, Guildford, 268, 269
+  ----, Robert (Earl of Leicester), 266-281
+  Duff, Adam, 340
+  Dundalk, Baroness of, 322
+  Dundonald, Earl of, 222
+
+  Eberstein, Princess von, 322
+  Edward VI., 268
+  Eglinton, Lady, 311
+  Eldon, Earl of, 333
+  Elizabeth, Queen, 137, 139, 142-144, 258, 269-281, 331
+  Errington, Mr Sheriff, 59
+  Errol, Lord, 216
+  Essex, Countess of, 277
+  ----, Earl of, 60, 248, 270, 332
+  Esterhazy, Princess, 46
+  ----, Prince Paul, 49
+  Evelyn, 84, 177, 193
+  Exeter, Earl of, 264
+
+  Fane, Lady Sarah Sophia, 37, 41
+  Farmer, Captain, 97-100
+  Farren, Elizabeth, 248, 249
+  Fenton, Lavinia, 245-246
+  Ferrers, Earl of, 51-61, 289
+  Feversham, Countess of, 322
+  Fielding, Sir Godfrey, 330
+  Fife, Dukes of, 340
+  Fitzgerald, Henry Gerald, 128-133
+  ---- family, 343
+  Fitzwilliam family, 342-343
+  Folkestone, Viscount, 332-333
+  Foote, 201
+  Forbes, George, 220-228
+  ----, Susan Janet, 227-230
+  Forneron, 189
+  Fortescue, Mr, 64-65, 68-69
+  ---- family, 341
+  Fox, Charles James, 62, 249
+  Frederick, The Great, 198
+  Freeman, Professor, 334, 342
+
+  Gainsborough, 3
+  Galloway, Earl of, 222
+  Gardiner, Lady Harriet, 104
+  Gascoigne, Sir Christopher, 330
+  George I., 317-325
+  ---- II., 209, 210, 287, 293
+  ---- III., 22, 87, 91-93, 210-221, 296
+  ---- IV., 45, 94
+  Gilchrist, Miss Constance, 255
+  Glastonbury, Baroness of, 322
+  Gloucester, Duchess of, 93
+  ----, Duke of (Richard), 137
+  Godefroi, M., 308-310
+  Godric, 343
+  Gordon, Lord William, 217-218
+  Graeme, Colonel, 214
+  Gramont, 10, 75
+  Granville, Lady, 43, 49
+  Gresham, Sir Richard, 333
+  Greville, William, 331
+  Grey, Lady Jane, 268, 269
+  Gronow, Captain, 46, 47, 48, 253
+  Grosvenor, Countess, 87-89
+  ---- family, 339, 340
+  Guise, Comte de, 2
+  ----, Duchesse de, 188
+  Gunning, Elizabeth, 282-297
+  ----, John, 282
+  ----, Maria, 282-297
+  ----, Mrs, 284
+  Gwynn, Nell, 186, 187, 192
+
+  Haldane, Mr, 304
+  Halhed, 26
+  Hambleden, Viscounty of, 334
+  Hamilton, Betty (Lady), 297
+  ----, Colonel, 174, 175
+  ----, Count, 4, 6, 10, 14
+  ----, Duke of, 173-176, 196, 197, 239, 249, 291-294, 299, 314
+  ----, George, 7, 8
+  ----, Susanna (Lady), 222
+  Hanmer, Mrs, 197
+  Harewood, Lord, 333
+  Harrington, Earl of, 282
+  ----, Lady, 46
+  Hastings, Marquess of, 148-156
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 277
+  Hay, Mr, 305
+  Heathcote, Gilbert, 333
+  Heneage family, 343
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 277-279
+  Henri IV., 191
+  Henrietta Maria, Queen, 2
+  Hereford, Lady, 277
+  Hereward, the Wake, 342
+  Hervey, Hon. Augustus, 197-199
+  ----, Lord, 93
+  Hewit, Mrs, 304, 308-310
+  Hewitt, Anne, 328, 329
+  ----, William, 328, 329
+  Heyward, Lord Mayor, 333
+  Hill, Captain Richard, 167-173
+  Hillsborough, Lord, 68
+  Hindlip, Lord, 333
+  Hoggins, Sarah (Countess of Exeter), 259-265
+  Holland, Lady, 210
+  ----, Lord, 211
+  Home, Earl of, 315
+  Hopetoun, Earl of, 299
+  Horton, Christopher, 89
+  ----, Mrs, 89-91
+  Howard, Bernard, 81
+  ----, Captain Thomas, 76-78
+  ----, Sir William, 342
+
+  Ibbetson, Captain, 37
+  Irnham, Lord, 81
+  Iveagh, Lord, 333
+
+  Jackson, Canon, 341
+  Jennings, Frances, 111, 112
+  ----, John (Sir), 111, 112
+  ----, Sarah, 110-126
+  ----, Squire, 110, 111
+  Jermyn, Henry, 9, 76-78, 112
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 107
+  Jersey, Earl of, 37, 41, 50, 333
+  ----, Countess of (Sarah), 41-50
+  Johnson, Dr, 25, 62, 296-298
+  ----, Mr John, 54-57
+
+  Kemble, John, 250
+  Kendal, Duchess of, 322-325
+  Kent, John, 157
+  Ker, Captain, 301
+  Kerr, Captain, 158
+  Kielmansegg, Baroness von, 318-320, 324
+  Kildare, Lady, 210
+  Killigrew, Harry, 78-81, 83
+  ----, Tom, 79
+  King, Colonel, 130-133
+  ----, Sir John, 127
+  ----, Mary (Hon.), 127-135
+  Kingsborough, Lady, 128, 130
+  ----, Viscount, 127, 129, 132, 133
+  Kingston, Earl of, 134
+  ----, Duchess of, 200-206
+  ----, Duke of, 199, 231
+  Königsmarck, 318
+
+  La Brune, Madame, 309, 310
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 104
+  Lauder, Farmer, 229
+  ----, Mrs, 230
+  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 99, 106
+  Leeds, Duke of, 329
+  Leicester, Earl of, 275-281
+  ----, Countess of, 281
+  Lennox, Lady Sarah, 207-230
+  Lieven, Princess of, 46
+  Lindores, Lord, 311
+  Linley, Elizabeth Ann, 21-35
+  ----, Mary, 28, 35
+  ----, Thomas, 21, 22, 24, 28
+  Long, Mr, 24, 31
+  Louis XIV., 2, 19, 79, 179-194
+  ----, Napoleon (Prince), 107
+  Lovelace, Lord, 166
+  Luttrell, Anne, 89-95
+  ----, Colonel, 89
+  ----, Elizabeth, 95
+  Lyndhurst, Lord, 106
+  Lyon of Brigton, 223, 224
+  Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, 335
+  ---- family, 335
+  Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, 62-73
+
+  Macartney, Major-General, 174-175
+  Madden, Dr, 109
+  Mancini, Hortense de, 189
+  Mann, Sir Horace, 201
+  Mansfield, Lord, 311
+  Manvers, Lord, 160
+  March, Lord, 46, 208, 209
+  Marsante, Comte de, 96
+  Mary, Queen, 269, 270
+  ----, ---- of Scots, 275
+  Masham, Lord, 334
+  Matthews, Major, 26-30
+  Mazarin, Duchesse de, 192, 193
+  Meath, Bishop of, 22
+  Mellon, Harriet, 252-254
+  Meredith, Sir William, 52
+  Merrill, Mr, 197
+  Messalina, 74
+  Metcalfes, of Nappa, 329
+  Michele, 309, 310
+  Mohun, Charles Lord, 165-176
+  ----, Sir William de, 165
+  Monaldeschi, Count, 74
+  Monmouth, Duke of, 116, 191
+  ----, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Montagu, Edward Wortley, 231-242
+  ----, Lady Mary Wortley, 231, 238
+  Montford, Jack, 167-173
+  Montgomery, Mr, 48
+  ----, Miss, 48
+  Moore, Dr, 239
+  ----, Thomas, 101
+  More, Hannah, 202
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 137
+  Morland, Duchess of, 193
+  Mornington, Lady, 47
+  Mount Stephen, Lord, 334
+  Munster, Duchess of, 322
+  Murray, Captain, 97, 98
+
+  Napier, Hon. George, 218-220
+  Napier, Lord, 219
+  Neave, Sir Digby, 66
+  Newbattle, Lord, 212
+  Newcastle, Duke of, 204
+  Ney, Marshal, 104
+  Norfolk, Duke of, 342
+  Northbrook, Lord, 327
+  Northumberland, Duke of, 266, 268, 269, 327
+
+  O'Neill, Eliza, 249-251
+  Orleans, Duchess of, 179-181
+  Ormond, Duke of, 76
+  Ormonde, Lord, 277
+  Osborne, Edward, 328, 329
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 329
+  Osnabrück, Bishop of, 324
+  "Other," 343
+  Otho, Dominus, 343
+  Overtoun, Lord, 334
+
+  Page, Mr, 170, 171
+  ----, Mrs, 168
+  Paget, Lady Florence, 151
+  Panmure, Earl of, 299
+  Parker family, 338
+  Payne, George, 159
+  Peach, Joseph, 64
+  Pelham, Mr, 311
+  Pepys, 5, 8, 12, 17, 18, 78, 80, 192
+  Peterborough, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Pierce, Mr, 12, 18
+  Pierrepoint, Hon. H.M., 265
+  Pindar, 338
+  Pope, 243
+  Portland, Duke of, 157, 163, 164
+  Portsmouth, Duchess of, 184-194, 207
+  Power, Edmund, 96-99
+  ----, Marguerite, 96-109
+  Pulteney, Mr, 196
+  Pusey, Canon, 333
+
+  Queensbury, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 311,
+  Querouaille, Louise de, 19, 177-194
+
+  Radnor, Earls of, 332-333
+  Radzivill, Prince, 205
+  Raikes, Mr T., 49
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 137
+  Rawlins, Colonel Giles, 77
+  Redmaynes (of Fulford), 329
+  Revelstoke, Baron, 327
+  Reynolds, 23
+  Richelieu, Duc de, 327
+  Richmond, Duchess of, 17-20
+  ----, Duke of, 13-18, 208, 218, 265
+  Ripon, Marquesses of, 329
+  Robinson, Anastasia, 243, 244
+  Robinsons, 328, 329
+  Robsart, Amy, 268-274
+  Rogers, Samuel, 45
+  Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 339
+  Rotier, Phillipe, 12
+  Round, Mr Horace, 336
+  Rowe, 166
+  Russell, Lord John, 44
+  ---- family, 340, 341
+  Ruvigny, 19
+  Ryder, Lady Susanna, 48
+
+  St Albans, Duke of, 254
+  St Aldegonde, Count, 48, 49
+  St Evremond, 182
+  St John family, 341
+  St Simon, 190
+  Salisbury, Marquess of, 330
+  Sandwich, Earl of, 231
+  Sault, Comte de, 179
+  Schulenburg, Ehrengard von der, 316-325
+  ----, Mathias (Count), 316
+  Scott, John, 333
+  Sedley, Catherine, 120-121
+  ----, Sir Charles, 120
+  Sefton, Lady, 46
+  Selkirk, Earl of, 314
+  Selwyn, George, 216, 288
+  Sentinelli, Count, 74
+  Seymour, Lady Elizabeth, 328
+  Shaw, Lady, 311
+  Sheffield, Lord, 277
+  Sheridan, Charles, 25
+  ----, Mrs (E. Linley), 31-35
+  ----, Richard Brinsley, 25-35
+  ----, Thomas (Dr), 25
+  ----, Thomas, 25, 283, 284
+  Shipway frauds, 336
+  Shirley, Lady Barbara, 51
+  ---- Laurence, (Earl of Ferrers), 51-61
+  Shrewsbury, Anna Maria, Countess of, 74-86
+  ----, Earl of, 75, 81, 82, 84, 86
+  Smith, Albert, 107
+  ----, General, 90
+  ----, John, 331
+  ----, Robert, 333
+  ---- family, 338
+  Smithson, Hugh, 328
+  Smythesonne, Smitheson, etc., 327, 328, 338
+  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 317
+  ---- Dorothea of Zell, 317, 323, 324
+  Southwell, Lord, 236
+  Spencer, Elizabeth, 139-147
+  ----, Sir John, 136-144, 340
+  ---- family, 340
+  Spenser, Edmund, 344
+  Standish, Charles, 48
+  Stanley, Lord, 297
+  Stephens, Catherine, 247-248
+  Stewart, Andrew, 314
+  ---- Colonel John, 302-315
+  Stourton, family, 341
+  Stow, 136
+  Strangways, Lady Susan, 211, 212, 215, 216
+  Strathcona, Lord, 334
+  Strathmore, Earl of, 223-224
+  Stuart, La belle, 1-20
+  ----, Lady Louisa, 300
+  ----, Madame, 2
+  ----, Walter, 2, 3
+  Sturt pedigree, 343, 344
+  Suffolk, Lady, 317
+  Surtees, Miss, 333
+
+  Taafe, Mr, 236, 237
+  Talbot, Sir John, 81
+  ----, Richard, 112
+  Tenison, Archbishop, 344
+  Tennyson, Lord, 344
+  Thackeray, 108
+  Thormanby, 157
+  Thurlow, 204
+  ----, Edward, Lord, 247
+  Tripp, Baron, 49
+  Turenne, Marshal, 116
+  Tyrconnel, Duchess of, 112
+
+  Vaillant, Sheriff, 59
+  Vendôme, Philippe de, 191, 192
+  Vernon, Miss, 259
+  Villiers, Adela, Lady, 37
+  ----, Barbara, 1, 115
+  ----, Clementina, 50
+  ----, Sir George, 36
+  ----, George, Earl of, 37, 41
+
+  Wake, Sir Hereward, 342
+  Wales, Prince of (Henry Frederick), 95
+  Walpole, Horace, 23, 51, 89, 190, 201-204, 211, 289, 291, 295, 318, 321, 325
+  Walsingham, Countess of, 325
+  Warburton, General, 63
+  Ward, Mr Plumer, 72
+  ----, William, 331
+  Warwick, Earl of, 331
+  Wellesbourne family, 337
+  Wellington, Duke of, 42, 47, 48, 49, 107, 265
+  Wentworth, Lord, 138
+  Westmorland, Earl of, 38-40, 216
+  Wigton, Lady, 306, 307
+  Wilberforce, William, 106
+  Wilkes, John, 23
+  William III., 86
+  Willis, Mr, 47
+  Wilton, Earl of, 249
+  Wood, Major, 130, 131
+  Woodrow, 301
+
+  York, Duke of (James), 112, 115, 185, 193
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14193 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14193 ***</div>
+
+<h1>LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">BARRISTER-AT-LAW</p>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF &quot;LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS,&quot; ETC. ETC.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LONDON</p>
+
+<p class="center">T. WERNER LAURIE</p>
+
+<p class="center">CLIFFORD'S INN</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="Page_front" id="Page_front"><img src="images/front-t.jpg" alt="ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON" title="ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON" /></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>TO</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">MRS TOM HESKETH</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>L'amiti&eacute; est l'amour sans ailes</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as
+possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that
+those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of
+books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the
+compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy,
+with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its
+follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable
+reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I
+have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a
+labour which has been to me a delight.</p>
+
+<p>THORNTON HALL.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>As love plays a prominent part in at least twenty of these stones, and
+is only really absent from one or two of them, I venture to hope that my
+good friends, the reviewers, who have been so kind to my previous books,
+will not find fault with my title, which, more accurately than any other
+I can think of, describes the nature and scope of my book</i>.</p>
+
+<p>T.H.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>CHAP.<span class="tocright">PAGE</span>
+<ol class="TOC">
+<li>A PRINCESS OF PRUDES                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>
+<li>THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH                <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></span></li>
+<li>THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li>
+<li>A GHOSTLY VISITANT                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></span></li>
+<li>A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></span></li>
+<li>A PROFLIGATE PRINCE                    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></span></li>
+<li>THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS                  <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></span></li>
+<li>A QUEEN OF COQUETTES                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></span></li>
+<li>A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELOPEMENT          <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></span></li>
+<li>TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF                  <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></span></li>
+<li>THE WICKED BARON                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li>
+<li>A FAIR <i>INTRIGANTE</i>               <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MERRY DUCHESS                      <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></span></li>
+<li>THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></span></li>
+<li>THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li>
+<li>A NOBLE VAGABOND                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></span></li>
+<li>FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS                <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></span></li>
+<li>A PEASANT COUNTESS                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></span></li>
+<li>THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN               <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span></li>
+<li>TWO IRISH BEAUTIES                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS                    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="LOI">
+<li>ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON     <span class="tocright"><i><a href="#Page_front">Frontispiece</a></i></span></li>
+<li>FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND     <span class="tocright"><i>to face page </i><a href="#Page_18">18</a></span></li>
+<li>MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></span></li>
+<li>SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></span></li>
+<li>HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></span></li>
+<li>ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER              <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span></li>
+<li>MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h4>A PRINCESS OF PRUDES</h4>
+
+
+<p>Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the &quot;Merrie
+Monarch's&quot; passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
+day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him &quot;sitting
+and toying with his concubines,&quot; there was, it is said, only one of them
+all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
+simplest, and most designing of prudes, <i>La belle Stuart</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
+queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
+girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
+future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
+carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
+Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
+blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>France, where
+he had found a fresh field for his valour.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
+Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
+frequently &quot;lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre,&quot; and even a
+crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
+brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
+mother's pride.</p>
+
+<p>Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
+established herself as the pet <i>par excellence</i> of the Court of France.
+With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
+every gallant, from &quot;Monsieur&quot; to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
+romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
+King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
+her &quot;big sweetheart.&quot; So devoted was His Majesty to <i>La belle Ecossaise</i>
+that, when her mother talked of taking her away to England, he begged
+that she would not remove so fair an ornament from his Court, and vowed
+that he would provide the child with a splendid dower and a noble
+husband if she would but allow her to remain.</p>
+
+<p>But Madame Stuart had other designs for her pretty daughter; and when
+Henrietta Maria took boat to England to shine again at the Court of
+Whitehall, under her son's reign, Frances Stuart joined her retinue, and
+found herself transported <a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>from the schoolroom to the most brilliant and
+dangerous court in Europe. When this transformation came in her life
+Walter Stuart's daughter was just blossoming into as sweet and fragrant
+a flower as ever bloomed in woman's guise. Fair and graceful as a lily,
+with luxuriant brown hair, eyes of violet, and a proud, dainty little
+head, she had a figure which, although yet not fully formed, was
+faultless in its modelling and its exquisite grace. And these physical
+charms were allied to an unspoiled freshness, which combined the artless
+fascinations of the child with the allurements of the woman.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of
+Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can
+scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England,
+the French &quot;Mademoiselle,&quot; as she was called, was hailed as a new
+revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the
+bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.</p>
+
+<p>To the &quot;Merrie Monarch's&quot; senses, sated with riper beauties and more
+stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose
+compared with exotic hot-house flowers. She was, he vowed, so &quot;dainty,
+so fresh, so fragrant,&quot; that none but the sourest of anchorites could
+resist her&mdash;and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well. Almost at
+sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her
+the battery of all his fascinations. Was ever maid placed, on the
+threshold of <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>life, in so dangerous a predicament? For the King, who was
+her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a
+past-master in the conquest of woman. But, in response to all his
+advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a
+merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the
+gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another &quot;big
+playfellow&quot; to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did
+not wish to know more. He might kiss her&mdash;<i>vraiment</i>&mdash;why not? and that
+Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told
+that &quot;he would kiss her for half an hour at a time,&quot; caring little who
+looked on.</p>
+
+<p>And all her other Whitehall lovers&mdash;a legion of them, from the Duke of
+Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the
+same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish
+prudery? &quot;She was a child,&quot; says Count Hamilton, &quot;in all respects save
+playing with dolls&quot;&mdash;a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet,
+one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper
+than is usually associated with so much simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.
+Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new
+era of nursery games which she inaugurated. Jaded gallants and sedate
+Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in
+blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>with the Stuart maid as Lady of
+Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked&mdash;or affected to
+be&mdash;one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting
+on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at &quot;I love my love with an
+A because he is Amorous&quot;; &quot;I hate him with a B because he is Boring,&quot;
+and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for,
+Pepys says, &quot;some of them were very witty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The little madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred
+environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
+exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
+big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
+castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
+toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
+and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
+no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
+Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
+hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
+with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
+unseemly goings-on.</p>
+
+<p>And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
+of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
+had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
+Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
+all <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
+for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
+by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
+summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp&mdash;until what was
+&quot;play to the child&quot; began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
+world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
+elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
+ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
+away and not be so naughty again.</p>
+
+<p>Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
+treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
+playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
+Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
+stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
+himself more to win the favour of a maid.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Having provided himself,&quot; says Hamilton, &quot;with a great
+     number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
+     obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
+     them; at the same time offering her his most humble
+     services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
+     her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
+     of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
+     Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of
+     laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the
+     room. Thus ignominiously was sounded the death-knell of
+     Arlington's hopes!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in
+England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and
+tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of
+them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic;
+and for a time she revelled in his comradeship. He first won her heart
+in the following fashion. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting
+and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and
+hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. &quot;I can do better than that,&quot;
+exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. &quot;Give me two candles.&quot; The candles
+were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious
+mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were
+extinguished, while <i>La belle Stuart</i> paraded after him, clapping her
+hands and laughing in her glee.</p>
+
+<p>Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour. Rollicking George
+was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was
+privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had
+ever enjoyed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Since the Court has been in the country,&quot; he confessed,
+     &quot;I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You
+     know that the <i>d&eacute;shabille</i> of the bath is a great
+     convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to
+     their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all
+     their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully
+     acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all
+     other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any
+     lady at Court for a well-turned <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>arm and a fine leg, but
+     she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
+     After all, a man must be very insensible to remain
+     unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless
+encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest
+where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont,
+taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of
+flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and
+persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her
+riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I followed them,&quot; he says, &quot;up into Whitehall, and into
+     the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked,
+     talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and
+     changing and trying one another's by one another's heads
+     and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse,
+     with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes,
+     little Roman nose, and excellent <i>taille</i>, is now the
+     greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if
+     ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least
+     in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which
+     I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady
+     Castlemaine.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her
+girlish beauty and irre<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>sponsibility will never be known; but we know
+that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis
+Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry,
+in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.</p>
+
+<p>And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her
+witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other
+than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her
+Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that
+she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged
+Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a
+rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an
+artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was
+carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the
+cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of
+throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked
+on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments,
+between the pair&mdash;&quot;with ring and all other ceremonies of church service
+and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking,
+evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion
+with great spirit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely
+saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The King,&quot; to quote Hamilton again, &quot;who seldom<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>
+     neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom
+     failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most
+     indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment;
+     however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's
+     appearing with her in such a situation, being confident
+     that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all
+     the advantages which these opportunities could afford
+     Miss Stuart.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact Charles's <i>maitresse en titre</i> regarded the
+&quot;Mademoiselle&quot; as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
+&quot;She is a lovely little thing,&quot; she once said patronisingly, &quot;but she is
+only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest
+lover in the world.&quot; But she was not long left in this unsuspicious
+Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the &quot;child&quot; had made a conquest
+of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held
+the throne of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by
+Gramont with &quot;the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a
+'calash') that had ever been seen.&quot; The Queen herself and Lady
+Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to
+take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to
+create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and
+eloquence to secure this concession from the King.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>
+     to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen
+     retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King
+     was driven to distraction between the cajoling and
+     threats of the two rival beauties.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's
+unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in
+the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.</p>
+
+<p>According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the
+&quot;prude&quot; her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she
+was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a
+King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a
+dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a
+bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever
+found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of
+Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as <i>La belle Stuart;</i>
+though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition &quot;to be a
+Duchess&quot; that she declared she was &quot;ready to marry any gentleman of
+fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so
+cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his
+passion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she
+treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Pierce tells me,&quot; Pepys writes, &quot;that my Lady<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>
+     Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he
+     do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of
+     all business in the world, and to the open slighting of
+     the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by
+     while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in
+     her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him
+     going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or
+     any of the Nobles, when they would ask where the King is,
+     they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
+     meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly
+     disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were
+her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which
+she moved a splendid, but unassailable Queen, for every man who came
+within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
+One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the
+youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to
+England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration
+of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was
+asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe
+Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace
+of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in
+love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of
+<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on
+millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the
+faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the
+verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.</p>
+
+<p>It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the
+handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most
+insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good
+looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such
+a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
+who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
+maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.</p>
+
+<p>Small in stature, deformed in figure&mdash;a caricature of a man, His Grace
+of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
+Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
+butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
+should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
+England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
+The Court was struck with consternation&mdash;and convulsed with laughter.
+Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
+experience. But there could be no doubt about it. <i>La belle Stuart</i>, who
+had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
+gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>Arlington, was not only
+smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
+assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
+reputation a King had been powerless to sully.</p>
+
+<p>Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
+vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
+old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
+had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
+night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
+Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
+pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
+triumph, told him that at the moment <i>La belle Stuart</i> turned him away
+from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
+rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. &quot;Come with me,&quot; Lady
+Castlemaine answered, &quot;and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
+truth;&quot; and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
+his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
+sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
+open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
+     Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
+     probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
+     King, who of all men was usually <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>one of the most mild
+     and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of
+     Richmond in such terms as he had never used before. The
+     Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his
+     master and King justly irritated. The first transports
+     which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous. Miss
+     Stuart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge,
+     the Thames flowing close beneath it. He cast his eyes
+     upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and
+     fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable
+     of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying
+     a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces
+     that were poured on him.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart showed a very
+different metal. She was furious at the indignity of the King's
+intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as
+his Royal ears had never listened to. She was no slave, she said, with
+flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to
+receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with
+honourable intentions. She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as
+she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no
+power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and
+throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was
+denied her in his Court! And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by
+pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, &quot;to leave
+her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his
+heart. He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he
+would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be
+revenged. On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled,
+and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an
+audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging
+her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a
+convent. So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen
+and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine
+promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.</p>
+
+<p>One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost
+to him for ever. He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the
+Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large
+revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his
+<i>maitresse en titre</i>; but to all his seductions and bribes the
+inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye. No future, however
+dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.
+&quot;I hope,&quot; said the King at last, &quot;I may live to see you old and
+willing,&quot; as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with
+the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his
+sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the
+offence.</p>
+
+<p>But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind. It had long been her
+ambition&mdash;from child<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>hood, it is said&mdash;to be a Duchess, and she was not
+going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world. What
+might come after was another matter. A Duchess's coronet and a
+wedding-ring were her immediate goal. Thus it came to pass that one dark
+night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to
+London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach. Through the
+night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long
+before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.
+Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles's long intrigue had
+ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing the news the King was beside himself with anger. He forbade
+the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court&mdash;he even dismissed
+his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a hand in the
+plot.</p>
+
+<p>But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
+presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
+honeymoon. Within a year&mdash;so powerless is anger against love&mdash;Charles
+summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
+Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
+splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
+a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
+says Pepys,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>
+     Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
+     to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
+     out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's &quot;nose
+out of joint&quot; must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
+doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
+maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
+coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
+prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
+maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
+Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
+Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
+shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
+tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once &quot;did take a
+pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
+Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
+himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
+horrid shame.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-018-t.jpg" alt="FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND" title="FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND" />
+</div>
+
+<p>But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To the
+consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with small-pox,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by which,&quot; to quote Pepys again, &quot;all do conclude she
+     will be wholly spoiled, which is the greatest instance of
+     the uncertainty of beauty that could <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>be in this age; but
+     then she hath had the benefit of it to be first married,
+     and to have kept it so long, under the greatest
+     temptations in the world from a King, and yet without the
+     least imputation.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to Louis
+XIV., in which he says that &quot;her matchless beauty was impaired beyond
+recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever.&quot;
+During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with anxiety,
+visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
+sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of
+her was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
+to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
+the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the &quot;Sun-King&quot; had
+sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
+Louis's favour; and <i>La belle Stuart</i> was not slow to realise that at
+last her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least
+until the Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of
+Lady of the Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the
+scene of so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books
+and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of
+years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>ducal
+robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her
+nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with
+part of it an estate, to be known as &quot;Lennox's Love to Blantyre&quot;; and to
+this day &quot;Lennox-Love&quot; perpetuates, like the Britannia of our coins, the
+memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women who have ever
+driven men to distraction by their beauty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" /><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h4>THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH</h4>
+
+
+<p>A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
+allurement, not only as &quot;Queen of the West,&quot; but as Empress of all the
+haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
+rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms,
+statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell
+mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure
+or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares
+and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the
+moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish
+found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.</p>
+
+<p>But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common
+consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth
+Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at
+the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. She was,
+as all the world knew, only the daughter of Thomas Linley,
+singing-master <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>and organiser of the concerts, a man who had plied
+chisel and saw at the carpenter's bench before he found the music that
+was in him; but, obscure as was her birth, she reigned supreme by virtue
+of a loveliness and a gift of song which none of her sex could rival.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus little wonder that Elizabeth Linley's fame had travelled far
+beyond the West Country town in which she was cradled. George III. had
+summoned her to sing to him in his London palace, and had been so
+overcome by her gifts of beauty and melody that, with tears streaming
+down his cheeks, he had stroked her hair and caressed her hands, and
+declared to the blushing girl that he had never seen any one so
+beautiful or heard a voice so divinely sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Dibdin tried to enshrine her in fitting verse, but abandoned the
+effort in despair, vowing that she was indeed of that company described
+by Milton:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Who, as they sang, would take the prisoned soul<br /></span>
+<span>And lap it in Elysium.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Meath, in his unepiscopal enthusiasm, declared that she
+was &quot;the link between an angel and a woman&quot;; while Dr Charles Burney,
+supreme musician and father of the more famous Madame d'Arblay, wrote
+more soberly of her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting
+     as her countenance and conversation. With a
+     mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation,
+     she was possessed of the double power of <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>delighting an
+     audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of
+     brilliant execution, which is allowed to very few
+     singers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>To her Horace Walpole also paid this curious tribute:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Miss Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The
+     king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in
+     so holy a place as oratorio.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such are a few of the tributes, of which contemporary records are full,
+paid to the fair &quot;Nightingale of Bath,&quot; whom Gainsborough and Reynolds
+immortalised in two of their inspired canvases&mdash;the latter as
+Cecilia&mdash;her face almost superhuman in its beauty and the divine rapture
+of its expression&mdash;seated at a harpsichord and pouring out her soul in
+song.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that a girl of such charms and gifts&mdash;&quot;superior to all
+the handsome things I have heard of her,&quot; John Wilkes wrote, &quot;and withal
+the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen&quot;&mdash;should have
+lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if
+not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a
+foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty
+compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and
+rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean
+her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of
+pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold
+shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>promised her hand to an
+elderly, unattractive wooer called Long, a man almost old enough to be
+her grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>That her heart had not gone with her hand we may be sure. We know that
+it was only under the strong compulsion of her father that she had given
+her consent; for Mr Long had a purse as elongated as his name, and to
+the eyes of the poor singing-master his gold-bags were irresistible. Her
+elderly wooer loaded his bride-to-be with costly presents; he showered
+jewels on her, bought her a trousseau fit for a Queen; and was on the
+eve of marrying her, when&mdash;without a word of warning, it was announced
+that the wedding, to which all Bath had been excitedly looking forward,
+would not take place!</p>
+
+<p>Mr Linley was furious, and threatened the terrors of the law; but the
+bridegroom that failed was adamant. It was said that, in cancelling the
+engagement, Mr Long was acting a chivalrous part, in response to Miss
+Linley's pleading that he would withdraw his suit, since her heart could
+never be his, and by withdrawing shield her from her father's anger.
+However this may have been, Mr Long steadily declined to go to the
+altar, and ultimately appeased the singing-master by settling &pound;3,000 on
+his daughter, and allowing her to keep the valuable jewels and other
+presents he had given her.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was
+ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome
+by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his
+<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>appearance at Bath&mdash;a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined
+to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of
+love was none other than Richard Brinsley Sheridan, grandson of Dean
+Swift's bosom friend, Dr Thomas Sheridan, one of the two sons of another
+Thomas, who, after a roaming and profitless life, had come to Bath to
+earn a livelihood by teaching elocution.</p>
+
+<p>This younger Thomas Sheridan seems to have inherited none of the wit and
+cleverness of his father, Swift's boon companion. Dr Johnson considered
+him &quot;dull, naturally dull. Such an excess of stupidity,&quot; he added, &quot;is
+not in nature.&quot; But, in spite of his dulness, &quot;Sherry&quot;&mdash;as he was
+commonly called&mdash;had been clever enough to coax a pension of &pound;200 a year
+out of the Government, and was able to send his two boys to Harrow and
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>The Sheridan boys had been but a few days in Bath when they both fell
+head over heels in love with Elizabeth Linley, with whom their sister
+had been equally quick to strike up a friendship. But from the first,
+Charles, the elder son, was hopelessly outmatched.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On our first acquaintance,&quot; Miss Linley wrote in later
+     years, &quot;both professed to love me&mdash;but yet I preferred
+     the youngest, as by far the most agreeable in person,
+     beloved by every one.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Indeed, from a boy, Richard Sheridan seemed born to win hearts. His
+sister has confessed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I admired&mdash;I almost adored him. He was handsome. His<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>
+     cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes&mdash;the finest in
+     the world&mdash;the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a
+     tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same
+     playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that
+     was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
+     delighted the family circle.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when, in the year 1769, he first set
+eyes on the girl, who, after many dramatic vicissitudes, was to bear his
+name and share his glories. From the first sight of her he was
+hopelessly in love, although none but his sister knew it. He was little
+more than a school-boy, and was content to &quot;bide his time,&quot; worshipping
+mutely at the shrine of the girl whom some day he meant to make his own.</p>
+
+<p>He gave no sign of jealousy when his elder brother made love to her
+before his eyes&mdash;only to retire quickly, chilled by a coldness which he
+realised he could never thaw; or even when his Oxford chum, Halhed, his
+dearest friend and the colleague of his youthful pen, fell a victim to
+Elizabeth's charms, and, in his innocence, begged Sheridan to plead his
+suit with her. Halhed, too, had to retire from the hopeless suit; and
+Richard Sheridan, still silent, save, perhaps, for the eloquence of
+tell-tale eyes, held the field alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this stage of our story that a grave element of danger entered
+Elizabeth Linley's life, with the arrival at Bath of a Major Matthews, a
+handsome <i>rou&eacute;</i>, with a large rent-roll from Welsh <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>acres, and a
+dangerous reputation won in the lists of love. At sight of the fair
+Nightingale in the Assembly Rooms this hero of many conquests was
+himself laid low. He was frantically in love, and before many days had
+passed vowed that he would shoot himself if his charmer refused to smile
+on him. Her coldness only fanned his ardour; and his persecution reached
+such a pitch that in her alarm she appealed to young Sheridan for help.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young lover than such an
+appeal and the necessity for it. It was a tribute to her esteem, and to
+his budding manliness, which delighted him. Moreover, it gave him many
+opportunities of meeting her, and talking over the situation with her.
+At any cost this persecution must end; and the result of the conferences
+was that an excellent plan was evolved. Richard was to worm himself into
+the confidence of the Major, and, in the character of friend and
+well-wisher, was to advise him, as a matter of diplomacy, to cease his
+attentions to Miss Linley for a time. Meanwhile arrangements were to be
+made for the Nightingale's escape to France, where she proposed to enter
+a convent until she was of age&mdash;thus finding a refuge from the
+persecution to which her beauty constantly subjected her, and also from
+the scandal which the Long fiasco had given rise to, and which was still
+a great source of unhappiness to her.</p>
+
+<p>The plot was cunningly planned and worked smoothly. The Major was
+induced by subtle plead<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>ing to leave Miss Linley in peace for a time;
+and, to quote Miss Sheridan:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;At length they fixed on an evening when Mr Linley, his
+     eldest son and Miss Mary Linley were engaged at the
+     concert (Miss Linley being excused on the plea of
+     illness) to set out on their journey. Sheridan brought a
+     sedan-chair to Mr Linley's house in the Crescent, in
+     which he had Miss Linley conveyed to a post-chaise that
+     was waiting for them on the London road. A woman was in
+     the chaise who had been hired to accompany them on this
+     extraordinary elopement.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>For elopement it really was, although ostensibly Sheridan was merely
+playing the part of a friendly escort to a distressed lady, whatever
+deeper scheme, unknown to her, may have been in his mind. After a brief
+stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
+towards Lille.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
+hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
+could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
+had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
+and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
+the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.</p>
+
+<p>To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
+her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
+Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>travelled
+many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
+make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
+the convent at the altar.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It was not,&quot; she wrote to him later, &quot;your person that
+     gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
+     tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
+     that were the motives which induced me to love you.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
+duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
+anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
+left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
+to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
+discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
+<i>Chronicle</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for
+     that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away
+     from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and
+     that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my
+     knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters,
+     nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid
+     himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a
+     gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a
+     treacherous Scoundrel.&mdash;THOMAS MATTHEWS.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue. Sheridan
+promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the
+Major was <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult. But,
+so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a
+second meeting&mdash;and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.</p>
+
+<p>The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few
+furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were
+struggling together on the ground. Matthews, however, being much the
+stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken
+sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face. &quot;Beg your life, and I will
+spare it,&quot; he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man. &quot;I will
+neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain,&quot; was the unflinching
+answer.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Matthews then renewed the attack, and, having picked up
+     the point of one of the swords, ran it through the side
+     of the throat and pinned him to the ground with it,
+     exclaiming, 'I have done for him.' He then left the
+     field, accompanied by his second, and, getting into a
+     carriage with four horses which had been waiting for him,
+     drove off.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Sheridan, unconscious and apparently dying, was driven from the Downs to
+a neighbouring inn, &quot;The White Hart,&quot; where for a time he hung betwixt
+life and death. On hearing of his condition Miss Linley (who at the time
+was singing at Cambridge) travelled post-haste to his bedside; and,
+tenderly nursed by his wife and his sister, the wounded man slowly
+fought his way back to strength.</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that, after such a tragic experience and
+observing the mutual devotion of the <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>young couple, their parents would
+have relented and given their approval of the union, however improvident
+and inexcusable it might appear to them. But, on both sides, they were
+obdurate; and Mr Sheridan carried his opposition to the extent of
+extracting from his son a promise that he would not even see his wife.</p>
+
+<p>But love laughs at parents' frowns and usually triumphs in the end. When
+Elizabeth Linley went away to London to sing in oratorio, her husband
+followed her; and, in the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of hackney coachman, had the pleasure
+of driving not only his wife but her father, home nightly from the
+concert-room, without either of them suspecting his identity. When at
+last he revealed himself to his wife, her delight was so great as to
+leave no doubt of the sincere love she bore him. Many a secret meeting
+followed; a final joint appeal ultimately broke down the obduracy of the
+parents; and once again Sheridan led his bride to the altar, to make her
+finally and securely his own.</p>
+
+<p>For a time Richard Sheridan and his Nightingale found a haven in a
+remote, rose-covered cottage at East Burnham. These were days of
+unclouded happiness, when, the &quot;world forgetting and by the world
+forgot,&quot; they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
+were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
+of Mr Long's &pound;3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
+now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
+voice&mdash;she actually refused offers of nearly &pound;4000 for one short
+season&mdash;but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>for his
+own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
+back on fame and fortune.</p>
+
+<p>But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
+such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
+began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
+destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
+which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
+Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
+country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
+Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
+extravagances more suited to an income of &pound;5000 a year than the paltry
+&pound;150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
+and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
+song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
+dinners and to attend his wife's <i>soir&eacute;es</i>. Sheridan was in his element
+in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
+would gladly have changed it all for &quot;a little quiet home that I can
+enjoy in comfort,&quot; as she told her husband&mdash;above all, for the Burnham
+cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if Sheridan had never left the cottage and the roses, his name
+would never have been known to fame. His ambition needed some such
+stimulus as this spasm of extravagance to wake it to activity. He must
+now make money or be submerged by debts; <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>and under this impulse of
+necessity it was that he wooed fortune with <i>The Rivals</i>, and awoke to
+find himself famous and potentially rich. Other comedies followed
+swiftly from his eager and inspired pen&mdash;<i>The School for Scandal</i>, <i>The
+Duenna</i>, and <i>The Critic</i>&mdash;each greeted with enthusiasm by a world to
+which such dramatic triumphs were a revelation and a delight. Sheridan
+was not only the &quot;talk of the town&quot;; he was hailed universally as the
+brightest dramatic star of the age.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to say that Sheridan's fame was a delight to his wife.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Not long ago,&quot; she wrote to a friend, &quot;he was known as
+     'Mrs Sheridan's husband.' Now the tables are turned, and,
+     henceforth, I expect I shall be just Mr Sheridan's wife.
+     Nor could I wish any more exalted title. I am proud and
+     thankful to be the wife of the cleverest man in England,
+     and the best husband in the world!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Mrs Sheridan adored her husband is evident from every letter she
+wrote to him. She addresses him as &quot;my dearest Love&quot; and &quot;my darling
+Dick,&quot; and vows that she cannot be happy apart from him. &quot;I cannot love
+you,&quot; she declares, &quot;and be perfectly satisfied at such a distance from
+you. I depended upon your coming to-night, and shall not recover my
+spirits till we meet.&quot; But through her letters runs the same hankering
+after the old simple, peaceful days&mdash;the days of love in a cottage. &quot;I
+could draw,&quot; she writes, &quot;such a picture of happiness that it would
+<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>almost make me wish the overthrow of all our present schemes of future
+affluence and grandeur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But greatly as he loved his wife, Sheridan was now too much wedded to
+his ambition to listen to such tempting. He had conquered fame with his
+pen; now he aspired to subdue it with his tongue. In 1780, while he was
+still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages;
+and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow
+law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the
+oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries.
+Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he
+had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever
+been heard in our tongue&mdash;notably by his historic speech in the trial of
+Warren Hastings, to the preparation of which his wife had devoted
+herself body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband
+in Westminster Hall, she wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the
+     astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the
+     breasts of every class of people. Every party prejudice
+     has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence
+     and goodness.... What my feelings must be, you can only
+     imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some
+     difficulty that I can 'let down my mind,' as Mr Burke
+     said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.
+     But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this
+     moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last
+     week.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>But Mrs Sheridan's day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near
+to its close. She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of
+fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his
+marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal
+seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved
+sister, began to show themselves in her. Her illness was as swift as it
+was, happily, painless. She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly
+watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was
+pitiful to see.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;During her last days,&quot; says Mrs Canning, her devoted
+     friend, &quot;she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
+     sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
+     niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
+     out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
+     a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
+     an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
+     and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
+     poor heart would have burst in the conflict.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
+a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
+&quot;choir invisible.&quot; Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
+Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
+the world has ever known &quot;between an angel and a woman.&quot; As for Sheridan
+he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
+to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" /><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
+far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
+George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
+&quot;threadbare hanger-on&quot; at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
+the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
+Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
+was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
+of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
+in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
+wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
+career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
+assassin's knife.</p>
+
+<p>His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
+second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
+playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>in
+its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
+not, as Pope says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
+Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
+Arran, said: &quot;There is not so much as one farthing towards defraying the
+expense of his funeral.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nor have the men of Villiers' blood had any monopoly of adventure. Their
+wives and daughters have seldom been content to lead the unromantic life
+which happily contents so many of their sex. From Barbara Chaffinch,
+whose intrigues secured the Earldom of Jersey for her husband in William
+III.'s reign, to the Lady Adela Villiers who ran away with Captain
+Ibbetson, a handsome young officer of Hussars, to Gretna Green and the
+altar, they have played many diverse and sensational <i>r&ocirc;les</i> on the
+stage of their time.</p>
+
+<p>It was but fitting that George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey, should
+make a Countess of the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, in whose veins was an
+adventurous strain as marked as in his own; for she was the fruit of one
+of the most dramatic unions recorded in the annals of our Peerage. A
+year before she was cradled her mother was Anne Child, the richest
+heiress in England&mdash;the only daughter of Robert Child, head of the great
+banking firm at Temple Bar, and a descendant of Francis Child, the
+industrious London apprentice who married the daughter of his <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>master,
+William Wheeler, goldsmith, whose riches and business he inherited.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Old Child,&quot; as Anne's father was familiarly known, had many
+aristocratic clients who used his cheques and overdrew their accounts;
+but the most prodigal, as also the most ingratiating, of them all was
+the young Earl of Westmorland, who, not content with making large
+demands on the banker's exchequer and patience, had the audacity to
+aspire to all his wealth through his daughter's hand.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was perhaps as naturally flattered by the attentions of a lord as
+she was fascinated by his handsome face and figure and his courtly
+manners; but the father had other designs for his heiress than marrying
+her to a prodigal young nobleman. &quot;Your blood, my lord, is good,&quot; he
+once told him; &quot;but money is better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lord Westmorland was not, however, the man to be turned aside from the
+gilded goal on which he had set his heart. If he could not wed the
+heiress with her father's blessing, he would dispense with the
+benediction. That he <i>would</i> marry her he was determined; and Anne was
+just the girl to assist a bold lover in such an ambition.</p>
+
+<p>One day, so the story is told, Lord Westmorland decided to bring the
+matter to a crisis. He had been dining with Mr Child, and, after the
+wine had circulated freely, he said, &quot;Now, sir, that we have discussed
+business thoroughly, there is another matter on which I should be
+grateful for your opinion.&quot; &quot;What's that?&quot; enquired the banker, <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>beaming
+benevolently on his guest, as a man who has dined well and is at peace
+with the world. &quot;Well, sir, suppose you were deeply in love with a girl
+who returned your love, and that her father refused his consent. What
+would you do?&quot; &quot;What should I do?&quot; laughed the banker, &quot;why, run away
+with her, of course, like many a better man has done!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What more direct encouragement could an ardent lover want? It is
+possible that the next morning the banker had completely forgotten the
+conversation, and his vinous approval of runaway matches; but, two days
+later, he was destined to have a rude awaking. In the middle of the
+night he was aroused by the watchman to learn that his front door had
+been found open; and a little later the alarming discovery was made that
+his daughter had flown. His suspicions fell at once on that &quot;rascally
+young lord&quot;; and they were confirmed when he found that the Earl, too,
+had disappeared, and that a chaise, with four galloping horses, had been
+seen dashing northwards as fast as whip and spur could drive them.</p>
+
+<p>The banker was furious. He raged and stormed as he ordered his servants
+to procure the fastest horses money could command; and with lavish
+promises of reward to the postboys he set out in hot pursuit of the
+fugitives. Luckily they had no long start; and, with better horses, more
+frequent changes, and a heavier purse, he had little doubt that he would
+soon overtake them. But the chase was sterner and longer <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>than he had
+imagined. Cupid lends wings to runaway lovers. Fast as Mr Child's
+sweating horses raced, they gained but little on the pursued. Through
+the long night, the next day, and the following night the desperate race
+continued&mdash;through sleeping villages and startled towns, over hill and
+moor, until the borderland grew near. Then, between Penrith and
+Carlisle, the quarry was at last sighted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Child's horses, urged to a final effort by the postboys, slowly but
+surely reduced the interval; and now inch by inch they draw abreast of
+the runaway chaise. The moment of triumph has come. Mr Child, with body
+half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt,
+shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand
+waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's
+near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes
+later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
+which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.</p>
+
+<p>Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
+runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
+pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
+street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.</p>
+
+<p>For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
+and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
+his daughter won her way back into his heart, and <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>to her he left the
+whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
+than &pound;100,000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
+who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
+the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
+dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
+she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
+noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
+tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
+luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
+lily.</p>
+
+<p>It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
+looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
+prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
+to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
+aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
+rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
+the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
+to, resist. And one May day in 1804&mdash;almost twenty-two years to the day
+after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green&mdash;the Lady Sarah
+became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.</p>
+
+<p>From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
+more than a child) took the position <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>of a Queen, to which her rank,
+wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
+unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her <i>salon</i> was a second Royal
+Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
+to the &quot;Empress of Fashion.&quot; She entertained kings with a regal
+splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
+and the Tsar Nicholas I. were all delighted to do honour to a hostess so
+captivating and so queenly.</p>
+
+<p>At Middleton Park, her lord's Oxfordshire seat, she dispensed a
+hospitality which was the despair of her rivals. Her retinue of servants
+seldom numbered less than a hundred, and many a week her guests, with
+their attendants, far exceeded a thousand. Money was squandered with a
+prodigal hand. The very servants, it is said, drank champagne and hock
+like water; her housemaids had their riding horses, and dressed in silks
+and satins. Among her thousands of guests were such men as Wellington
+and Peel, Castlereagh and Canning, all humble worshippers at her shrine;
+and Lord Byron who, in his gloomy moods, would shut himself in his
+bedroom for days, living on biscuits and water, and stealing out at dead
+of night to wander ghost-like through the neighbouring woods. These
+moods of black despondency he varied by turbulent spirits, when he would
+be the gayest of the gay, and would challenge his fellow-guests to
+drinking bouts, in which he always came off the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Jersey had no more ardent admirer than <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>Byron, whose muse was
+inspired to many a flight in honour of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">&quot;The grace of mien,<br /></span>
+<span>The eye that gladdens and the brow serene;<br /></span>
+<span>The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,<br /></span>
+<span>Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And among her army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could
+stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was
+such superabundant energy enshrined in a form so beautiful and stately.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Shall I tell you what Lady Jersey is like?&quot; wrote
+     Creevey. &quot;She is like one of her numerous gold and silver
+     dicky-birds that are in all the showrooms of this house.
+     She begins to sing at eleven o'clock, and, with the
+     interval of the hour when she retires to her cage to
+     rest, she sings till twelve at night without a moment's
+     interruption. She changes her feathers for dinner, and
+     her plumage both morning and evening is the most
+     beautiful I ever saw.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>She seemed indeed incapable of fatigue. Tongue and body alike never
+seemed to rest, from rising to going to bed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She is really wonderful,&quot; says Lady Granville; &quot;and how
+     she can stand the life she leads is still more wonderful.
+     She sees everybody in her own house, and calls on
+     everybody in theirs. She is all over Paris, and at all
+     the <i>campagnes</i> within ten miles, and in all <i>petites
+     soir&eacute;es</i>. She begins the day with a dancing-master at
+     nine o'clock, and never <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> rests till midnight.... At ten
+     o'clock yesterday morning she called for me, and we never
+     stopped to take breath till eleven o'clock at night, when
+     she set me down here more dead than alive, she going to
+     end the day with the Hollands!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A life that would have killed nine women out of ten seemed powerless to
+touch her. When far advanced in the sixties she was acknowledged to be
+still one of the most beautiful women in England, retaining to an
+amazing degree the bloom and freshness of youth. And when she appeared
+at a fancy-dress ball arrayed as a Sultana, in a robe of sky-blue with
+coral embroideries and a turban of gold and white, she was by universal
+consent acclaimed as the most beautiful woman there. It may interest my
+lady readers to learn that she attributed her perpetual youth to the use
+of gruel as a substitute for soap and water.</p>
+
+<p>Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most
+fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair
+fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and
+repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity.
+So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage
+alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of
+men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. &quot;Diable!&quot; laughed the
+General, &quot;you must be very little sure of yourself if you are afraid to
+be alone with little Lord John!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was merciless to any of her lady friends <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>who lapsed from virtue, or
+in any way, however slight, offended the proprieties. But the vials of
+her fiercest anger were reserved for her mother-in-law, the
+Dowager-Countess, whose shameless intrigue with the Prince Regent
+scandalised the world in an age of lax morals; and the outraged Princess
+Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have
+anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to
+the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was
+the Regent at this slight that &quot;the dotard with corrupted eye and
+withered heart,&quot; as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the
+Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned to its owner.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, however, the Countess had her revenge. At a party in
+Cavendish Square she was walking along a corridor with Samuel Rogers
+when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
+himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
+stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
+contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
+and laughingly said, &quot;I did that well, didn't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of &quot;Almack's&quot; that Lady Jersey
+won her chief fame&mdash;Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
+in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
+hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
+however great, <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
+which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.</p>
+
+<p>Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
+and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
+to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
+at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
+Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
+doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
+face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
+of fashion and conquest&mdash;for, by the rules of the club, male members
+were selected by the ladies, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>. But beyond all doubt the
+destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
+Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club&mdash;Princess Esterhazy,
+Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
+Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
+counted.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Three-fourths even of the nobility,&quot; says a writer in
+     the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, &quot;knock in vain for admission.
+     Into this <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>, of course, the sons of
+     commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
+     'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
+     have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
+     themselves.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Many diplomatic arts,&quot; writes Captain Gronow, &quot;much
+     <i>finesse</i>, and a host of intrigues were set in <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>motion to
+     get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
+     rank and fortunes entitled them to the <i>entr&eacute;e</i> anywhere,
+     were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
+     for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
+     and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is
+     needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was
+     not innocent of abuses.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The fair ladies who ruled supreme over this little dancing and gossiping
+world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at
+the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+<i>chapeau bras.</i> On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to
+ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when
+the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped
+forward and said, &quot;Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers,&quot; whereupon
+the Duke, who had a great respect for orders and regulations, quietly
+walked away.</p>
+
+<p>Another inflexible rule of the club was that no one should be admitted
+after eleven o'clock; and it was a breach of this regulation that once
+overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington with humiliation. One evening, the
+Duke, who had promised to meet Lady Mornington at Almack's, presented
+himself for admission. &quot;Lady Jersey,&quot; announced an attendant, &quot;the Duke
+of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted.&quot; &quot;What o'clock
+is it?&quot; she asked. &quot;Seven minutes after eleven, your Ladyship.&quot; She
+paused for a moment, and then said with emphasis and distinctness, &quot;Give
+my compliments&mdash;Lady <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>Jersey's compliments&mdash;to the Duke of Wellington,
+and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of
+exclusion is such that, hereafter, no one can complain of its
+application. He cannot be admitted.&quot; And the Duke, whom even Napoleon
+with all his legions had been powerless to turn back, was compelled to
+retreat before the capricious will of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>Such an autocrat was this &quot;Queen of Almack's.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;While her colleagues were debating,&quot; says the author of
+     the &quot;Key to Almack's,&quot; &quot;she decided. Hers was the
+     master-spirit that ruled the whole machine; hers the
+     eloquent tongue that could both persuade and command. And
+     she was never idle. Her restless eye pried into
+     everything; she set the world to rights; her influence
+     was resistless, her determination uncontrollable.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Treat people like fools, and they will worship you,&quot; was her favourite
+maxim. And as Bryon, her intimate friend, once said, &quot;She was the
+veriest tyrant that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to
+shake their cap and bells as she willed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was at Almack's, it is interesting to recall, that Lady Jersey first
+introduced the quadrille from Paris.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I recollect,&quot; says Captain Gronow, &quot;the persons who
+     formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
+     They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
+     Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
+     Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
+shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;What scenes,&quot; writes Mr T. Raikes, &quot;have we witnessed in
+     these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
+     <i>d&eacute;butantes</i> at the commencement of a waltz, what
+     giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
+     owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
+     opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
+     of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
+     cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
+     became a scene of feud and contention.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
+divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
+many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
+victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
+Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
+twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
+waltz.</p>
+
+<p>For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
+world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
+inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
+her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her &quot;a
+tiresome, quarrelsome woman&quot;; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
+abject slaves, once exclaimed, &quot;What &mdash;&mdash; nonsense Lady Jersey talks!&quot;
+and Granville declared that she <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>had &quot;neither wit, nor imagination, nor
+humour.&quot; But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
+and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
+and personal charm.</p>
+
+<p>The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
+sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
+her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
+her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
+bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
+unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the
+darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the
+slayer of her hopes was not stayed. Her husband, whose devotion had so
+long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest
+son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the
+crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken
+from her.</p>
+
+<p>For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one
+January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the
+world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have
+ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" /><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the
+far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly
+seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud
+'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain,
+and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley &quot;a low wretch, a mad
+assassin, and a wild beast.&quot; He was, as my story will show, all this. He
+was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by
+devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in
+his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle,
+whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the
+Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And
+this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy,
+and ended it in tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>As a boy, he was subject to violent attacks of rage, when it was not
+safe to approach him; and his madness grew with his years. Strange tales
+are told <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>of him as a young man. We are told that he would spend hours
+pacing like a wild animal up and down his room, gnashing his teeth,
+clenching his fists, grinning diabolically, and uttering strange
+incoherent cries. He would stand before a mirror, making horrible
+grimaces at his reflection, and spitting upon it; he walked about armed
+with pistols and dagger, ready at a moment to use both on any one who
+annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
+and hatred of all around him.</p>
+
+<p>When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
+into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
+Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
+with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
+petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
+obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
+appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
+calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
+became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
+and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I still retain,&quot; writes a Mr Cradock in his &quot;Memoirs,&quot;
+     &quot;a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
+     who, with the Ladies Shirley, his <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>sisters, frequented
+     Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
+     the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
+     character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
+     but in the evening he became the terror of the
+     inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
+     to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
+     was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
+     behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
+     afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
+     My father's house was situated midway between Lord
+     Ferrers's lodgings and the Town Hall, where the race
+     assemblies were then held. He had, as was supposed,
+     obtained liquor privately, and then became outrageous;
+     for, from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to
+     the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a
+     silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies. He was
+     then secured for that evening. This was the last time of
+     his appearing at Leicester, till brought from
+     Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady
+     Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him,
+     no greater precaution had been used with respect to his
+     own safety as well as that of all around him. Whilst
+     sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always
+     urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters
+     ventured to come with him to the races, they had an
+     absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
+lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
+surrounded him<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>self with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
+both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
+eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
+tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
+from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
+figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.</p>
+
+<p>But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
+became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
+wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
+such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
+or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
+the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
+And this is how it came.</p>
+
+<p>The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
+received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
+his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
+lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
+this delicate post&mdash;for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
+such a &quot;tool&quot; he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
+who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
+his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
+Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
+was possessed of a <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
+could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.</p>
+
+<p>In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
+adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
+it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
+unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
+hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
+his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
+the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
+to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
+steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
+was on a Friday; and punctually at two o'clock, the hour appointed, Mr
+Johnson made his appearance, and was ushered into his Lordship's study.
+Unknown to him, Lord Ferrers had sent away his housekeeper and his
+menservants on various pretexts; and, apart from the Earl and the
+steward (the spider and the fly), there was no one in all the great
+house but three maidservants, whose chief anxiety was to keep as far
+away as possible from their mad master.</p>
+
+<p>With a courteous greeting Lord Ferrers invited Mr Johnson to take a
+seat; and then, placing before him a document, which proved to be a
+confession of fraud and dishonesty in his office of receiver, he
+commanded his steward to sign his name to it.</p>
+
+<p>On reading the confession which he was ordered <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>to sign, Mr Johnson
+indignantly refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. &quot;You
+refuse to sign?&quot; asked the Earl with ominous calmness. &quot;I do,&quot; was the
+emphatic reply. &quot;Then,&quot; continued his lordship, producing a pistol, &quot;I
+command you to kneel.&quot; Mr Johnson, now alarmed and awake to his danger,
+looked first at the stern, cold eyes bent on him, and then at the pistol
+pointed at his heart, and sank on one knee. &quot;Both knees!&quot; insisted the
+Earl. Mr Johnson subsided on the other knee, looking calmly at his
+would-be murderer, though beads of perspiration were standing on his
+forehead. A moment later a shot rang out in the silent room, and the
+steward fell to the floor mortally wounded. Laying down the smoking
+weapon, Lord Ferrers opened the door and called loudly for assistance.
+The horrified servants, who had heard the report, came, huddled and
+fearful, at his bidding. One he despatched for a doctor, and, with the
+assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom.
+When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside,
+trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's
+chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours
+at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on
+the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in
+agony at his house, a mile away.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As soon as it became known,&quot; to quote the account given
+     by an eye-witness in the <i>Gentleman's <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>Magazine</i>, &quot;that
+     Mr Johnson was really dead, the neighbours set about
+     seizing the murderer. A few persons, armed, set out for
+     Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard they saw the
+     Earl going towards the stable, as they imagined, to take
+     horse. He appeared to be just out of bed, his stockings
+     being down and his garters in his hand, having probably
+     taken the alarm immediately on coming out of his room,
+     and finding that Johnson had been removed. One
+     Springthorpe, advancing towards his lordship, presented a
+     pistol, and required him to surrender; but his lordship
+     putting his hand to his pocket, Springthrope imagined he
+     was feeling for a pistol, and stopped short, being
+     probably intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to escape
+     back into the house, where he fastened the doors and
+     stood on his defence.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The crowd of people who had come to apprehend him beset
+     the house, and their number increased very fast. In about
+     two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the garret window, and
+     called out: 'How is Johnson?' Springthorpe answered: 'He
+     is dead,' upon which his lordship insulted him, and
+     called him a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody
+     but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again assured that
+     he was dead, he desired that the people might be
+     dispersed, saying that he would surrender; yet, almost in
+     the same breath, he desired that the people might be let
+     in, and have some victuals and drink; but the issue was
+     that he went away again from the window, swearing that he
+     would not be taken.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The people, however, still continued near the house, and
+     two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one,
+     Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a
+     blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but
+     Curtis, so far from <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>being intimidated, marched boldly up
+     to him, and his lordship was so struck with the
+     determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that
+     he suffered him to seize him without making any
+     resistance. Yet the moment that he was in custody he
+     declared that he had killed a villain, and that he
+     gloried in the deed.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The tragedy is now hastening to its close. The assassin was kept in
+custody at Ashby until a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of &quot;Wilful
+Murder&quot; against him, when he was transferred to Leicester, and a
+fortnight later to London, making the journey in his own splendid
+equipage with six horses, and &quot;dressed like a jockey, in a close
+riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt.&quot; He was lodged in
+the Round Tower of the Tower of London, where, with a couple of warders
+at his elbow night and day, with sentries posted outside his door, and
+another on the drawbridge, he passed the last weeks of his doomed life.</p>
+
+<p>In mid-April he was duly tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of
+Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to
+prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
+dissentient voice, pronounced &quot;Guilty,&quot; and sentenced to be &quot;hanged by
+the neck until he was dead,&quot; when his body should be handed over to the
+surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed&mdash;pitiful salve to his
+pride&mdash;that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
+his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
+course.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
+other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
+o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey&mdash;the
+most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
+a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
+as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
+horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.</p>
+
+<p>Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
+of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
+procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
+spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
+journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
+of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
+<i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
+     silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
+     after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
+     perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
+     but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
+     then began in the following order: A very large body of
+     constables of the county of Middlesex, preceded by one of
+     the high constables; a party of horse grenadiers, and a
+     party of foot; Mr Sheriff Errington, in his chariot,
+     accompanied by his under-Sheriff, Mr Jackson; the landau
+     escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers and
+     foot; Mr Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which was
+     Under-Sheriff Mr <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>Nichols; a mourning-coach and six, with
+     some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
+     six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
+     from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
+     hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
+     whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
+     though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
+     saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
+     through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
+     death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
+     the King, begging that he might suffer where his
+     ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered&mdash;namely, on
+     Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
+     obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
+     part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
+     and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
+     the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
+     As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
+     particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
+     and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
+handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
+muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
+amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
+exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
+coin in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, not even a struggle <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>marking the moment when life left him.
+After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
+Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
+exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
+resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
+the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
+mad beyond all doubt, and &quot;knew not what he did&quot;; and in the eyes of all
+charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
+remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
+two centuries ago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" /><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h4>A GHOSTLY VISITANT</h4>
+
+
+<p>There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more
+tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting
+climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly
+visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this
+singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear
+and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson
+declared, &quot;I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I
+am willing to believe it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished
+poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of
+Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the
+county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his
+clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute
+age.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Of his morals,&quot; Sir Bernard Burke says, &quot;we may judge by
+     the fact of his having died the victim <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>of the coarsest
+     debauchery, and leaving behind him a diary more
+     disgustingly licentious than the pages of Aratine
+     himself.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had
+his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his <i>Diaboliad</i> &quot;to the
+worst man in His Majesty's Dominions,&quot; and when he penned those terrible
+lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Have I not tasted every villain's part?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Have I not broke a noble parent's heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do I not daily boast how I betrayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The tender widow and the virtuous maid?&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse
+lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until
+that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, &quot;I
+awoke, and behold I was a lord!&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;From the time when,&quot; Mr Stanley Makower writes,
+     &quot;although no more than a youth of nineteen, his
+     engagement to General Warburton's daughter had been
+     broken off on the discovery of the vicious life he had
+     led in his travels in France and Italy, he had been a
+     source of shame and trouble to his family.... To measure
+     the depths of Lyttelton's vices, it is necessary to read
+     his own letters, in which the literary style is as
+     perfect as the fearless admission of fault is
+     bewildering.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the
+brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>and graces of
+person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
+Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
+was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
+boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
+literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
+have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
+statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
+and high position in the arena of politics.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
+Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
+to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
+itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
+plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
+the pleasure he loved.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
+still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
+nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
+of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
+his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
+London home.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He found,&quot; to quote the words of his lordship's
+     <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>stepmother, &quot;Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
+     on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
+     cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
+     I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
+     two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
+     of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
+     Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
+     said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
+     their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
+     gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
+would be lying among the &quot;vulgar fellows&quot; who die in their youth at
+five-and-thirty!</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
+for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
+of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp&mdash;the speech of a man in
+the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the
+spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were
+followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely
+killing him.</p>
+
+<p>It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord
+Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful
+life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a
+fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party,
+including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host
+could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his
+depraved tastes, Lord <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination&mdash;a
+wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following
+incident&mdash;which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events
+that followed&mdash;took place.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord Lyttelton,&quot; to quote Sir Digby Neave, &quot;had come to
+     Pit Place in very precarious health, and was ordered not
+     to take any but the gentlest exercise. As he was walking
+     in the conservatory with Lady Affleck and the Misses
+     Affleck, a robin perched on an orange-tree close to them.
+     Lord Lyttelton attempted to catch it, but failing, and
+     being laughed at by the ladies, he said he would catch it
+     even if it was the death of him. He succeeded, but he put
+     himself in a great heat by the exertion. He gave the bird
+     to Lady Affleck, who walked about with it in her hand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so
+pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what
+was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the
+following startling statement:&mdash;&quot;Last night,&quot; he said, &quot;after I had been
+lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping
+of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about
+my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these
+strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in
+white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking
+towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>death, for I
+had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I
+enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three
+days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his
+guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer
+him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the
+despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction
+that he was a doomed man. &quot;You will see,&quot; was all the answer he would
+vouchsafe, &quot;I shall die at midnight on Saturday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to
+which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton
+did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the
+preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he
+was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day&mdash;a speech which
+should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He
+spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences,
+and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as
+full of confidence as of his subject.</p>
+
+<p>Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
+eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
+his hearers.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Cast your eyes for a moment,&quot; he declared, amid
+     impressive silence, &quot;on the state of the Empire.
+     <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
+     us as a commercial and maritime people&mdash;lost&mdash;for ever
+     lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
+     part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
+     her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
+     Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
+     hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
+     world for the preservation of freedom.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
+the &quot;voice of one crying in the wilderness,&quot; Lord Lyttelton felt that he
+had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
+laurels of the patriot and the orator.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
+James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, &quot;with the idleness of one who has
+never known what occupation means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
+you such fine compliments on your speech?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lyttelton smiled faintly. &quot;No, it was not of that I was thinking,&quot; he
+answered. &quot;Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
+majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
+minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
+lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
+of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
+thinking&mdash;of death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>story of Lyttelton's
+dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
+of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have,&quot; continued
+Lyttelton. &quot;But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
+nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
+thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
+true that I have not more than three days to live&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You take the thing too seriously,&quot; interposed his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Join me at Pit Place to-morrow,&quot; said Lyttelton. &quot;Then you shall see if
+I take it too seriously.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
+boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
+the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
+and exclaiming, &quot;I shall cheat the lady yet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
+at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
+high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
+&quot;Ah, Richard is himself again!&quot; But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
+hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
+silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
+but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
+to himself, <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
+passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
+retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
+knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
+house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, &quot;to
+deceive him into comfort.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
+curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
+mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
+fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
+to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
+that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
+straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
+to go&mdash;half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve&mdash;and nothing
+happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
+watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
+laughter&mdash;discordant, jubilant, defiant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find,&quot; he said to his
+valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. &quot;And
+now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer.&quot; The valet proceeded to
+mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
+at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. &quot;You dirty fellow!&quot; his
+lordship exclaimed. &quot;Go down and fetch a spoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the servant returned a few minutes later <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>he found, to his horror,
+his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
+He ran downstairs again, shouting, &quot;Help! Help! My lord is dying!&quot; The
+alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
+host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
+watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
+died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
+of three nights previously.</p>
+
+<p>Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
+statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
+would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
+to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
+say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
+former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
+question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
+remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
+exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
+three days before the event.</p>
+
+<p>Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
+was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
+Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
+often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
+his lordship had said: &quot;Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
+come and inform you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
+Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
+the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
+lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
+his house at Dartford, in Kent.</p>
+
+<p>When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's &quot;Illustrations of Human
+Life,&quot; he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
+twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
+in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
+to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
+Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
+the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
+chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
+occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
+Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find&mdash;his slippers.
+The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
+egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
+out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
+there, however.</p>
+
+<p>Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
+strictly searched. <i>The door was locked on the inside</i>, yet no Lord
+Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
+servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>arrived. The man answered:
+&quot;No, sir.&quot; &quot;You may depend upon it,&quot; said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
+mystified and out of humour, &quot;that he is somewhere in the house. He was
+here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
+tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
+the inn if he likes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
+Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
+too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
+following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
+night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
+midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
+ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
+swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
+&quot;he was not himself or a man again for three years.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" /><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h4>A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</h4>
+
+
+<p>There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
+recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
+Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
+while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
+bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
+this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
+dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
+or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
+least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.</p>
+
+<p>No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
+virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
+Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
+honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
+nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
+blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>conquest
+easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
+eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
+or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
+until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
+any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
+herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
+which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
+indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
+succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
+favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
+contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.</p>
+
+<p>Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
+he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
+Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
+were veritable prudes. &quot;I would lay a wager,&quot; he says, &quot;that if she had
+a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
+I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct.&quot; The only
+indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
+elastic conscience.</p>
+
+<p>As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
+honourable names, and also some of <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>the most despicable characters in
+the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
+capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
+the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
+seek a fresh conquest.</p>
+
+<p>To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
+Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
+for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
+for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
+her charms, ensnared him with her <i>beaut&eacute; de diable</i>, and then,
+satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
+watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
+quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment&mdash;the shedding
+of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
+join her at a <i>petit souper</i> at Spring Gardens, a favourite
+pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
+commenced when the <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> was interrupted by the appearance of
+none other than the &quot;invincible Jermyn,&quot; one of the handsomest and most
+notorious <i>rou&eacute;s</i> of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
+most ardent lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
+Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
+<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
+what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
+dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
+brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
+flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
+his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
+Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
+of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
+his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
+climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
+marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
+in its sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
+before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
+friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
+satisfaction&mdash;a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
+who vowed he would &quot;wipe the young puppy out.&quot; The duel took place in
+the &quot;Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall,&quot; and proved to be of
+as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
+desired.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
+     nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
+     Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>and the first
+     mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
+     Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
+     another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
+     could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
+     the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
+     But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
+     before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
+     Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
+     tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
+and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
+Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
+of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
+described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
+appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
+years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.</p>
+
+<p>The Court, as Pepys records, was &quot;much concerned in this fray&quot;; but it
+was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
+the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
+fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
+Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
+varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
+the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>and lower
+tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
+roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
+lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
+brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
+day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
+practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
+heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
+himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
+well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
+merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
+painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
+the &quot;Roi Soleil&quot; himself. &quot;Ah, Sire,&quot; said the Jester, as he struck an
+attitude before the trio of canvases, &quot;I knew that our Lord was
+crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
+jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
+enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
+have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
+a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
+as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
+the most foul-mouthed, <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>evil-living man in London, whose very contact
+was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
+inveigled into his company and that of the &quot;jolly blades,&quot; who were his
+boon companions; &quot;but Lord!&quot; the diarist says ingenuously, &quot;their talk
+did make my heart ache!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a <i>liaison</i> astonished even
+those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
+passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
+his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
+in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over &quot;his lady's
+most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
+as much as he knew himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
+of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
+he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
+from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
+most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
+was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
+man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
+libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
+any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
+with the bitterest invectives; &quot;painted a frightful picture of her
+conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
+into defects.&quot; The <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
+vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
+begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
+him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
+brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.</p>
+
+<p>But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
+and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
+furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
+with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
+in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
+limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
+Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
+screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
+duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
+tells the following story:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
+Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
+Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
+Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
+mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
+and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
+and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
+through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>all along up one of his
+armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
+measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
+Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
+about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
+mistress.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
+lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
+sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
+the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
+transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
+Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
+betrayal.</p>
+
+<p>From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
+his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
+of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
+his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
+and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
+crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
+execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
+the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
+storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
+flaunted their amour in the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the Countess's husband had been <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>removed from their path the
+shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
+must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
+and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
+opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
+to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
+enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
+Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
+distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
+witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
+who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
+     out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
+     from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
+     Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
+     from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
+     murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
+     he was thought dead.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
+Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
+himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
+his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
+of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
+retired into the obscurity in which alone <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>he could feel safe from such
+a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
+unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
+favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
+of their lust and their triumphs.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
+standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
+almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
+duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
+course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
+effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
+revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot;
+himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
+     revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
+     than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
+     mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
+     Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
+alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
+he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
+the partner of his guilt were ordered <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>to separate; and for this purpose
+to enter into security to the King in the sum of &pound;10,000 apiece. Thus
+ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
+Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
+his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
+friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There reft of health, of fortune, friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
+marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
+England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
+hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
+haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
+penitence.</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
+of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
+across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
+shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
+Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
+proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
+of wedding bells &quot;Messalina's&quot; history practically ended as far as the
+world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
+life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>her passion had now
+died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
+political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
+as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
+years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
+herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
+young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
+of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
+if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
+man, whom William III. had called &quot;the soul of honour,&quot; stood branded to
+the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
+to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
+of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
+will, in the service of the devil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" /><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h4>A PROFLIGATE PRINCE</h4>
+
+
+<p>Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
+Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
+abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of &quot;revered memory,&quot; in
+spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
+Each brother had his amours&mdash;many of them highly discreditable; but for
+unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
+unenviable palm.</p>
+
+<p>Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
+solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
+placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
+soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
+left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
+was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
+whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
+aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>woman was ever wooed
+with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My dear Angel,&quot; he once wrote to her, &quot;I got to bed
+     about ten. I then prayed for you, my dearest love, kissed
+     your dearest little hair, and lay down and dreamt of you,
+     had you ten thousand times in my arms, kissing you and
+     telling you how much I loved and adored you, and you
+     seemed pleased.... I have your heart, and it is warm at
+     my breast. I hope mine feels as easy to you. Thou joy of
+     my life, adieu!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another letter he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Oh, my dearest soul ... your dear heart is so safe with
+     me and feels every motion mine does. How happy will that
+     day be to me that brings you back! I shall be unable to
+     speak for joy. My dearest soul, I send you ten thousand
+     kisses.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>So irrepressible was his passion that it burst the bounds of prose, and
+gushed forth in verses such as this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Hear, solemn Jove, and, conscious Venus, hear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thou, bright maid, believe me while I swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No time, no change, no future flame shall move<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The well-placed basis of my lasting love.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When the fair and frail Countess, in a fit of alarm, took refuge at
+Eaton Hall, her Royal lover followed her in disguise, installed himself
+at a neighbouring inn, and continued his intrigue under the very nose of
+her jealous husband, who at last was driven to sue for divorce. He won
+an easy verdict, and with it <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>&pound;10,000 damages&mdash;a bill which George III.
+himself had ultimately to pay. Within a few months the incorrigible Duke
+had another &quot;dearest little angel&quot; in his toils, and pursued his
+gallantries without a thought of the Countess he had left to her shame.</p>
+
+<p>Such was this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of
+his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771,
+at Brighton&mdash;a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded
+her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for fresh conquests.</p>
+
+<p>Anne Luttrell, as the widow had been known in her maiden days, was one
+of the three lovely daughters of Lord Irnham, in later years Earl of
+Carhampton, and a member of a family noted for the beauty of its women,
+and the wild, lawless living of its men. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell,
+was the most reckless swashbuckler and the deadliest duellist of his
+time&mdash;a man whose morals were as low as his temper and courage were
+high.</p>
+
+<p>At seventeen Anne had become the wife of Christopher Horton, a
+hard-drinking, fast-living Derbyshire squire, who left her a widow at
+twenty-two, in the prime of her beauty, and eager, as soon as decency
+permitted, to enter the matrimonial lists again.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Horace Walpole, who had a keen eye for female charms,
+describes her as</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;extremely pretty, very well-made, with the most amorous
+     eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette
+     beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>and completely
+     mistress of all her passions and projects. Indeed,
+     eyelashes three-quarters of a yard shorter would have
+     served to conquer such a head as she has turned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another portrait Walpole says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;There was something so bewitching in her languishing
+     eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she
+     pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and
+     yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through
+     it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced
+     divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric
+     kind.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious
+young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at
+Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit
+of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General
+Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his
+attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at
+the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to
+her grave plain &quot;Mrs Smith&quot; when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to
+boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the
+Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside
+when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this
+she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>favours&mdash;after a
+period of coquetry and coy reluctance&mdash;were at his disposal; but the
+price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring&mdash;nothing less. And such was
+the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke&mdash;flinging scruples and
+fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, and
+were there made man and wife. The widow had caught her Prince and meant
+the world to know she was a Princess.</p>
+
+<p>For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing
+his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager
+Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more. But his Duchess
+was inexorable. She declined to play any longer the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of &quot;virtuous
+mistress&quot; in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of
+the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the
+throne.</p>
+
+<p>Between his wife's tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the
+Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his
+exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to
+make the plunge&mdash;to break the news to the King. Had he but known how
+inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back
+to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by
+trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic
+the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged
+with danger and unrest. And when the quaking Duke presented himself
+before his brother <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>as he was moodily walking in his palace garden,
+George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of
+worries.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the King read the ill-spelled, clumsily-worded note which
+the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
+flame. &quot;You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!&quot; he shouted, purple in
+face and hoarse with passion. &quot;I tell you that woman shall never be a
+Royal Duchess&mdash;she shall never be anything.&quot; &quot;What must I do, then?&quot;
+gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. &quot;Go abroad until I
+can decide what to do,&quot; thundered the King, waving his brother
+imperiously away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
+upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
+this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
+would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her&mdash;before
+her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
+Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
+Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
+world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
+smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
+through his Chamberlain that &quot;there was no road between Cumberland House
+and Windsor Castle&mdash;that the Castle doors would be closed against any
+who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
+paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
+a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
+perfection her new and exalted <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of Princess. &quot;No woman of her
+time,&quot; says Lord Hervey, &quot;performed the honours of her drawing-room with
+such grace, affability, and dignity.&quot; And, in spite of George's frowns,
+the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
+Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
+was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in
+beauty, was received with open arms at the Castle, and drew to her court
+all the greatest in the land.</p>
+
+<p>She even made overtures to her rival and enemy, and proposed that they
+should appear together in the same box at the opera&mdash;an overture to
+which the Duchess of Gloucester retorted contemptuously: &quot;Never! I would
+not smell at the same nosegay with her in public!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By sheer effrontery Duchess Anne at last forced her way into the Royal
+Court and public recognition as a member of George's family; and the
+fact that both the King and the Queen snubbed her mercilessly for her
+pains, detracted little from her triumph and gratification. What her
+Grace of Gloucester had won by submission and ingratiating arts, she had
+won by brazen defiance and importunity. But the goal, though so
+differently reached, was the same. Her triumph was complete.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>To her last day, however, she never forgave the King and Queen. While
+they had smiled on the sempstress's daughter, who had been guilty of
+precisely the same offence as herself&mdash;that of wedding a Royal Prince
+without the King's sanction&mdash;they had scorned her, a Luttrell, the
+daughter of a noble house; and terrible was the revenge she took. She
+deliberately set herself to debase the Prince of Wales&mdash;a youth whose
+natural tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him
+in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his
+passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he
+himself was a past-master&mdash;drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious
+profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would
+have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the
+hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the
+Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his Consort for their slights;
+and her shameless reward was when she witnessed their grief at the moral
+degradation of their eldest son.</p>
+
+<p>But even in the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell
+was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the
+social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was
+empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and
+flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family
+circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome
+stranger; and such homage as <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>she received was conceded to her rank and
+not to herself. &quot;Of all princesses,&quot; she once wrote to a friend, &quot;I
+really think I am the most miserable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her husband died at the age of forty-five, worn out with excesses,
+regretted by none, execrated by many. Of his father it had been written
+by way of epitaph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;He was alive and is dead,<br /></span>
+<span>And, as it is only Fred,<br /></span>
+<span>Why, there's no more to be said.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand,
+would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of
+years&mdash;unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in
+name&mdash;harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of
+coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose
+failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the
+Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of Elizabeth&mdash;one of the &quot;three beautiful Luttrells&quot;&mdash;is among
+the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister
+died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and
+actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her
+liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower
+depths&mdash;was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the
+streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set
+her free from her fetters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" /><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
+been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
+into a Countess, and live in history as one of the &quot;most gorgeous&quot;
+figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
+certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
+and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
+one of his most amiable characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish squire was a proud man&mdash;proud of his pretty and shiftless
+wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
+his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
+husbands&mdash;one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
+proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
+he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
+Marguerite, the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; of a good-looking family, and with no
+gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
+waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
+though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
+neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
+and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
+Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as &quot;Buck Power&quot; and
+&quot;Shiver-the-Frills&quot;; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
+Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
+a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
+wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
+his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
+life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
+of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
+day to dazzle the world as the &quot;most gorgeous Lady Blessington.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As with many another &quot;ugly ducking&quot; Marguerite Power's beauty was only
+dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
+long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
+flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
+other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
+had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
+charm&mdash;Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
+stationed at Clonmel. <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
+and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
+encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
+offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
+wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
+moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
+showed the utmost aversion. &quot;I hate him,&quot; she protested in tears to her
+father, who supported his suit; &quot;and I would rather die a hundred times
+than marry him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But &quot;Beau Power&quot; was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
+child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
+family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
+indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
+biggest scoundrel in Tipperary&mdash;a &quot;maiden tribute&quot; to a lover's lust and
+a father's ambition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-098-t.jpg" alt="MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON" title="MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
+followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
+young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
+Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
+from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
+days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
+station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
+no means <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>reluctant to &quot;be rid of the brat&quot; by sending her back to her
+home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
+almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
+left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
+the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
+to shield and care for her.</p>
+
+<p>How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
+must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
+at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
+England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
+though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
+scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
+We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
+struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
+in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
+her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she received at her house only those whose age and
+     character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
+     others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
+     could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
+     Blessington, then a widower.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
+charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
+at its <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
+as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
+during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
+this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
+ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
+and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy&mdash;or, as
+some say, in a drunken quarrel&mdash;had flung himself to his death through a
+window of his gaol.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
+squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
+would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
+widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
+of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
+prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The &quot;ugly
+duckling&quot; had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
+happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
+radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
+alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
+landlords, with a rent-roll of &pound;30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
+extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
+for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>gorgeous
+furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
+wife seems to have shared.</p>
+
+<p>When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
+revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of &quot;crimson Genoa
+silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
+equal richness.&quot; But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
+childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
+her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
+months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
+<i>salon</i> all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
+her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
+his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
+worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
+of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
+yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
+and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
+retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
+have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
+d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
+Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
+charming a cavalier as this &quot;Admirable Crichton&quot; of Georgian days.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Count d'Orsay,&quot; says Charles James Mathews, the famous<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>
+     comedian, who knew him well, &quot;was the beau-ideal of manly
+     dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
+     conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
+     handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
+     degree; highly educated, and of great literary
+     acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
+     mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
+     conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
+     instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
+     swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
+     horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
+Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
+its tragic close.</p>
+
+<p>From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
+with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
+spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
+sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
+From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
+ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
+received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
+lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, &quot;fit for any
+queen.&quot; And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
+pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>and its colonnade, &quot;supporting a terrace covered with flowers&quot;; its
+marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
+long gallery, &quot;filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On the top of the gallery,&quot; she says, &quot;is a terrace, at
+     the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
+     and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
+     charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
+     gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
+     grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
+     tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
+     delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
+     rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
+     architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
+     oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
+     consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
+     the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
+     splendour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
+ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
+indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
+splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
+years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
+d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
+galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
+Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
+nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
+her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
+her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
+daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
+few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
+protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
+London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
+for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
+Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
+even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
+thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.</p>
+
+<p>The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
+indeed, like a passage from the &quot;Arabian Nights.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The bed,&quot; she says, &quot;which is silvered instead of gilt,
+     rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
+     exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
+     alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
+     living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
+     with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
+     and from the columns that support the frieze of the
+     recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
+     hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
+     the room opposite the fireplace&mdash;pale blue carpets,
+     silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Her bath was of white marble; her <i>salle de bain</i> was draped with white
+muslin trimmed with lace, and <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
+Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
+lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
+keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
+to the gilt consoles, marble-topped <i>chiffoni&egrave;res</i>, and <i>fauteuils</i>
+&quot;richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
+curtains.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
+lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
+before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
+in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
+years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
+of his &pound;30,000 a year was an annual income of &pound;600, which went to his
+illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of &pound;2,000 a year
+was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
+future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
+for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
+contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
+with which he had always surrounded her.</p>
+
+<p>It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
+solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
+which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
+found a small mine of welcome gold. Her &quot;Books of Beauty&quot; and &quot;Gems of
+Beauty&quot; were an instantaneous success&mdash;they made a strong appeal to <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>the
+flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
+Her &quot;Conversations with Byron,&quot; a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
+fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
+glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
+travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.</p>
+
+<p>In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
+jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
+so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
+<i>fauteuil</i> of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
+and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
+her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
+and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
+gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
+tassel, and his shower of ringlets.</p>
+
+<p>But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
+lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
+magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
+she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
+well advanced in the forties&mdash;and this she found at Gore House, in
+Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
+and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
+spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
+within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
+who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
+hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
+finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
+commands to a Court-ball.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Gore House,&quot; said Brougham, &quot;one is sure to meet some of the most
+interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
+moment.&quot; Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
+men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
+without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
+Smith and Douglas Jerrold&mdash;so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
+hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
+hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
+greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
+or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
+than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
+never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
+dearly-loved and devoted son.</p>
+
+<p>Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below &pound;4,000 a year, it
+was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
+this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
+reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
+D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
+<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt&mdash;some of it, at least,
+incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House <i>m&eacute;nage</i>&mdash;until he found
+himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding &pound;100,000,
+and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
+a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
+rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
+smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
+avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his &quot;pound of
+flesh.&quot; The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
+resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
+safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
+had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
+magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks later, all &quot;the costly and elegant effects of the Right
+Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent&quot; were
+put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
+through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous&mdash;among
+them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
+goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
+effects brought absurdly low prices, realised &pound;12,000&mdash;a smaller sum
+probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>no doubt broke Lady
+Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
+auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
+grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, &quot;She
+was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother&mdash;a true, loving mother to me.&quot;
+Three years later this &quot;paragon of all the perfections&quot; followed the
+Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
+designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
+graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" /><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h4>A QUEEN OF COQUETTES</h4>
+
+
+<p>The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
+calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
+Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
+Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
+crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
+of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
+lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
+sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
+boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-110-t.jpg" alt="SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH" title="SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH" />
+</div>
+
+<p>And it was on this very day, as the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot; was riding under
+the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
+clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
+twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
+opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
+little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
+birthday could have been more auspicious <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>than this which saw the
+restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
+splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
+of the Sandridge baby.</p>
+
+<p>If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
+live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
+counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
+Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
+come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
+country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
+management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
+man in the moon.</p>
+
+<p>His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
+Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
+when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
+accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
+a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
+John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
+and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
+Pole.</p>
+
+<p>Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
+little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
+loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
+as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
+when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
+<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
+splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
+her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
+speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
+notes &quot;containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
+promises,&quot; slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
+but the disdainful beauty dropped the <i>billets-doux</i> on the floor for
+any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
+was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.</p>
+
+<p>James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
+gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
+in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
+after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
+hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
+raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
+Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
+pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
+sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
+of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.</p>
+
+<p>While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
+madcap at the Court of <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
+rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
+toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
+lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
+was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
+innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
+sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
+where a very different life awaited her.</p>
+
+<p>She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
+the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
+glimpse of it. Her more modest <i>r&ocirc;le</i> was to be playfellow and companion
+of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne&mdash;a shy, backward child, a
+few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
+eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
+education to her.</p>
+
+<p>To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
+Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
+country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
+passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
+romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
+between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
+playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.</p>
+
+<p>It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>blossomed rapidly into
+young womanhood&mdash;little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
+infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character&mdash;an
+imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
+inflexible will within the circle of the Court.</p>
+
+<p>While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
+John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
+closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
+ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
+made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
+Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
+handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
+in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
+ten years' superiority in age.</p>
+
+<p>John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
+one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
+aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
+who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
+hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
+of his lands and a fine of &pound;4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
+own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
+a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
+Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
+John; and <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
+daughter Arabella.</p>
+
+<p>From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
+Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
+handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
+once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
+of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
+person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
+many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
+might not have been his without the asking.</p>
+
+<p>Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
+the King's &quot;light o' love,&quot; and had borne him three sons, all
+Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
+what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
+net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
+love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
+conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
+trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
+singular spectacle&mdash;that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
+and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
+an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
+lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
+inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>One cannot blame the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot; for deciding that such activities
+were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
+packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
+before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of &pound;5,000
+with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, &quot;he immediately bought an
+annuity of &pound;500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
+foundation of his subsequent fortune.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
+to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
+proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
+under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
+under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
+of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
+who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
+outpost, exclaimed, &quot;I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
+handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
+that the officer commanded who has lost it.&quot; And the &quot;handsome
+Englishman&quot; promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
+of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
+Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
+thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
+had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>at least saved
+the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
+Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
+as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
+queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
+at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
+towers over meaner flowers. And&mdash;such are the strange ways of love&mdash;from
+that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
+power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
+bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
+graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
+life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic&mdash;never
+has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.</p>
+
+<p>But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man&mdash;even by a
+lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
+romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
+battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
+and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
+She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
+Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
+man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
+amorous advances she presented a <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>smiling and inscrutable front; his
+ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.</p>
+
+<p>Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
+have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
+years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
+indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
+soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
+handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
+recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
+and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
+for at least a smile or a look of kindness.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Show me,&quot; he writes, &quot;that, at least, you are not quite
+     indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
+     anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
+     conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
+     ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
+     know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
+is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
+him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is &quot;extreme ill with the
+headache,&quot; and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
+vows, in his pain,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
+     my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
+     could be to me one perpetual torment. If the <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>Duchess,&quot;
+     he adds, &quot;sees company I hope you will be there; but if
+     she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
+     chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
+     drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
+     shall come.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At last the iceberg thaws a little&mdash;though it is only to charge him with
+unkindness! She assumes the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of virtue; and, with a woman's
+capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
+she herself has visited on him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Your not writing to me,&quot; she says, &quot;made me very uneasy,
+     for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
+     am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
+her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
+word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses <i>him</i> of
+unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
+temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;That would hinder you,&quot; she says, with delicious, if
+     cruel satire, &quot;from seeing the play, which I fear would
+     be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
+     your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
+     until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
+     without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
+     come to me without any prejudice to your health.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
+if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
+take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
+of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.</p>
+
+<p>But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
+was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
+on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
+for his ambitious purpose&mdash;one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
+friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
+unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
+no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
+alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
+love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
+penniless beauty.</p>
+
+<p>For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
+though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
+temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
+it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
+marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
+greatness!</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
+flew into a towering rage. &quot;Marry a shocking creature for money!&quot; she
+raved; &quot;and this was what all his passionate protestations of <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>love
+amounted to!&quot; Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
+wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As for seeing you,&quot; she wrote, &quot;I am resolved I never
+     will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
+     for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
+     order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
+     surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
+     creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
+     shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
+     and give God thanks, though too late I see my error.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
+for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
+shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
+divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
+man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
+Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
+done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
+battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
+negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
+solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
+came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.</p>
+
+<p>But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
+did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life&mdash;that he
+<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I vow to God,&quot; he wrote, &quot;you do so entirely possess my
+     thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
+     your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
+     that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
+     despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
+     you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
+     breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
+     you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
+     will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
+     adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
+     how I may deserve, though not have, your love.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
+seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
+of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
+had merely written it to amuse himself, and to &quot;make her think that he
+had an affection for her when she was assured he had none.&quot; At last,
+however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
+him that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
+     so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
+     ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
+     be made ridiculous to the world.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
+wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>
+     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
+     better pleased with your happiness than my own,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>she answered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
+     you say you have, you would find out some way to make
+     yourself happy&mdash;it is in your power. Therefore press me
+     no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
+     approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
+     consider who was the cause of it.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
+veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these&mdash;&quot;you
+would find out some way to make yourself happy&mdash;<i>it is in your power</i>.&quot;
+And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
+following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
+advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
+by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
+his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
+and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
+answering that she did it &quot;that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
+hearing from you more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
+to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
+in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>Court, and brought
+her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
+actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
+     she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
+     would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
+     which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
+     my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
+     her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
+     she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
+     it, and not use me thus like a footman.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
+innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
+deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
+poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
+     enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
+     should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
+     However,&quot; she continued, &quot;if you can be so well contented
+     never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
+     will believe you, though I have not other people.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
+contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
+merciless manner she charges him with &quot;being content never to see her.&quot;
+Although she had never <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
+for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
+less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
+or lover so patient under so much provocation?</p>
+
+<p>She further accused him of laughing at her when he was &quot;at the Duke's
+side,&quot; to which he retorted &quot;I was so far from that, that had it not
+been for shame I could have cried.&quot; She even swore that it was he who
+avoided <i>her</i>; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
+shadow everywhere, and had even &quot;made his chair follow him, because I
+would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
+forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
+strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
+her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
+when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
+shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
+first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
+Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
+portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
+lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
+could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
+to <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
+re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
+wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" /><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER</h4>
+
+
+<p>When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
+eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a &quot;quiverful&quot; of
+offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
+annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
+so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
+in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
+could sully her.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
+Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
+preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
+won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
+rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
+was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
+in danger.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
+daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
+unscrupulous <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
+Mitchelstown nursery&mdash;one of a dozen brothers and sisters&mdash;a wholesome,
+merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
+the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
+luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
+Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
+thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
+Mary's senior&mdash;indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
+married man&mdash;had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
+children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
+&quot;big playfellow&quot; when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
+a young man of remarkable physical gifts&mdash;tall, of splendid figure, and
+strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
+of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
+young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
+He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
+dances&mdash;in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
+parents began to grow alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
+weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
+blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>note to the
+effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
+friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
+missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
+bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
+overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
+ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
+soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
+on her fate.</p>
+
+<p>From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
+description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
+handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
+In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
+large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
+Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
+no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
+deed&mdash;a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
+family of the girl he had abducted.</p>
+
+<p>When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
+infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
+from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
+deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
+restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
+this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
+runaway than her abductor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
+until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
+to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
+at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
+fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
+young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
+girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
+the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be my daughter!&quot; exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. &quot;But who is the
+gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can.&quot; &quot;He is tall and
+handsome&mdash;&mdash;&quot; began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
+walked Fitzgerald himself. &quot;Why,&quot; exclaimed the servant, as with
+startled eyes she looked at the intruder, &quot;that's the very gentleman who
+visits the lady!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
+turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
+against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
+boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
+within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
+on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
+demanded a meeting on the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
+Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
+<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
+surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
+dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
+placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
+man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
+remained uninjured.</p>
+
+<p>After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
+between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
+second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: &quot;You are a &mdash;&mdash; villain, and
+I will not hear a word you have to offer!&quot; Once more the duellists took
+up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
+effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
+combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
+next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
+and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
+lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
+at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
+Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
+vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
+Mary into his power.</p>
+
+<p>Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
+enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
+his <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
+literally &quot;bargained without his host,&quot; who chanced to be an old trusted
+retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
+suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
+day and walked abroad at night.</p>
+
+<p>No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
+been strange &quot;goings-on&quot; lately; and the least he could do was to
+communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
+&quot;up to some mischief.&quot; His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
+back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
+suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
+inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
+of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
+from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
+Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
+Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
+spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
+newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
+room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
+he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
+voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
+and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
+oaths, they broke in the door&mdash;and found themselves face to face with a
+brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
+stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
+at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
+combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
+play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
+last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
+head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
+fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
+daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
+distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
+But wherever it travelled&mdash;from the shebeens of Connemara to the
+coffee-houses of Cheapside&mdash;it carried with it a wave of compassion for
+the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
+confessed to a friend: &quot;God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
+it had been done by some other hand than mine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
+murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
+salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
+Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>Before he could be
+brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
+the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
+rank&mdash;including that of trial by his Peers.</p>
+
+<p>In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
+took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
+appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
+Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
+small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
+procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
+of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
+Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded &quot;Not Guilty,&quot; and claimed to be tried
+&quot;by God and my Peers.&quot; But the trial, which drew thousands to
+Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that &quot;all manner of
+persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,&quot;
+no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
+One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, &quot;Not Guilty, upon my
+honour&quot;; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
+congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.</p>
+
+<p>And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
+this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
+important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
+subsided; and with this object she was sent, under <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>an assumed name, to
+join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
+her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
+she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
+is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
+made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
+many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
+her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
+names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
+pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
+the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.</p>
+
+<p>Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
+produced, she exclaimed: &quot;I, myself, am the person for whom you express
+such sorrow.&quot; Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: &quot;And now,
+I suppose, you will drive me from your home.&quot; But such was not to be
+Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
+lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
+complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
+became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
+no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
+had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" /><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h4>A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
+better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
+Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
+raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.</p>
+
+<p>From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
+in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
+on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
+succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
+years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
+business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
+Everything he touched seemed to &quot;turn to gold&quot;; before he had reached
+middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as &quot;Rich Spencer&quot;; and
+by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
+in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
+which a century earlier Stow had described as &quot;very <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>large and
+beautiful, and the highest at that time in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
+had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
+stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
+When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
+Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
+which, to quote Sir Thomas More, &quot;he lodged himself, and little by
+little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
+crowded and King Henry's left desolate&quot;; and it was in one of its
+magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
+the Crown of England.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
+has immortalised it in &quot;Richard III.&quot;; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
+than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
+there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
+when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
+as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
+Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
+the historic and splendid home in which &quot;Rich Spencer&quot; dispensed
+hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
+his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
+leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>Canonbury
+Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
+It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
+event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
+the news of &quot;Rich Spencer's&quot; wealth had travelled as far as the
+Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
+who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
+to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
+failed is told by Papillon.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Rich men,&quot; says this chronicler, &quot;are commonly the prey
+     of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
+     spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
+     is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
+     Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
+     twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
+     which, if he had done, &pound;50,000 ransom had not redeemed
+     him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
+     musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
+     left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
+     with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
+     hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
+     came always to his house. But by the providence of God&mdash;I
+     have this from a private record&mdash;Sir John, upon some
+     extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
+     night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
+     fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
+     to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
+     This,&quot; adds Papillon, &quot;was a desperate attempt.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
+still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
+she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
+of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
+she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
+city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
+window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
+her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had &quot;the sweetest face I have seen
+in my City of London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
+suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
+inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
+England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
+coronet laid at her feet before she had well left her school-books. But
+to all these offers, dazzling enough to a merchant's daughter, Elizabeth
+turned a deaf, if dainty ear. &quot;It is not me they want,&quot; she would
+laughingly say, &quot;but my father's money. I shall live and die, like the
+good Queen, my namesake, a maid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so has many another much-sought maiden said in the pride of an
+untouched heart; but to them as to her the &quot;Prince Charming,&quot; before
+whom all her defences crumble, comes at last. In Elizabeth Spencer's
+case, the conquering prince was William, second Lord Compton, one of the
+handsomest, most <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>accomplished and fascinating young men in London. In
+person, as in position, he was alike unimpeachable&mdash;an ideal suitor to
+win even the richest heiress in England; and it is little wonder that
+the heart of the tradesman's daughter began to flutter, and her pretty
+cheeks to flame when this gallant, whose conquests at the Royal Court
+itself were notorious, began to pay marked homage to her charms.</p>
+
+<p>That his reputation in the field of love was none of the best, that he
+was as prodigal as he was poor, mattered little to her&mdash;probably such
+defects made him all the more romantic in her eyes, and his attentions
+all the more welcome. To Sir John, however, who was even more jealous of
+his treasure than of all his gold, the young lord's reputation and,
+above all, his poverty were fatal flaws in any would-be son-in-law of
+his. As soon as he realised the danger he put every obstacle in the way
+of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of
+locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover.
+&quot;If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank,&quot; he told him in
+no ambiguous terms; &quot;and if your fortune matched your family, I should
+have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly,
+I would rather see my girl dead than wedded to such as you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To his daughter's tears and pleading he was equally obdurate. She might
+ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were
+half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he
+encouraged such folly as this. But <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>Spencer's daughter, when she found
+conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong
+as her father's; she told him to his face that with or without his
+sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton. &quot;I will marry him,&quot; she
+declared with flushed face and panting breast, &quot;even if you make me a
+beggar.&quot; &quot;And that, madam,&quot; the defied and furious father retorted, &quot;I
+can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord
+Compton's wife ever have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John's anger;
+and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least,
+whatever others might follow, was at an end. But how little he knew his
+daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.</p>
+
+<p>One day, a few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker,
+carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he
+soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the
+garden, and giving him a respectful &quot;good day.&quot; &quot;A civil young man,&quot; Sir
+John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; &quot;his face seems
+somehow familiar to me.&quot; And well might it be familiar; for the baker
+who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace,
+Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the
+merchant's only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this
+daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her
+parent.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before Sir John's disillusionment <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>came. His daughter
+was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her
+whereabouts. Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury
+against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had
+outwitted him. Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of
+the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to
+fail in execution. Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again&mdash;now
+becomingly penitent&mdash;she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife
+of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>To &quot;Rich Spencer&quot; the blow was crushing, humiliating. It was bad enough
+to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter;
+but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such
+undesirable hands was bitter beyond words. His home and his heart were
+alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would
+never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his
+should ever go into the Compton coffers.</p>
+
+<p>In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full
+year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend,
+at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he
+remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was
+prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his
+bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have summoned you, Sir John,&quot; Her Majesty said, &quot;to ask a great
+favour of you. I do not often <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>stoop, as you know, to beg a favour of
+any man; nor should I now, did I not know that I have no more dutiful
+subject than yourself, and that to ask of you is to receive. I am
+interested in two young people who have had the misfortune to marry
+against the wishes of the lady's father, and who have thus forfeited his
+favour. And I wish you to give me and the youthful couple pleasure by
+taking his place and standing sponsor to their first child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To such a request made by his Sovereign Sir John could but give a
+delighted consent. He would do much more than this, he vowed, to give
+her a moment's gratification; and he not only attended the baptismal
+ceremony, but on the suggestion of the Queen, who was also present,
+allowed the child to bear his own Christian name. &quot;More than this, your
+Majesty,&quot; he declared, &quot;as I have now no child of my own, I will gladly
+adopt this infant as my heir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your goodness of heart, Sir John,&quot; Her Majesty answered, beaming with
+pleasure, &quot;shall not go unrewarded; for the child you have now taken to
+your heart and made inheritor of your wealth is indeed of your own flesh
+and blood&mdash;the first-born son of your daughter, and my friend, Elizabeth
+Compton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the dramatic plight into which &quot;Rich Spencer's&quot; loyalty and
+generosity had led him. He had innocently pledged himself to adopt as
+his heir, the son of the daughter he had disowned for ever. &quot;And now,
+Sir John,&quot; continued the Queen, &quot;that you have conceded so much to make
+me happy, will you not go one step farther and take your wilful and
+<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>penitent daughter to your heart again?&quot; What could the poor merchant do
+in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour
+what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older
+he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with
+her graceless husband.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When, full of years, Sir John died in 1609, his obsequies were worthy of
+his wealth and fame. He was followed to his grave in St Helen's Church
+by a thousand mourners, clad in black gowns; and three hundred and
+twenty poor men, we are told, &quot;had each a basket given them, containing
+a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle
+of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a
+black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen points, two red herrings, four
+white herrings, six sprats and two eggs&quot;&mdash;a quaint and lavish symbol of
+his charity when alive.</p>
+
+<p>So enormous was the fortune he left, that it is said Lord Compton, on
+hearing its amount (&pound;800,000) &quot;became distracted, and so continued for a
+considerable length of time, either through the vehement apprehension of
+joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take up
+and dispense of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That my Lady Compton, who a few years after her father's death blossomed
+into a Countess, proved a devoted and dutiful wife to her lord there is
+no reason to doubt; but that she had an adequate idea of her own
+importance and a determination to have her share of her father's
+money-bags is shown by the <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>following letter, which is sufficiently
+remarkable to bear quotation in full.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My sweet life,&mdash;Now that I have declared to you my mind
+     for the settling of your estate, I suppose that it were
+     best for me to bethink what allowance were best for me;
+     for, considering what care I have ever had of your
+     estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those which
+     both by the laws of God, nature, and civil policy, wit,
+     religion, government, and honesty, you, my dear, are
+     bound to, I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your
+     most kind and loving wife, the sum of one thousand pounds
+     per an., quarterly to be paid.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, I would, besides that allowance for my apparel,
+     have six hundred pounds added yearly for the performance
+     of charitable works; these I would not neither be
+     accountable for. Also, I will have three horses for my
+     own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow; none
+     lend but I, none borrow but you. Also, I would have two
+     gentlewomen, lest one should be sick; also, believe that
+     it would be an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand
+     mumping alone, when God has blest their Lord and Lady
+     with a great estate. Also, when I ride hunting or
+     hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have
+     them attending, so for each of those said women I must
+     have a horse. Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen,
+     and will have two coaches; one lined with velvet to
+     myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my
+     women lined with sweet cloth, orelaid with gold; the
+     other with scarlet, and laced with watchet lace and
+     silver, with four good horses. Also, I will have two
+     coachmen, one for myself, the other for my women. Also,
+     whenever I travel, I will be allowed not only <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>carroches
+     and spare horses for me and my women, but such carriages
+     as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my
+     things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor
+     theirs with washmaids.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, laundresses, when I travel; I will have them sent
+     away with the carriages to see all safe, and the
+     chambermaids shall go before with the grooms, that the
+     chambers may be ready, sweet, and clean.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, for that it is indecent for me to croud myself
+     with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him have
+     a convenient horse to attend me either in city or
+     country; and I must have four footmen; and my desire is
+     that you will defray the charges for me.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;And for myself, besides my yerely allowance, I would
+     have twenty gowns apparel, six of them excellent good
+     ones, eight of them for the country, and six others of
+     them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my
+     purse two thousand and two hundred pounds, and so you to
+     pay my debts. Also, I would have eight thousand pounds to
+     buy me jewels, and six thousand pounds for a pearl chain.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Now seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you,
+     I pray you to find my children apparel, and their
+     schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their
+     wages.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, I will have all my houses furnished, and all my
+     lodging-chambers to be suited with all such furniture as
+     is fit, as beds, stools, chairs, cushions, carpets,
+     silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings,
+     etc.; and so for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I
+     will have them delicately furnished with hangings, couch,
+     canopy, cushions, carpets, etc.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>Also, my desire is that you would pay your debts, build
+     up Ashby House and purchase lands and lend no money (as
+     you love God) to the Lord Chamberlain, which would have
+     all, perhaps your life from you; remember his son, my
+     Lord Wildan, what entertainments he gave me when you were
+     at the Tilt-yard. If you were dead, he said, he would be
+     a husband, a father, a brother, and said he would marry
+     me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little
+     wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely; also, he fed
+     me with untruths concerning the Charter-House; but that
+     is the least; he wished me much harm; you know how. God
+     keep you and me from him, and such as he is.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;So now I have declared to you my mind, what I would
+     have, and what I would not have; I pray you, when you be
+     Earl, to allow a thousand pounds more than now I desire
+     and double allowance.&mdash;Your loving wife, ELIZABETH COMPTON.&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" /><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h4>TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once
+so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so
+tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of
+Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever
+has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it
+was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
+and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
+leading <i>r&ocirc;le</i>. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
+lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
+brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
+estates and a princely rent-roll.</p>
+
+<p>But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
+often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
+gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenvi<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>able
+reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
+were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the &quot;jolly fast Marchioness&quot;
+was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
+was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
+roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
+tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
+manifested themselves in a dangerous form.</p>
+
+<p>While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
+from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
+or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
+was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
+bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for &pound;13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
+which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
+was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
+and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
+of a hansom.</p>
+
+<p>But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
+Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of
+half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully
+embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged
+venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him,
+in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the
+Earl carried off the Grand <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to
+1867 the Marquess won over &pound;60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings
+in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that
+he only spoke the truth when he boasted, &quot;I could easily make &pound;30,000 a
+year by backing other men's horses.&quot; Indeed on one race, Lecturer's
+Cesarewitch, he cleared &pound;75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a
+racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new
+deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his
+appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales
+himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed
+hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was
+regal in its prodigality.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As he canters on to the course,&quot; we are told, &quot;he
+     slackens speed as he passes through the line of
+     carriages, from which come shrill, plaintive cries, 'Dear
+     Lord Hastings, do come here for one second,' and others
+     to like purpose. Conveniently deaf to the voice of the
+     charmers, he rides straight into the horseman's circle,
+     and takes up his position on the heavy-betting side.
+     'They're laying odds on yours, my lord,' exclaims a
+     bookmaker. 'What odds?' blandly asks the owner. 'Well, my
+     lord, I'll take you six monkeys to four!' 'Put it down,'
+     is the brief response. 'And me, three hundred to two&mdash;and
+     me&mdash;and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
+     clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'&mdash;the
+     bets are booked as freely as offered. <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>'And now, my lord,
+     if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
+     thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
+     is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
+     genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
+     with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
+     four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
+     Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
+     and away they dash.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
+fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose &pound;50,000
+on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
+of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
+to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
+and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
+inroads on even his enormous resources.</p>
+
+<p>The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
+through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
+to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
+had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
+laid against him.</p>
+
+<p>Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
+story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
+Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
+who was passionately devoted to her, little <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>dreaming that another had
+stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for
+escort, drove to Messrs Swan &amp; Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but
+the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She
+entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord
+Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away
+while her <i>fianc&eacute;</i> patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at
+the opposite side of the building.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on
+him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace
+of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less
+than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His
+opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord
+Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and
+Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for
+once&mdash;and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950
+guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.</p>
+
+<p>At the time he little realised&mdash;nor did he much care&mdash;what a bargain he
+had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St
+Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them
+&pound;300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred
+Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at
+having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>against Hermit
+so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and
+Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over &pound;100,000.</p>
+
+<p>It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the
+longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a
+smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the
+course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he
+seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling
+this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, &quot;Hermit fairly broke my
+heart. But I didn't show it, did I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely
+needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of
+more than &pound;100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was
+only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate
+of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised &pound;300,000. When the doors of
+Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present
+themselves were his agents, who handed over &pound;103,000 in settlement of
+all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored
+heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival
+had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was
+due.</p>
+
+<p>When next his lordship appeared on a race-course&mdash;it was at Ascot, a few
+months later&mdash;he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the
+bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>which must have
+taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this
+merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further
+disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first&mdash;at the
+Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park
+Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so
+much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great
+part of his Derby losses.</p>
+
+<p>When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the
+winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He
+uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to
+fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was
+helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. &quot;Tell me how I stand,&quot;
+asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The
+Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy,
+answered: &quot;You have lost &pound;23.&quot; And he, who could thus calmly calculate
+so trifling a loss, was &pound;50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the
+Plate!</p>
+
+<p>He knew well that he was a ruined man&mdash;worse than this, unutterably
+galling to his proud spirit&mdash;he knew that he was a disgraced man. His
+vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not &pound;50,000 in the world to
+pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face
+of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an
+English gentleman and a sportsman.</p>
+
+<p>He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>and hounds, and
+all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the
+wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful &pound;10,000. His last sovereign was
+gone, and he was &pound;40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he
+next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the
+echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero
+of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a
+defaulter!</p>
+
+<p>And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were
+being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of
+Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to
+suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was
+unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the
+Marquess stood to win &pound;35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.</p>
+
+<p>The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in
+the columns of the <i>Times</i>; and although Lord Hastings denied that there
+was &quot;one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses,
+correctly stated,&quot; and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the
+public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.</p>
+
+<p>So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and
+his good name that his health&mdash;undermined no doubt by excesses&mdash;broke
+down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among
+the northern seas in search of <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>health; but no sea-breezes could bring
+back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man
+before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near
+its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt
+that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the
+last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster
+races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on
+crutches.</p>
+
+<p>The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the
+Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and
+straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been
+his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled
+from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal,
+and lovingly patted her glossy neck.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his
+former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for
+life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but,
+almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up
+the struggle and drew his last breath&mdash;&quot;leaving neither heir to his
+honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in
+spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a
+perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>his first pony another
+meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and
+been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.</p>
+
+
+<p>Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and
+loved as &quot;Lord George,&quot; who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was
+the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won
+the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in
+his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too
+brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his
+own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win
+the coveted &quot;blue riband,&quot; he sold every horse in his stables at a word,
+and abandoned the Turf in despair.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord George Bentinck,&quot; wrote Thormanby, a few years ago,
+     &quot;was the idol of the sportsmen of his own day. The
+     commanding personality of the man threw a spell over all
+     with whom he was brought into contact; they were
+     half-fascinated, half-awed&mdash;judgment and criticism
+     surrendered to admiration. There are still veterans left,
+     like old John Kent, who talk with bated breath of Lord
+     George as a superior being, a god-like man, a king of
+     men.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the
+tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and
+brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and,
+like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>into hot
+water&mdash;and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such
+little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr
+exclaimed aloud: &quot;If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself,
+Colonel, I will.&quot; Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: &quot;Captain
+Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the youth and such the man&mdash;gay, debonair, and popular to the
+highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman
+he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course
+being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have
+envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale
+of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he
+often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud
+numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his
+out-of-pocket expenses ran to &pound;50,000 and more a year. To provide the
+money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of
+1843, for instance, he stood to win &pound;150,000 on his horse Gaper, and
+actually pocketed &pound;30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his
+net winnings on bets reached &pound;100,000; and he thought nothing of staking
+his entire year's private income on a single race.</p>
+
+<p>One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him&mdash;some many
+times&mdash;but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby,
+always eluded <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty.
+So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness
+of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of
+pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll sell you the lot,&quot; he impulsively said to George Payne at
+Goodwood, &quot;from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey),
+for &pound;100,000. Yes or no?&quot; Payne offered him &pound;300 to have a few hours to
+think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next
+morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was
+sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: &quot;I'll take the
+lot, Bentinck, at &pound;10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on
+the course.&quot; &quot;If you please,&quot; was Lord George's placid answer; and thus
+ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.</p>
+
+<p>And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of
+pique, for &quot;an old song&quot; was Surplice, the winner of the next year's
+Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his
+hand and had let it go!</p>
+
+<p>How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage
+in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;A few days before&mdash;it was the day after the Derby, May
+     25, 1848&mdash;the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the
+     library of the House of Commons. He was standing before
+     the bookshelves with a volume in his hand, and his
+     countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolution in
+     favour of the Colonial <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>interest, after all his labours,
+     had been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd; and on
+     the 24th, his horse, Surplice, whom he had parted with
+     among the rest of the stud, had won that paramount and
+     Olympic stake, to gain which had been the object of his
+     life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
+     sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him
+     before a heart, which he knew at least could yield him
+     sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what
+     have I sacrificed it?' he murmured. It was in vain to
+     offer solace.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the Turf.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'It is the Blue Riband of the Turf,' he slowly repeated
+     to himself; and, sitting down at a table, buried himself
+     in a folio of statistics.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found
+lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very
+morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in
+the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord
+Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on
+his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never
+made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about
+midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
+the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
+to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
+&quot;Died by the visitation of God&mdash;to wit, a spasm of the heart.&quot; Thus
+vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
+ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
+forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
+dazzling than his Turf fame.</p>
+
+<p>But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
+of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
+verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
+vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
+it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
+unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
+facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
+tragedy. &quot;The hand of God&quot; it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
+blow&mdash;it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
+one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
+although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
+doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
+perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
+it has been told.</p>
+
+<p>Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
+eligible <i>partis</i> of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
+<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>many an &quot;affair of the heart.&quot; But not one of all the high-born ladies,
+who would have turned their backs on coronets to become &quot;Lady George,&quot;
+could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
+penniless girl, who could not even boast a &quot;respectable&quot; parentage.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
+between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
+daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
+in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
+low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
+alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
+seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
+forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the
+Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth.
+It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley
+marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were
+illegitimate.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is
+said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And
+little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her
+mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and
+refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had
+enslaved. <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among
+them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder
+brother, and the future &quot;eccentric Duke&quot; of Portland, often referred to
+as &quot;The Wizard of Welbeck.&quot; The Marquess and his younger brother had
+never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when
+they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden
+this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was
+more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual
+relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the
+brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George,
+whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no
+physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant
+squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord
+George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused
+to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest,
+over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved
+fatal.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that
+September day in 1848; of that &quot;spasm of the heart&quot; which, according to
+the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George
+Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long
+mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is
+explained; <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke
+of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as
+to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother,
+however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could
+be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
+the world in sorrow and remorse?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" /><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE WICKED BARON</h4>
+
+
+<p>The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
+sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
+fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
+and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
+fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
+Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
+Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
+man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
+was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
+with the stigma of eternal shame.</p>
+
+<p>From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
+low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
+he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
+women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
+each indulgence he <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
+murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
+his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
+marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
+figures prominently&mdash;none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
+most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
+every man who came under the spell of her charms.</p>
+
+<p>Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
+passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
+Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
+their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
+in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
+be &quot;as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar.&quot; Dr Doran describes her as
+&quot;that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
+head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain&quot;; although, with
+all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
+of being Congreve's mistress all the time.</p>
+
+<p>Describing her charms, another chronicler says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She was of a lovely height, with dark brown hair and
+     eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushing
+     complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an
+     involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such, in the cold medium of print, was Mrs <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>Bracegirdle when she became
+the central figure of a great tragedy, the horrors of which have sent a
+thrill down to our own time.</p>
+
+<p>Among Mrs Bracegirdle's many baffled wooers was Captain Richard Hill, a
+boon companion of Charles, Lord Mohun, and a man of unrestrained
+passion. To all the Captain's coarse advances the actress turned a
+contemptuous shoulder, until in his rage he swore that at any cost she
+should be his. There was, he was convinced, only one real obstacle to
+the success of his suit, Jack Montford, the handsomest actor of his day,
+to whom Mrs Bracegirdle was said to be very kind; and the furious
+Captain vowed: &quot;I am resolved to have the blood of Montford, and to
+carry off his charmer by force if need be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hill made no concealment of his purpose. He mouthed his threats
+aloud at his favourite tavern in Covent Garden and elsewhere; and he
+found a willing helper in Lord Mohun, who was always ripe for any
+dastardly scheme; and, with Mohun's help, he carefully prepared his
+plans for both murder and abduction, for on both his heart was set.</p>
+
+<p>By lavish bribes the two conspirators engaged half a dozen soldiers to
+assist in their scheme; they arranged that a coach with two horses, and
+four others in reserve, should be in waiting at nine o'clock in Drury
+Lane, close to the theatre at which Mrs Bracegirdle made her appearance
+nightly; and, equipped with a formidable armoury of swords, daggers, and
+pistols, they repaired at the appointed time to the scene of action.</p>
+
+<p>For a full hour they waited, watching with lynx <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>eyes the door from
+which the fair actress would emerge; but, as luck would have it, she was
+not playing that night. She was, in fact, at the moment supping at the
+house of a friend, Mrs Page, in Princes Street, close by; and they were
+on the point of proceeding there when the lady made her appearance, with
+her mother as companion and Mr Page and her brother for escort, on her
+way home to her lodgings in Howard Street across the Strand.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of their fair prey two of the soldiers rushed forward, snatched
+Mrs Bracegirdle from her mother's arm and dragged her, screaming and
+resisting, towards the coach in which Lord Mohun was sitting by his
+cases of pistols, and in which it was intended to carry her off to
+Totteridge. When her escort rushed to her rescue, Hill struck at the old
+lady with his sword; but the cries and sounds of scuffling attracted
+such a crowd that a change of plans became necessary.</p>
+
+<p>With consummate cleverness the adroit Captain now took each of the
+ladies by the arm and coolly conducted them himself out of the crowd to
+their lodgings, Mohun and the soldiers following ignominiously behind.
+Upon reaching Howard Street, the ladies safely indoors, the soldiers
+were dismissed, and Mohun and his ally, with drawn swords, paced up and
+down the street, vowing vengeance on the unhappy Montford, whom they
+considered the cause of all their troubles, and who, sooner or later,
+must pass through Howard Street on his way to his house in Norfolk
+Street adjoining.</p>
+
+<p>For two long hours they kept their bloodthirsty vigil, feeding the
+flames of hate with copious draughts <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>of wine, which they procured from
+a neighbouring tavern. The lady had escaped them, but they would at
+least make sure of her lover, the handsome actor, who on the stroke of
+midnight turned the corner into Howard Street.</p>
+
+<p>Montford had, it appears, already heard of the frustrated attempt to
+carry off Mrs Bracegirdle, and that Mohun and Hill were keeping watch
+outside her lodgings; so that he was not unprepared for an unpleasant
+scene. Picture his amazement then when Lord Mohun advanced smilingly to
+meet him, and embraced him with a great show of affection. &quot;I am not
+prepared for such cordiality,&quot; the actor said coldly, as he disengaged
+himself from the unwelcome embrace. &quot;I should prefer to learn how you
+justify Captain Hill's abominable rudeness to a lady, or keeping company
+with such a scoundrel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the Captain, inflamed with drink, strolled insolently up
+to the pair, and, giving Montford a resounding box on the ear,
+exclaimed, &quot;Here I am to justify myself. Draw, fellow!&quot; But before
+Montford had time to recover from the blow and to unsheath his sword,
+Hill ran him through the body. Without a groan the wounded man sank to
+the ground. A cry of &quot;Murder&quot; arose; the watchmen rushed to the scene.
+But before they arrived Hill had made his escape; while Mohun, who at
+least had the courage of his race, submitted himself to arrest. His
+first question to the watchmen was, &quot;Has Hill escaped?&quot; And when he was
+assured that he had, he added: &quot;I am glad of it! I should not care if I
+were hanged for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>Such was the story which sent a thrill of horror through London on the
+day following the tragedy, and which aroused a fury of anger against the
+cowardly assassins; for not only was Jack Montford a popular idol who
+had captured all hearts with his handsome face and figure, his clever
+acting and his unaffected personal charm, but his wife, who had been
+thus tragically widowed, was one of the most gifted and delightful women
+who ever adorned the stage.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus inevitable that Lord Mohun's trial by his Peers, which was
+opened on the 31st of January 1693, in Westminster Hall, and which was
+invested with all the pomp and ceremonial befitting such an occasion,
+should attract crowds of excited spectators, curious to see the
+principal actors in this sensational drama, and burning to see justice
+done to the noble instigator of the murder. The pent-up excitement
+culminated when Mrs Bracegirdle, looking more beautiful than ever in
+spite of her pallor and evidences of suffering, entered the witness-box;
+and every word of the story she told was listened to in a silence that
+was painful in its intensity.</p>
+
+<p>In answer to the Attorney-General's request that she should &quot;give my
+lord an account of the whole of your knowledge of the attempt that was
+made upon you in Drury Lane, and what followed upon it,&quot; she said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;'My lord, I was in Prince's Street at supper at Mr
+     Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home
+     with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach
+     by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was
+     drawn, and a great many men <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>stood by it. Just as I came
+     to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and
+     pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to
+     them, and they knocked my mother down almost, for my
+     mother and my brother were with me.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'My mother recovered and came and hung about my neck, so
+     that they could not get me into the coach, and Mr Page
+     went to call company to rescue me. Then Mr Hill came with
+     his drawn sword and struck at Mr Page and my mother; and
+     when they could not get me into the coach because company
+     came up, he said he would see me home, and he had me by
+     one hand and my mother by the other. And when we came
+     home he pulled Mr Page by the sleeve and said, &quot;Sir, I
+     would speak with you.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Pray, Mrs Bracegirdle, did you see
+     anybody in the coach when they pulled you to it?'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'Yes, my Lord Mohun was in the coach;
+     and when they pulled me to the coach I saw my Lord Mohun
+     in it. As they led me along Drury Lane, my Lord Mohun
+     came out of the coach and followed us, and all the
+     soldiers followed them; but they were dismissed, and, as
+     I said, when we came to our lodgings, Mr Hill pulled Mr
+     Page by the sleeve and said he would speak with him.
+     Saith Mr Page, &quot;Mr Hill, another time will do; to-morrow
+     will serve.&quot; With that, when I was within doors, Mr Page
+     was pulled into the house, and Mr Hill walked up and down
+     the street with his sword drawn. He had his sword drawn
+     when he came alone with me.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Did you observe him to say anything
+     whilst he was with you?'<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a></p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'As I was going down the hill he said,
+     as he held me, that he would be revenged, but he did not
+     say on whom. When I was in the house several persons went
+     to the door, and afterwards Mrs Browne (my landlady),
+     went to the door, and spoke to them, and asked them what
+     they stayed and waited there for. At last they said they
+     stayed to be revenged of Mr Montford; and then Mrs Browne
+     came in to me and told me of it.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Were my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill both
+     together when that was said, that they stayed to be
+     revenged of Mr Montford?'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'Yes, they were. And when Mrs Browne
+     came in and told me, I sent my brother and my maid and
+     all the people we could out of the house to Mrs Montford
+     to desire her to send, if she knew where her husband was,
+     to tell him of it; and she did. And when they came
+     indoors again I went to the door, and the doors were
+     shut, and I listened to hear if they were there still;
+     and my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill were walking up and down
+     the street. By-and-bye the watch came up to them, and
+     when the watch came they said, &quot;Gentlemen, why do you
+     walk with your swords drawn?&quot; Says my Lord Mohun, &quot;I am a
+     peer of England&mdash;touch me if you dare!&quot; Then the watch
+     left them, and they went away; and a little after there
+     was a cry of &quot;murder.&quot; And that is all I know, my lord.'</p></div>
+
+<p>When at the close of the case Lord Mohun was asked if he had anything to
+say in his defence, he answered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My lords, I hope it will be no disadvantage to me my not
+     summing up my evidence like a lawyer. I <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>think I have
+     made it plainly appear that there never was any formal
+     quarrel or malice between Mr Montford and me. I have also
+     made appear the reason why we stayed so long in the
+     street, which was for Mr Hill to speak with Mrs
+     Bracegirdle and ask her pardon, and I stayed with him as
+     my friend. So plainly appeareth I had no hand in killing
+     Mr Montford, and upon the confidence of my own innocency
+     I surrendered myself to this honourable house, where I
+     know I shall have all the justice in the world.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The trial, which lasted five days, resulted in a verdict of
+acquittal&mdash;sixty-nine peers voting Lord Mohun &quot;Not Guilty,&quot; and fourteen
+finding him &quot;Guilty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that such a severe lesson and narrow escape would
+have given Mohun pause in his career of vice and crime. On the contrary,
+it seems merely to have whetted his appetite for similar adventures. He
+plunged into still deeper dissipation; one mad revel succeeded another;
+duel followed duel, all without provocation on any part but his own. He
+killed in cold blood two more men who had innocently provoked his
+enmity, &quot;as if increase of appetite did grow by that it fed on,&quot; until
+he rightly became the most dreaded and hated man in all England, a man
+to whom a glance, a gesture, or a harmless word might mean death.</p>
+
+<p>But his evil days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died
+in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed
+<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known
+partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided
+that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there
+be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the
+fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled swordsman of his day?</p>
+
+<p>Mohun jumped at the vile suggestion, and lost no time in seeking the
+Duke and insulting him in public. His Grace, however, who knew the man's
+reputation only too well, treated the insult with the silence and
+contempt it deserved; whereupon Mohun, roused to fury by this studied
+slight, changed his <i>r&ocirc;le</i> to that of challenger. Thrice he sent his
+second, one Major-General Macartney, almost as big a scoundrel as
+himself, to the Duke's house in St James's Square; the fourth time a
+meeting was arranged for the following morning at the Ring, in Hyde
+Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night
+hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning&mdash;the morning of 15th
+November 1712&mdash;the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously
+at the Ring&mdash;in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the
+early morning hours a desolate part of the Park&mdash;and the preliminaries
+were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: &quot;I am well
+assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you
+shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton,
+will entertain you.&quot; &quot;<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>I wish for no better partner,&quot; Macartney replied;
+&quot;the Colonel may command me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords
+flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in
+lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on
+the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as
+grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the
+blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded
+in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the
+very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his
+opponent, but the others fought on&mdash;gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting,
+the strength ebbing with each thrust.</p>
+
+<p>At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword
+passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling
+forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into
+the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him
+in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it
+into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as
+fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland.</p>
+
+<p>Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen,
+he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed
+to his wounds&mdash;the &quot;Dog Mohun,&quot; as Swift called him, lying in death but
+a few yards from his victim.<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I am infinitely concerned,&quot; Swift wrote the same day,
+     &quot;for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man.
+     I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well
+earned his unenviable title, &quot;The wicked Baron.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" /><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h4>A FAIR <i>INTRIGANTE</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a
+diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a
+half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour,
+and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her
+allurements and her shame.</p>
+
+<p>If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal
+in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged
+to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centuries of
+noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or
+remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that
+is known of this Queen of <i>intrigantes</i> is that she had for father a
+worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in
+the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter
+part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and
+two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among
+his neighbours. It was at Brest that Evelyn enjoyed <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>this hospitality
+for a brief period; and the diarist has nothing but what is good to say
+of the retired tradesman.</p>
+
+<p>But the worthy merchant had his hands full with one at least of his two
+daughters, who was developing dangerous fascinations, and with them a
+precocious knowledge of how to turn them to account. He was thankful to
+pack Louise off to a boarding-school, where she seems to have led her
+teachers such a dance that it became necessary to place her in stronger
+hands; and with this view the foolish father sent her to Paris, the last
+place in the world for such a charming and designing minx, and to the
+custody of a weak-willed aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have suited Louise better than this change of arena for
+the exercise of her wilfulness and witchery. Before she had been many
+days in the French capital she was able to twist her aunt round her
+little finger&mdash;indeed her power of captivating was, to the end of her
+life, her chief dower&mdash;and to obtain all the freedom she wanted. And it
+was not long before her allurements won the admiration of the dissolute
+Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France, a man skilled in all the arts
+of love. The girl's bourgeois head was completely turned by the
+splendour of her first captive; and, to make him secure, she counted no
+sacrifice too great. Not, indeed, that she ever regarded her virtue as
+anything but the principal piece she intended to play on the chessboard
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>For a few years Louise revelled in the new life <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>which the amorous Duc
+opened to her, and which only came to an end when the Admiral was
+despatched, in command of a fleet, against the Turks, an expedition from
+which he was fated never to return. Before he said good-bye, however,
+Louise took care to make the next step on her ladder of world-conquest
+secure. Through the Duc's influence she was appointed maid-of-honour to
+Madame, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., and sister to the second Charles of
+England, now restored to the throne of his fathers.</p>
+
+<p>We can well imagine that the wool merchant's daughter wasted no sighs on
+the lover she had lost. She had now a much wider and more splendid field
+at the Court of France, for the exploiting of her dangerous gifts and
+the indulgence of her ambition. That the new maid had no lack of lovers
+we may be sure; for though she was not richly dowered with beauty she
+always seems to have had a magnetic power over the hearts of men. We
+know, too, that she singled out for special favour, the Comte de Sault,
+the handsomest noble in France, a man skilled above all his fellows in
+the then moribund knightly exercises; and that her <i>liaison</i> with the
+Comte, in a court where such intimacies were the fashion, added to,
+rather than detracted from, her social prestige.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the life of Louise de Querouaille up to the time when she made
+her first acquaintance with the land in which she was destined to crown
+her adventurous career, and to make herself at once the most dazzling
+and the most hated figure in England. <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>At this time Louis' designs on
+Spain and Holland had received a rude check by the signing of an
+alliance between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces; and it
+became a matter of vital importance to detach England from a combination
+so fatal to his schemes. With this object he decided to send Henrietta,
+Duchess of Orleans, on a visit, ostensibly of affection, to her brother
+Charles II., charged with a secret mission to induce him by every
+artifice in her power to withdraw from the alliance.</p>
+
+<p>How Henrietta returned flushed with triumph from this iniquitous
+embassy, after ten days of high revelry at Dover, is well-known history.
+Charles, in response to his favourite sister's pleading and bribes, not
+only consented to desert his allies, but, as soon as he decently could,
+to follow in the steps of his brother, the Duke of York, to Rome; and in
+return for these evidences of friendship, Louis was gracious enough to
+promise him substantial aid and protection; and, further, to grant him a
+subsidy of &pound;1,000,000 a year if he would take up arms with France
+against Holland.</p>
+
+<p>It is more to our purpose to know that among the gay galaxy of courtiers
+who accompanied Madame to England was Louise de Querouaille, who thus
+first set eyes on the King, in whose life-drama she was to play so
+brilliant and baleful a <i>r&ocirc;le</i>; and that before Charles, with streaming
+eyes, said &quot;good-bye&quot; to his scheming sister, she had made excellent use
+of her opportunities to enslave this English &quot;King of Hearts.&quot; So much
+at least was reported to Louis <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>on the return of the embassy, when he
+was assured by Madame that, of all the beautiful women in her train, the
+only one to make any impression on her Royal brother was Louise de
+Querouaille.</p>
+
+<p>This information, no doubt, was in Louis' mind when, later, it became
+necessary to cement Charles's allegiance to his compact. Gold was always
+a potent lure to the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot; whose purse was never deep enough
+for the demands made on it by his extravagance; but a still more
+seductive bait was a beautiful woman to add to his seraglio. The Duchess
+of Cleveland had now lost her youth and good looks; the incomparable
+Stuart's beauty had been fatally marred by small-pox. Of all the fair
+and frail women who had held Charles in thrall there was none left to
+dispute the palm with the French maid-of-honour except Nell Gwynn, the
+Drury Lane orange-girl, whose sauciness and vulgarity gave to the jaded
+Sybarite a piquant relish to her charms.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a splendid opportunity for Louis to complete the conquest of
+his vacillating cousin whose allegiance was so vital to his plans of
+aggrandisement. Louise should go to Whitehall to play the part of
+beautiful spy on Charles, and, by her favours, to make him a pliant tool
+in the hand of &quot;le Roi Soleil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charles, who was by no means loth to renew his Dover acquaintance with
+the bewitching maid-of-honour, sent a yacht to Dieppe to bring her to
+England, and charged no less a personage than the Duke of Buckingham to
+be her escort to Whitehall. The Duke, however, who was probably too much
+<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>occupied with his own affairs of the heart, &quot;totally forgot both the
+lady and his promise; and, leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe, to
+manage as best she could, passed over to England by way of Calais,&quot;&mdash;a
+slight which the indignant Louise never forgave.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that the new favourite of the King made her journey across
+the Channel under the escort of the English Ambassador, and was given by
+him into the charge of Buckingham's political rival, Lord Arlington.
+&quot;The Duke of Buckingham thus,&quot; to quote Bishop Burnet, &quot;lost all merit
+he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his strange
+conduct threw into the hands of his enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of the &quot;French spy,&quot; whose mission was well understood, was
+hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few
+stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent
+verses by St Evremond&mdash;efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded
+with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her
+without having even seen her was a matter of small concern&mdash;she was
+prepared for it. All she cared for was that Charles should give her a
+cordial welcome; and this he did with effusiveness and open arms. Apart
+from her character as ambassadress to his &quot;dear brother&quot; of France, she
+was a new and piquant stimulus to his sated appetite&mdash;a &quot;dainty dish to
+set before a King.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was installed at Whitehall to the flourish of trumpets; was
+appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen, who frankly disliked and dreaded
+this new rival in <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>her husband's accommodating affection; and at once
+assumed her position as chief of those women the King delighted to
+honour. And with such restraint and discretion did she conduct herself
+during these early days at Whitehall that she disarmed the jealousy of
+the Court ladies, while receiving the homage of their gallants.</p>
+
+<p>To Charles she was coyness itself&mdash;virtue personified. While smiling
+graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her
+attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she
+guard her favours that the French Ambassador began to show alarm.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I believe,&quot; he wrote at this time, &quot;that she has so got
+     round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to
+     our Sovereign lord and master, <i>if</i> she only does her
+     duty.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Louise was fully conscious of her duty and meant to do it, was
+never really in question&mdash;but the time to unbend was not yet. It was no
+part of her clever strategy to drop like a ripe plum into Charles's
+mouth. <i>Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter.</i> She would be accounted all
+the greater prize for proving difficult to win.</p>
+
+<p>The psychical moment, she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited
+Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where,
+removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house
+freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the
+revels of which Euston was 183 <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>the scene during a few intoxicating
+weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the
+merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, experts in gallantry,
+and his ladies, with most of whom an acquaintance with virtue was but a
+faded memory, it is no difficult matter to raise a corner of the curtain
+in imagination. One typical scene Forneron records thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium
+     of October evenings in a country-house, got up a
+     burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the
+     bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest
+     ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the
+     retirement of the former into the nuptial chamber.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was precisely such a ceremony in which, a few years earlier, Charles
+had figured with <i>La belle Stuart</i>, while Lady Castlemaine looked on
+with laughter and applause.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-184-t.jpg" alt="LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH" title="LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that
+Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed <i>maitresse en
+titre</i> to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the
+confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of
+the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of
+Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool
+merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange
+for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war
+with Holland; <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother
+and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.</p>
+
+<p>Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the
+wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a
+double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of
+a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might
+her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London,
+throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his &quot;petite
+Louise&quot; had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed
+at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for
+when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was
+probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the
+throne.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She has got the notion,&quot; wrote the French Ambassador,
+     &quot;that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She
+     talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as
+     if they were mortal.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to
+be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which,
+nominally &pound;10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of
+&pound;136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range
+of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>pardons
+and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably
+the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten
+gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with
+the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When
+Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and
+     splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice
+     or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and
+     expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed
+     some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for
+     design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of
+     the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some
+     pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of
+     the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes,
+     exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for
+     Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of
+     wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras,
+     etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides
+     some of his Majesty's best paintings!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise
+de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, &quot;gutter-rival&quot; of hers,
+Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's
+affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of
+French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a
+disconcerting <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful
+rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle
+in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
+Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court <i>salons</i> and corridors, as if
+she were carrion.</p>
+
+<p>And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
+Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to &quot;chuck
+Charles's royal chin,&quot; and to call him her &quot;Charles the third,&quot; in
+unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
+favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
+all, was no better than herself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Duchess,&quot; she would say, &quot;pretends to be a person of quality. She
+says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
+person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
+quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
+my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
+just as fond of me as he is of his French miss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
+gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
+progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
+the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
+possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
+providing a French bride for his successor, the <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>Duke of York, promise
+much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
+James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
+from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
+suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
+had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
+declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
+concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
+promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
+become her crowning ambition to win the right to a <i>tabouret</i> at the
+Court of Versailles&mdash;the highest privilege accorded to the old
+<i>noblesse</i>, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
+this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
+France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
+but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
+<i>tabouret</i> went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
+the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
+would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
+commands he might lay upon her.</p>
+
+<p>His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
+by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
+Franche Comt&eacute;, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
+discovered that for once his vaulting <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ambition had overleaped itself.
+The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
+sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
+Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
+paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
+Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
+popular rage against the &quot;painted French spy&quot; who was regarded, and
+perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
+enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
+heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
+imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
+Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
+exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless
+beauty to complete her conquest of the amorous Sovereign&mdash;&quot;the last
+conquest of her conquering eyes,&quot; as Waller wrote in his fulsome
+greeting of the new divinity of the Whitehall seraglio.</p>
+
+<p>For once Louise's indomitable courage showed signs of yielding. The
+whole armoury of fate seemed arrayed against her at this crisis in her
+life; even Louis, for whom she had striven so hard, began to distrust
+her powers and to show indifference to her. When Forneron paid her a
+visit at this time he found her in tears. &quot;She opened her heart to him,
+in the presence of her two French maids, who stood by <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>with downcast
+eyes. Tears rained down her cheeks; and her speech was broken with sobs
+and sighs.&quot; Never had this designing beauty been so near the verge of
+absolute ruin.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary perhaps to follow the Duchess through the period of
+her eclipse; to watch the weak-kneed Charles sink deeper and deeper into
+the morass of his disloyalty until, in return for a subsidy of
+&pound;4,000,000, he offered to dissolve parliament and to make England the
+bond-slave of Louis's designs on Europe; or to see Louise, the chief
+instrument of all this ignominy, reach the climax of her disgrace and
+her peril when mobs besieged Whitehall, and clamoured that the &quot;Jezebel&quot;
+should be sent to the scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>It is sufficient for our purpose to know that through all this terrible
+time she steered her way with almost superhuman skill back to the
+sunshine of success and favour. Her life-long ambition was crowned when
+Louis gave her the d'Aubigny lands and, with them, the <i>tabouret</i> which
+had so long dazzled her eyes and eluded her grasp. When the sky in
+England had at last cleared she paid a visit to her native land. For
+four ecstatic months the wool merchant's daughter made a triumphant
+progress through France, acclaimed and f&ecirc;ted as a Queen. At her castle
+of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
+to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
+her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
+visit to the Capucines in <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>Paris her approach was heralded by a
+procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
+cross. &quot;She was received,&quot; we are told, &quot;as if she were a Queen, which
+quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour.&quot; To
+such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
+actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
+reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
+favourite of the King, all his other mistresses&mdash;even the Queen herself
+being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
+did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
+himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
+England&mdash;<i>plus roi que le Roi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
+more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
+The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
+Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
+which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
+of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
+she had was the rakish Philippe de Vend&ocirc;me, grandson of Henri IV. and
+nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
+seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
+seems to have conducted an open and shameless <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>intrigue with De
+Vend&ocirc;me&mdash;a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
+for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
+despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
+her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
+withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
+written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
+by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
+was able to breathe again.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
+the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
+courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
+light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
+was shocked at such scenes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I was told to-night,&quot; he writes, &quot;that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won &pound;15,400
+     in one night, and lost &pound;25,000 in another night at play,
+     and has played &pound;1000 and &pound;1500 at a cast.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
+     and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above &pound;8000, in doing
+     which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
+     satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
+     favour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
+them was on the night of <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>1st February 1685&mdash;the last Sunday Charles was
+permitted to spend on earth.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The great courtiers,&quot; says Evelyn, &quot;and other dissolute
+     persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
+     a bank of at least &pound;2000 before them. The King, though
+     not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
+     occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
+     shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
+     Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
+     stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
+     glorious gallery. Six days after,&quot; he adds, &quot;all was in
+     the dust.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
+concern&mdash;for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
+to Louis, her paymaster&mdash;was that Charles should at least die an avowed
+Catholic.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I found her,&quot; Barillon wrote to Louis, &quot;overcome with
+     grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
+     changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
+     and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
+     to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
+     pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
+     there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
+     not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
+     his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
+     with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
+     conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
+     near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
+     his brother's soul.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
+queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
+before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
+were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
+that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
+and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
+pension of &pound;800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
+True, she was still able to claim her <i>tabouret</i> at the Court of
+Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
+the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
+her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
+refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
+vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
+one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
+eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
+such havoc in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" /><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MERRY DUCHESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
+centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
+Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
+romantic and adventurous <i>r&ocirc;le</i> Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
+life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
+distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
+infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
+dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
+an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
+daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
+she was long out of the nursery she vowed that &quot;she would be a Duchess,&quot;
+and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
+of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
+short frocks she was a finished coquette.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
+precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
+his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
+where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
+the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
+of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
+now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
+appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
+almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
+Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
+conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
+where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
+her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
+himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;
+but while, with tantalising coquetry, she kept them all dangling, one
+alone tempted her&mdash;that which was laid at her feet by the Duke of
+Hamilton, a gallant whose high rank was rivalled by his handsome face
+and figure, and his many courtly accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>When the Duke asked her to be his wife she graciously consented, and her
+Duchess's coronet seemed assured thus early, with a prospect of
+happiness that does not always accompany it; for in this case she seems
+to have given her heart where she <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>gave her hand. For a time the course
+of true love ran smoothly, and the maid-of-honour became a model of
+decorum as the affianced wife of the man she loved.</p>
+
+<p>But her dream of happiness was destined to be short-lived. An intriguing
+aunt, Mrs Hanmer, who had no love for the Hamiltons, set to work to dash
+the cup of happiness from her niece's lips. She intercepted the Duke's
+letters, poured into Elizabeth's ears poisonous stories of his
+infidelities and entanglements to account for his silence, and, when the
+poison began to show signs of working, whisked her niece away on a visit
+to the country-house of her cousin, Mr Merrill, at Lainston, where among
+her fellow-guests was a dashing young naval lieutenant, the Hon.
+Augustus Hervey, who was second heir to his father's Earldom of Bristol.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant, as was inevitable, perhaps, fell promptly under the
+spell of the maid-of-honour's charms, and made violent love to her,
+with, of course, Mrs Hanmer's whole-hearted connivance. The girl,
+blazing with resentment of the Duke's coldness, and his apparent
+indifference to her beauty and his vows, lent a willing ear to his
+pleadings, and within a few days had promised to be wife to a man whom,
+as she confessed later, she &quot;almost hated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was, by mutual consent, to be secret, partly on account of
+the bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear
+of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in
+1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>and made its
+way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the
+light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and
+mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which
+was to lead to such dramatic developments.</p>
+
+<p>Forty-eight hours later the bridegroom had joined his ship at
+Portsmouth; and his bride's greatest joy, as she confessed, was when he
+had departed. Such a marriage, the fruit of pique and anger, boded ill
+for happiness. Frankly, the union was one long misery, broken by the
+intervals when the husband was away at sea, and accentuated during his,
+happily brief, visits to her. Two children were born to this
+ill-assorted pair, but both died young; and Elizabeth Hervey had
+abundant opportunity to follow her natural bent, by seeking
+forgetfulness in dissipation.</p>
+
+<p>In the full glow of her beauty, a wife who was no wife, she resumed her
+broken career of conquest. She made a tour of Europe, leaving a train of
+broken-hearted and languishing lovers behind her. At Berlin she brought
+Frederick the Great to his knees, and made an abject slave of him; she
+shocked the ladies of the Dresden Court by her laxity and the prodigal
+display of her charms, and by the same arts bewitched the men. She led,
+we are told, a life of shameless dissipation, which only her beauty and
+intellectual gifts redeemed from vulgar depravity. She had lovers in
+every capital she visited, and discarded them as lightly as so many
+playthings.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to England, so anxious was she <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>to obliterate that fatal
+episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to
+Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page
+out of the marriage register.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the naval lieutenant had blossomed into an Earl, on his
+father's death; and when the new Earl, her husband, showed signs of
+failing health, and there was an early prospect of graduating as a
+wealthy dowager Countess, she saw the wisdom of making another journey
+to Lainston to replace the record of her marriage. Alas, for her
+scheming; the moribund Earl took a new lease of life, and the gilded
+dowagerhood became nebulous and remote again.</p>
+
+<p>But Elizabeth Chudleigh was not to be long baulked in her ambitious
+designs. Though her charms had grown too opulent and were faded&mdash;for she
+was now near her fiftieth birthday&mdash;she was able to count among her
+slaves the aged Duke of Kingston, an amiable and weak old gentleman of
+enormous wealth, and with one accommodating foot already &quot;in the grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Wife, or no wife, she now made up her mind to be a Duchess at last. She
+appealed to Lord Bristol, the husband from whom she had so long been
+estranged, to divorce her, even going so far as to offer to qualify for
+the divorce by an open and flagrant act of infidelity; but his lordship
+only shrugged a scornful shoulder. Still, not to be thwarted, she
+brought a suit of jactitation of marriage, and, by a lavish use of
+bribes and cajolery, got a <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>sentence from the Ecclesiastical Court which
+at last set her free. Within a month she had blossomed into &quot;the most
+high and <i>puissante</i> Princess, the Duchess of Kingston,&quot; thus realising
+her childish ambition.</p>
+
+<p>For four and a half years the Duchess was a dignified pattern of all the
+virtues. The passions of youth had lost their fires; the scenes of
+revelry and coarse dissipation to which they had given birth were only a
+memory. She would yet die in the odour of sanctity, however tardy. But
+storms were brewing, and the Duke's death, in 1746, precipitated them,
+though not before she had had another fling with the riches he left to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing aside her widow's weeds, she flung herself again&mdash;old, obese,
+and faded as she was&mdash;into a round of dissipation which shocked and
+disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the
+&quot;quality,&quot; until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she
+had brought on her head.</p>
+
+<p>She bought a magnificent yacht and sailed away to Rome, where Pope and
+Cardinal alike conspired to do her honour; and was only saved from
+eloping with a titled swindler by his arrest and later suicide in
+prison. It was while in Rome that news came to her that her late
+husband's heirs were planning a charge of bigamy against her, with a
+view to setting aside his will in her favour.</p>
+
+<p>Her exchequer was empty for the time; but, presenting herself before her
+banker, pistol in hand, <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>she compelled him to provide her with funds to
+enable her to return to London&mdash;to find all arrangements already made
+for her trial in Westminster Hall on a charge of bigamy. Public opinion
+was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and
+lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy
+entitled, &quot;A Trip to Calais.&quot; But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her
+fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of
+ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid
+equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene,
+smiling, contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>It was of this period of her life that the following story is told. One
+day when driving in London her gorgeous carriage was brought to a halt
+by a coal-cart which was being unloaded in a narrow street. The Duchess
+was furious at the delay, and protruding her head and shoulders from the
+carriage and leaning her arms on the door, she cried out to the
+offending carter: &quot;How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman of quality in
+the street?&quot; &quot;Woman of quality!&quot; sneered the man. &quot;Yes, fellow,&quot;
+rejoined her Grace, &quot;don't you see my arms upon my carriage?&quot; &quot;Indeed I
+do,&quot; he answered, &quot;and a pair of d&mdash;&mdash; coarse arms they are, too!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seldom has a trial excited such widespread excitement and interest.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Everybody,&quot; Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir
+     Horace Mann, &quot;is on the quest for tickets for her Grace
+     of Kingston's trial. I am persuaded that <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>her impudence
+     will operate in some singular manner; probably she will
+     appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster
+     Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when
+     she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil
+     to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce,
+     novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think
+     cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of
+     Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles
+     the waters.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if Walpole resisted the temptation to witness a scene so piquant and
+remarkable, hundreds of the highest in the land, including Queen
+Charlotte herself, the Prince of Wales and many another Royal personage,
+ambassadors and statesmen, flocked to Westminster to see the notorious
+Duchess on her trial on the charge of bigamy. And the vast Hall was
+packed with a curious and expectant crowd when her Grace made her
+stately entry with a retinue of <i>femmes de chambre</i>, her doctor,
+apothecary, and secretary, and proceeded to her seat, in front of her
+six bewigged Counsel, with the dignified step and haughty mien of an
+Empress.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah More, who was present at the trial, says that hardly a trace of
+her once enchanting beauty was visible; and that, had it not been for
+her white face, &quot;she might easily have been taken for a bundle of
+bombasin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trial lasted several days, during the whole of which the Duchess
+conducted herself with remarkable dignity and composure, in face of the
+damning array of evidence that was brought against her&mdash;<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>the evidence of
+a maid who had witnessed her midnight marriage in Lainston Church; of
+the widow of the parson who officiated at the nuptials; and of Serjeant
+Hawkins, who authenticated the birth of her first child by Augustus
+Hervey.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The scene opened on Wednesday with all its pomp,&quot; wrote
+     Walpole, who although not present seems to have followed
+     the trial with the keenest interest, &quot;and the
+     doubly-noble prisoner went through her part with
+     universal admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious
+     folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her conduct
+     was decent, and even seemed natural. Her dress was
+     entirely black and plain; her attendants not too
+     numerous; her dismay at first perfectly unaffected. A few
+     tears balanced cheerfulness enough, and her presence of
+     mind and attention never deserted her. This rational
+     behaviour and the pleadings of her Counsel, who contended
+     for the finality of her Ecclesiastical Court's sentence
+     against a second trial, carried her triumphantly through
+     the first day, and turned the stream much in her favour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The following day proved a much more severe test to her Grace's
+composure; and no sooner had the Court risen than &quot;she had to be
+blooded, and fell into a great passion of tears.&quot; And each succeeding
+day added to the tension and anxieties which she struggled so bravely to
+conceal.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day of the trial Walpole says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The plot thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges
+     were called on for their opinions, and <i>una voce</i>
+     dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court. The<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>
+     Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 'Life and
+     Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, <i>alias</i> Hervey,
+     <i>alias</i> the most high and <i>puissante</i> Princess, the
+     Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a
+     front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the
+     first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present
+     at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was
+     benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her
+     dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded
+     enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two
+     babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first
+     nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist
+     and become Earl of Bristol.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Three days later Horace Walpole concludes his narrative of the trial,
+which we are afraid his antipathy to the adventurous Duchess has
+coloured a little too vividly:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The wisdom of the land,&quot; he writes, &quot;has been exerted
+     for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and
+     yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess
+     to convert herself into a Duchess. After a pretty
+     defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she herself
+     had written and pronounced very well), the sages, in
+     spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished a hot iron)
+     dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the
+     fees, all voting her guilty; but the Duke of Newcastle,
+     her neighbour in the country, softening his vote by
+     adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.' So ends the
+     solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not
+     intend to leave her that title.... I am glad to have done
+     with her.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>A few days later, in spite of a writ, <i>ne exeat regno</i>, which had been
+issued against her, she was back in France, travelling in state as
+&quot;Madame la Duchesse de Kingston.&quot; From Calais she made her magnificent
+progress to Rome, where Pope and Cardinals vied in doing honour to so
+exalted and charming a lady, and entertained her as regally as if she
+had been a Queen. Returning to Calais she installed herself in a
+palatial house where she dispensed a lavish hospitality, and flung her
+gold about with prodigal hands.</p>
+
+<p>But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
+cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
+Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
+balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
+continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
+Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
+entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
+torchlight.</p>
+
+<p>Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
+in Paris, and the ch&acirc;teau of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
+alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
+Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
+by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
+of her jewels to her &quot;dear friend,&quot; the Russian Empress; a large diamond
+to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
+necklace <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
+that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
+bore the same title.</p>
+
+<p>But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
+close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
+sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
+She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
+dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. &quot;At your peril, disobey
+me!&quot; she said to her protesting attendants. &quot;I <i>will</i> get up!&quot; She got
+up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
+drained glass after glass of Madeira. &quot;I will lie down on the couch,&quot;
+she then said. &quot;I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
+felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
+fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
+life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
+pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
+found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
+indulgence of her appetites were &quot;all vanity.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" /><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h4>THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER</h4>
+
+
+<p>If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
+whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen
+a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from
+Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of
+heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's
+blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and
+philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother,
+the lovely and frail Louise Ren&eacute;e de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
+the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women&mdash;the Duchesses of
+Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin&mdash;who spent their days in &quot;open
+dalliance&quot; with the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot; and their nights at the
+basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.</p>
+
+<p>As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast&mdash;the
+mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our
+Peerage. One <a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing
+cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his
+heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord
+Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful
+Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery;
+a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were
+immediately to be made husband and wife.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride
+the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, &quot;You are surely not going
+to marry me to that dowdy!&quot; But there was no escape; the demands of
+&quot;honour&quot; must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and
+within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were
+separated&mdash;Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his
+bride to her nursery toys.</p>
+
+<p>Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour
+round the world&mdash;a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means
+eager to renew his acquaintance with the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; who was his
+wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a
+vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no
+sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never
+yet had had power to do.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. &quot;You must
+indeed be a stranger to <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>London,&quot; was the answer, &quot;if you do not know
+the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!&quot; Lady March! Could that
+exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
+married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
+introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
+indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
+his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
+the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
+without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
+a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
+the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
+mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
+nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
+George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
+pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: &quot;How do
+you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, <i>n'est-ce pas</i>?&quot;
+George was so delighted with the child's <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> that he took her up
+in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
+had promised to come and see him.</p>
+
+<p>And how the King and his &quot;little sweetheart,&quot; <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>as he called her, enjoyed
+these visits! and the merry romps they had together!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On one occasion,&quot; says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
+     of much later days), &quot;after a romp with my mother, the
+     King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
+     squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
+     to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
+     that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
+     begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
+     was quite delighted.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
+her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
+to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
+years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
+sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
+little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
+years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
+embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
+disgust: &quot;Pooh! she has grown too stupid!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
+and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend&mdash;none other
+than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
+little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
+the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
+<a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
+her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
+some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
+Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
+Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
+House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
+     When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
+     on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
+     lovely and so expressive.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
+her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
+     saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
+     hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
+     sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
+     fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
+seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it&mdash;an
+indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
+One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
+of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
+Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>summon up courage to declare
+his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
+Coronation, &quot;Ah!&quot; he exclaimed with a sigh, &quot;there will be no Coronation
+until there is a Queen.&quot; &quot;But why, sir?&quot; asked Lady Susan in surprise.
+&quot;They want me to have a foreign Queen,&quot; George answered, &quot;but I prefer
+an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
+world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: &quot;Has your
+friend given you my message?&quot; &quot;Yes, sir.&quot; &quot;And what do you think of it?
+Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
+do you think of it?&quot; &quot;Nothing, sir,&quot; Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
+downcast eyes. &quot;Pooh!&quot; exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
+&quot;nothing comes of nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
+small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
+spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
+already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
+Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
+passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
+shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
+her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, &quot;That
+will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The news of this accident, however, had a very <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>different effect on the
+young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
+passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
+surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
+to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
+to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
+unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
+and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
+Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
+to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
+extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
+Sarah's face as she led her son away. &quot;I felt many a time,&quot; the insulted
+girl said in later years, &quot;that I should have loved to box her ears.&quot;
+But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
+the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
+such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
+brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
+George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
+attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
+rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
+rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.</p>
+
+<p>Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>lover for some days
+she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
+the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
+King that she &quot;thought nothing&quot; of his advances, had developed into the
+veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
+strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
+her own defeat.</p>
+
+<p>That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
+Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
+might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
+against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
+despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
+fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
+surrender of his liberty there was no escape.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
+quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
+favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
+Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
+was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
+life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
+the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow&mdash;to her
+vanity, if not to her heart. It was a &quot;bolt from the blue,&quot; for which
+she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I shall take care,&quot; she wrote to her friend, Lady<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>
+     Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, &quot;I shall
+     take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
+     if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
+     cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
+     what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
+     message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
+     not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
+     with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
+     not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
+     believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
+     will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
+     thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
+     shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
+     much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
+     can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
+     his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
+     as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
+     time of it.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
+Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
+consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
+of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
+retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
+no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
+compared with his ill-favoured bride, was &quot;as a queenly lily to a
+dandelion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
+Sarah's revenge, and of which <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>her son tells the following story. Among
+the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
+half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
+adherents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
+     he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
+     knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
+     and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
+     sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
+     and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
+     know he always loved Pretenders.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
+of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
+was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
+the score; but to one and all&mdash;including, as Walpole records, Lord
+Errol&mdash;she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
+fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
+of a mere Baronet&mdash;Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
+majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
+Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
+circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.</p>
+
+<p>More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
+baronet-husband.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;And who the d&mdash;&mdash;,&quot; she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
+     Susan, &quot;would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
+     house, good horses, greyhounds <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>for hunting, so near
+     Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
+     &pound;2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
+     would not be happy?&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
+silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
+idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
+Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
+     like my own and your description of yours, from which I
+     reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
+     me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
+     single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
+     happiest of beings.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
+she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
+flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
+rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
+resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
+He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
+not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
+handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
+baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
+with his wife. Before <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
+into a <i>liaison</i> with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
+termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
+nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
+intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
+lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
+the Leader is known to-day as the &quot;Lovers' Walk.&quot; It was a foolish
+paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
+After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
+to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate&mdash;he to travel
+abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
+brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
+(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
+night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
+chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
+that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
+remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
+bright days were still in store for her&mdash;a happy and honourable
+wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
+brother, that heralded the <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>new dawn for her darkened life. There were
+few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
+Lord Napier, who is described as &quot;faultless in figure and features.&quot;
+When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
+he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
+but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
+he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
+years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
+of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
+not fit to be his wife.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He knows,&quot; she wrote to Lady Susan, &quot;I <i>do</i> love him;
+     and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
+     that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
+     degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
+     marrying me.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
+proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
+day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
+to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
+their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
+sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
+their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
+generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
+was the historian of the Peninsular War.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
+Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;How I wish I could go with him,&quot; she wrote; &quot;the
+     gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
+     solace into a woman's darkened heart.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
+years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
+gallant boys.</p>
+
+<p>To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
+that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
+even look on the sons she loved.</p>
+
+<p>A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
+life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
+years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
+Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
+As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
+of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
+his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
+overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
+of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
+out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
+the mental pictures that thronged her <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>brain was, probably, that of a
+dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
+gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
+lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
+eyes, declaring that she &quot;thought nothing&quot; of her Royal lover's vows,
+though they carried a crown with them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII" /><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM</h4>
+
+
+<p>Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
+full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
+daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
+beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
+and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
+Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
+sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
+had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
+on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
+life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
+could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
+womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
+and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
+Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
+the Earl of Galloway.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>As for Susanna, the loveliest of the &quot;three Graces&quot;&mdash;&quot;Scotland's
+fairest daughter,&quot; to quote a chronicler of the time&mdash;she counted her
+high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
+long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
+luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
+stalwart and handsome young Earl&mdash;&quot;the fairest lass and bonniest lad&quot; in
+all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
+wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
+chapter of romance.</p>
+
+<p>For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
+happy.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I never thought,&quot; Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
+     &quot;that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
+     to crowd my happiness into.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.</p>
+
+<p>One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
+the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
+his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
+Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.</p>
+
+<p>After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
+of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
+continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
+advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
+Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
+jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
+the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
+leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
+from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
+unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
+the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
+horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
+roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
+with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
+drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
+to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
+antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
+entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
+dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
+tavern, where he had drunk &quot;not wisely, but too well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
+beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
+best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
+of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
+That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
+received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
+entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
+Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
+the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.</p>
+
+<p>The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
+beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
+cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
+with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
+them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
+in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
+that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
+and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
+make more lovely still.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
+dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
+model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
+passion were by no means dead in her; and to this &quot;eternal feminine&quot; we
+must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
+her story.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Countess's many servants was one <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>George Forbes, a young and
+strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
+late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
+with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
+was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
+liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
+that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
+promoted him to the charge of her stables&mdash;a proof of confidence which
+no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
+him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
+to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
+love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
+wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested&mdash;&quot;But my
+lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
+ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on.&quot;
+&quot;You must not say that,&quot; the Countess replied. &quot;You are more to me than
+rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
+you have it in your power to bestow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced,
+what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the
+consequences of such an ill-assorted union? And thus <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>strangely and
+romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of
+Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the
+altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.</p>
+
+<p>What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.
+The Countess was disowned by her noble relatives; her friends with one
+consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the
+constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape
+with her low-born husband to the Continent.</p>
+
+<p>Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred
+contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility;
+he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she
+had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for
+which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child&mdash;the
+very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could
+not bear&mdash;was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared
+for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned,
+she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after
+nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful
+friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as
+any that has fallen to the lot of woman.</p>
+
+<p>And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains,
+and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen
+<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she
+learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice
+to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
+memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
+father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
+from her&mdash;if, indeed, they knew themselves.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
+sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
+letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
+was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
+convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
+the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
+(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
+long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
+father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
+of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
+where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
+some years.</p>
+
+<p>At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
+conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
+sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
+the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
+stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
+<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
+unwelcome.</p>
+
+<p>Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
+ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
+bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
+to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
+slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
+possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
+took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
+broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
+oppression she had left for ever.</p>
+
+<p>For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
+through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
+humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
+bread from door to door.</p>
+
+<p>At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
+fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
+farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but
+the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer
+Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last
+the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open
+arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially
+invited to make her home with them.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of Emilia's strange life-story can be <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>told in few words. After
+a few years of peaceful and happy life in the hospitable farmhouse, she
+married the farmer's only son, an honest and worthy young fellow who
+loved her dearly. She became the mother of many children, who in their
+humble life knew nothing of their high-placed cousins, the Dukes and
+Earls of another world than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>When, in process of time, her husband died&mdash;many of her children had
+died young, the rest were far from prosperous&mdash;Mrs Lauder retired to
+spend her last days in a small cottage at St Ninian's, near Stirling,
+where for a time she lived in the utmost poverty. Then, when her life
+was almost flickering out in destitution, a few of her great relatives
+condescended to acknowledge her existence. The Earls of Galloway and
+Dunmore, the Duke of Hamilton, and Mrs Stewart Mackenzie combined to
+provide her with an annuity of &pound;100; and, thus secure against want, the
+old lady contrived to spin out the thread of her days a few years
+longer. Thus died, at the advanced age of eighty-five, eating the bread
+of charity, the woman who had in her veins the blood of Scotland's
+greatest men and her fairest women.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII" /><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h4>A NOBLE VAGABOND</h4>
+
+
+<p>The circle of the British Peerage has included many &quot;vagabonds,&quot; some of
+whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any
+one of them all has had the <i>wanderlust</i> in his veins to the same degree
+as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously
+ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been strange if this blue-blooded &quot;rolling-stone&quot; had been
+a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric
+woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who dazzled England by her beauty and
+brilliant intellect, and amused it by her oddities in the days of the
+first two Georges. This grandson of the Duke of Kingston, and
+great-grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich was &quot;his mother's
+boy&quot;&mdash;with much of his mother's physical and mental charms, and more
+than her eccentricities, as his story abundantly proves.</p>
+
+<p>As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where
+his father, the Hon. Sydney <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and
+there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English
+child to be inoculated for the small-pox. Probably, too, it was his
+boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all
+things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.</p>
+
+<p>His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy
+was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled
+against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he
+threw down his Euclid and C&aelig;sar and vanished as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in
+vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for
+his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be
+found anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the
+lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his
+father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying
+fish. &quot;That is the voice of young Montagu,&quot; he exclaimed, and promptly
+despatched his servant to bring the boy to him. The fish-seller
+innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head,
+and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.</p>
+
+<p>For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing
+that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.
+It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>to his
+master's shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice
+and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents
+and to school. Thus ignominiously ended Edward's first adventure, the
+precursor of a hundred others.</p>
+
+<p>He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he
+vanished again&mdash;this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the
+captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and
+consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into
+the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the
+vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the
+peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to
+drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by
+the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the
+prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof.</p>
+
+<p>For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his
+parents; but once more &quot;hope told a flattering tale.&quot; For the third time
+he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor
+working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This
+time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble
+any more about his prodigal son, declaring that &quot;he had made his bed and
+must lie on it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another
+mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought
+him again <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite
+clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home
+and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the
+restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that
+at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we
+find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar,
+who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of
+Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually
+developed into a pillar of the State!</p>
+
+<p>But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was
+destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep
+in debt that he vanished again&mdash;this time to escape from his creditors.
+He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed
+into the gambler and <i>rou&eacute;</i>, dividing his time between the seductive
+poles of the gaming-table and fair women.</p>
+
+<p>His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check
+one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed
+by the entry of a <i>posse</i> of officials into his room, armed with a
+warrant for his imprisonment.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On Sunday, the 31st of October 1751,&quot; Mr Montagu
+     records, &quot;when it was near one in the morning, as I was
+     undressed and going to bed, I heard a person enter my
+     room; and upon turning round and seeing a man I did not
+     know, I asked him calmly <i>what he wanted</i>? His answer was
+     that <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a><i>I must put on my clothes.</i> I began to expostulate
+     upon the motive of his apparition, when a commissary
+     instantly entered the room with a pretty numerous
+     attendance, and told me with great gravity that he was
+     come, by virtue of a warrant for my imprisonment, to
+     carry me to the Grand Chatel&ecirc;t. I requested him again and
+     again to inform me of the crime laid to my charge; but
+     all his answer was, that <i>I must follow him</i>. I begged
+     him to give me leave to write to Lord Albemarle, the
+     English Ambassador, promising to obey the warrant if his
+     Excellency was not pleased to answer for my forthcoming.
+     But the Commissary refused me the use of pen and ink,
+     though he consented that I should send a verbal message
+     to his Excellency, telling me at the same time that he
+     would not wait the return of the messenger, because his
+     orders were to carry me instantly to prison. As
+     resistance under such circumstances must have been
+     unavailable, and might have been blameable, I obeyed the
+     warrant by following the Commissary, after ordering one
+     of my domestics to inform my Lord Albemarle of the
+     treatment I underwent.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I was carried to the Chatel&ecirc;t, where the jailors,
+     hardened by their profession, and brutal for their
+     profit, fastened upon me as upon one of those guilty
+     objects whom they lock up to be reserved for public
+     punishment; and though neither my looks nor my behaviour
+     betrayed the least symptom of guilt, yet I was treated as
+     a condemned criminal. I was thrown into prison, and
+     committed to a set of wretches who bore no character of
+     humanity but its form. My residence&mdash;to speak in the jail
+     dialect&mdash;was in the SECRET, which is no other than the
+     dungeon of the <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>prison, where all the furniture was a
+     wretched mattress and a crazy chair. The weather was
+     cold, and I called for a fire; but I was told I could
+     have none. I was thirsty, and called for some wine and
+     water, or even a draught of water by itself, but was
+     denied it. All the favour I could obtain was a promise to
+     be waited on in the morning; and then was left by myself
+     under a hundred locks and bolts, with a bit of candle,
+     after finding that the words of my jailors were few,
+     their orders peremptory, and their favours unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I continued in this dismal dungeon till the 2nd of
+     November, entirely ignorant of the crime I was accused
+     of; but at nine in the morning of that day, I was carried
+     before a magistrate, where I underwent an examination by
+     which I understood the heads of the charge against me,
+     and which I answered in a manner that ought to have
+     cleared my own innocence.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The story of the charge and trial is a long one; but it can be briefly
+outlined as follows:&mdash;It seems that one, Abraham Paya, a Jew, who,
+disguised as &quot;Mr Roberts,&quot; was staying with a Miss Rose who was not his
+wedded wife, accused Montagu and two of his friends, Mr Taafe and Lord
+Southwell, of making him drunk as a preliminary to inveigling him into
+play and winning 870 louis d'or from him.</p>
+
+<p>As the Jew, whom his losses had sobered, refused to pay, Montagu and his
+associates had compelled him by violence and threats to give them drafts
+for the sums owing to them. Then, knowing that payment would be refused,
+&quot;Roberts&quot; shook the dust <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>of Paris off his feet, turned his back on lady
+and creditors alike, and ran away to Lyons. Whereupon, so said the
+complainant, Montagu and his fellow-thieves had ransacked his baggage
+(which he had foolishly left behind him), and appropriated all his money
+and jewels, to the value of many thousands of livres.</p>
+
+<p>To quote Mr Montagu again, the latter part of the charge was that Mr
+Taafe</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;smashed all the trunks, portmanteaus and drawers
+     belonging to the complainant, from whence he took out in
+     one bag 400 louis d'or, and out of another, to the value
+     of 300 louis d'or in French and Portuguese silver; from
+     another bag, 1200 livres in crown pieces, a pair of
+     brilliant diamond buckles, for which the complainant paid
+     8020 livres to the Sieur Pi&eacute;rre; his own picture set
+     around with diamonds to the amount of 1200 livres ...
+     laces to the amount of 3000 livres, seven or eight
+     women's robes; two brilliant diamond rings, several gold
+     snuff-boxes, a travelling-chest containing his plate and
+     china, and divers other effects, all of which Mr Taafe
+     (one of Montagu's co-defendants) packed up in one box,
+     and, by the help of his footman, carried in a coach to
+     his own apartment. That afterwards Mr Taafe carried Miss
+     Rose and her sister in another coach to his lodgings,
+     where they remained three days, and then sent them to
+     London, under the care of one of his friends.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Fortunately for Montagu, the verdict of the Court was in his favour;
+and, after such an unpleasant experience, he was glad to return to
+England, where, <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>such an adept at quick-changing was he, that we soon
+find him a full-blown Member of Parliament for Bossinery, lightening his
+legislative labours by writing a learned treatise on the rise and fall
+of ancient Republics. Was there ever such a man? Duke's grandson,
+fish-hawker, common sailor, peasant, <i>rou&eacute;</i>, gambler, Member of
+Parliament, scholar&mdash;all <i>r&ocirc;les</i> came equally easily to him; and many
+more just as varied were to follow. It was while thus wearing the halo
+of learning and high respectability that his father died, leaving him a
+substantial income, and a large estate in Yorkshire to his eldest son,
+if he should have one. And now we find him leaving his law-making and
+cultivating letters and science in Italy, further enriched by the guinea
+which was all his mother, Lady Mary, condescended to leave her vagrant
+son. The rest&mdash;an enormous property&mdash;went to his sister, the Countess of
+Bute.</p>
+
+<p>From Italy he went on a long tour through the East, where he seems to
+have played the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of Lothario very effectually. At Alexandria (to
+give only one of his love adventures) he lost his fickle heart to the
+beautiful wife of the Danish Ambassador, whom, under various pretences,
+he induced to leave the coast clear by getting him to go to Holland. The
+husband thus safely out of the way, Montagu proceeded to dispose of him.
+He showed the lady a letter from Holland giving sad details of his
+sudden death, and consoled the bereaved &quot;widow&quot; so well that she
+consented to reward him with her hand and to accompany him to Syria.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>By the time the dead husband had returned to life Montagu was already
+weary of honeymooning, and was thankful to make his escape to Italy,
+free to woo, and, if necessary, to wed again.</p>
+
+<p>We next find this human chameleon at Venice, wearing a beard down to his
+waist, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and drinking water, and
+recounting his adventures to all who cared to hear them. He was an
+Armenian, and played the part to perfection&mdash;until he wearied of it, and
+found another to play. At this time he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I have been a labourer in the fields of Switzerland and
+     Holland, and have not disdained the humble profession of
+     postillion and ploughman. I was a <i>petit maitre</i> at
+     Paris, and an abb&eacute; at Rome. I put on, at Hamburg, the
+     Lutheran ruff, and with a triple chin and a formal
+     countenance I dealt about me the word of God so as to
+     excite the envy of the clergy. My fate was similar to
+     that of a guinea, which at one time is in the hands of a
+     Queen, and at another is in the fob of a greasy
+     Israelite.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>From land to land he wandered, assuming a fresh character in each, and
+thoroughly enjoying them all. During a two years' residence at Venice he
+was visited by the Duke of Hamilton and a Dr Moore, the latter of whom
+gives the following entertaining account of the visit.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He met us,&quot; Dr Moore writes, &quot;at the stairhead, and led
+     us through some apartments furnished in the Venetian
+     manner, into an inner room quite in a different style.
+     There were no chairs, but he <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>desired us to seat
+     ourselves on a sofa, while he placed himself on a cushion
+     on the floor, with his legs crossed, in the Turkish
+     fashion. A young black slave sate by him; and a venerable
+     old man with a long beard served us with coffee. After
+     this collation, some aromatic gums were brought and burnt
+     in a little silver vessel. Mr Montagu held his nose over
+     the steam for some minutes, and snuffed up the perfume
+     with peculiar satisfaction; he afterwards endeavoured to
+     collect the smoke with his hands, spreading and rubbing
+     it carefully along his beard, which hung in hoary
+     ringlets to his girdle. This manner of perfuming the
+     beard seems more cleanly, and rather an improvement upon
+     that used by the Jews in ancient times.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;We had a great conversation with this venerable-looking
+     person, who is, to the last degree, acute, communicative,
+     and entertaining, and in whose discourse and manners are
+     blended the vivacity of a Frenchman with the gravity of a
+     Turk. We found him, however, wonderfully prejudiced in
+     favour of the Turkish characters and manners, which he
+     thinks infinitely preferable to the European, or those of
+     any other nation. He describes the Turks in general as a
+     people of great sense and integrity; the most hospitable,
+     generous, and the happiest of mankind. He talks of
+     returning as soon as possible to Egypt, which he paints
+     as a perfect paradise. Though Mr Montagu hardly ever
+     stirs abroad, he returned the Duke's visit, and as we
+     were not provided with cushions, he sate, while he
+     stayed, upon a sofa with his legs under him, as he had
+     done at his own house. This posture, by long habit, has
+     become the most agreeable to him, and he insists upon its
+     being <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>by far the most natural and convenient; but,
+     indeed, he seems to cherish the same opinion with regard
+     to all customs which prevail among the Turks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was during this interview that Mr Montagu declared: &quot;I have never
+once been guilty of a small folly in the whole course of my
+life&quot;&mdash;probably making the mental reservation that all his follies had
+been great ones. Thus this singular sprig of nobility drifted through
+his kaleidoscopic life, changing his religion as lightly as he changed
+from priest to ploughman, or from debauchee to Armenian storyteller.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever did was the publication of the
+following advertisement, the object of which was evidently to secure the
+large Yorkshire estate devised by his father to any son he might have:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;MATRIMONY.&mdash;A gentleman who hath filled two succeeding
+     seats in Parliament, is near sixty years of age, lives in
+     great splendour and hospitality, and from whom a
+     considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue,
+     hath no objection to marry any lady, provided the party
+     be of genteel birth, polished manners, and about to
+     become a mother. Letters directed to &mdash;&mdash; Brecknock,
+     Esq., at Wills's Coffeehouse, facing the Admiralty, will
+     be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every
+     possible mark of respect.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At this time Montagu was the father of three children&mdash;two sons (one a
+black boy of thirteen, who <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>was his favourite companion) and a daughter;
+but they all lacked the sanction of the altar.</p>
+
+<p>A lady answering these delicate requirements was actually found, and
+Montagu would probably have graduated as a respectable husband and
+father of another man's child had not his vagabond career been cut
+tragically short. One day, when he was dining at Padua with Romney, the
+famous artist, a partridge-bone lodged in the old man's throat, and
+refused to budge. He was suffocating; his face grew purple&mdash;almost
+black. In terrified haste a priest was summoned to administer the last
+consolations of religion; but the dying man would have none of him. When
+he was asked in what faith he wished to leave the world, he gasped, &quot;A
+good Mussulman, I hope.&quot; A few moments later Edward Wortley Montagu, who
+had played more parts on the world's stage than almost any other man who
+ever lived, was a corpse. This grandson of a Duke had begun his life of
+adventure as a fish-hawker, and ended it as &quot;a good Mussulman.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX" /><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h4>FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS</h4>
+
+
+<p>Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
+third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
+Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
+coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
+allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
+the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
+with one foot in the grave, when the &quot;nightingale&quot; of the London
+theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
+her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
+twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
+Channel.</p>
+
+<p>Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
+him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
+Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
+     me an account of the excessive <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>sufferings he had passed
+     through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
+     he had ended his domestic affairs through such
+     difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
+     of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
+     the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
+     (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
+     only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
+     since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
+     her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
+     of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
+     travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
+     has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
+     thing, persuade him to spare himself.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
+for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
+Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
+his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
+more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
+the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
+but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
+and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous <i>Beggar's Opera</i> that pointed
+the way to three of them.</p>
+
+<p>Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
+Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
+might&mdash;<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>indeed, he could not have failed to&mdash;have made the acquaintance
+of a &quot;little witch&quot; (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
+destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
+dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
+Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
+favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
+coffee-house.</p>
+
+<p>She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
+with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
+drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
+all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
+take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
+her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
+her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in <i>The Orphan</i>. Her
+<i>d&eacute;but</i> was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
+wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
+Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
+gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
+over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
+laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
+than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.</p>
+
+<p>Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
+<i>Beaux's Stratagem</i> with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>brilliant success she was offered the part of
+Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
+the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
+doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
+intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
+filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
+painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
+forth&mdash;&quot;The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum.&quot; And the
+news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
+tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
+of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
+no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
+the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
+Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.</p>
+
+<p>As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
+opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
+cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
+Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.</p>
+
+<p>Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
+who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
+in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
+child the sweetness of her voice <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>and the grace of her movements charmed
+all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
+and when only sixteen she made a brilliant <i>d&eacute;but</i> as Polly, recalling
+all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. &quot;So
+pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
+the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
+that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage.&quot; It is little wonder
+that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
+personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
+fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
+brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
+her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.</p>
+
+<p>Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
+London was losing its head over still another &quot;Polly Peachum&quot;&mdash;Catherine
+Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
+Stephens, who like her predecessors in the <i>r&ocirc;le</i>, sang divinely even as
+a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
+fame at a bound, as Mandano in <i>Artaxerxes</i>. One triumph succeeded
+another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
+<i>Beggar's Opera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
+too much wedded to her <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
+even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
+verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
+became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
+The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
+her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
+a year of their nuptial-day.</p>
+
+<p>Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet&mdash;and before&mdash;many an actress
+has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
+who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
+the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
+potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
+premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
+Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
+gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
+possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
+girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
+make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
+Bickerstaff's <i>Love in a Village.</i></p>
+
+<p>So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
+made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in <i>She Stoops to
+Conquer</i>; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
+of theatre-going London; <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>while her refinement, at that time by no means
+common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
+circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
+sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
+his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
+statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
+fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
+Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
+of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
+at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
+persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
+placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
+Grosvenor Square house.</p>
+
+<p>For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
+splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
+George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
+blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
+beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
+Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
+girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
+buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
+of things theatrical was in her veins; and while <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>she was still playing
+with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
+Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
+won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
+a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
+London and to a wider sphere of activity.</p>
+
+<p>From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
+     the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
+     genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
+     make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
+     juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
+     subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
+     very long family, to which I have given a decided
+     negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
+     seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
+     is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
+     the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
+     forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
+     companions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
+gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
+discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
+ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
+the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
+firmament of the drama, winning as much <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>popularity off as on the stage,
+before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
+sought it&mdash;Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
+distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as &quot;my Lady,&quot; and to
+see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
+the second Earl of Listowel.</p>
+
+<p>Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
+another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
+Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
+cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
+at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
+actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
+Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
+flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
+it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
+theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
+time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
+to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in <i>The Provoked
+Husband</i>; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
+been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
+not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
+beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, &quot;combined the stateliness
+of Juno with the gentler <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>and beauty of a Venus,&quot; made her a Queen of
+Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
+left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
+blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
+Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
+stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
+record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
+had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
+nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
+enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-252-t.jpg" alt="HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS" title="HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS" />
+</div>
+
+<p>For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
+with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
+theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
+the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in <i>The Rivals</i>, to her farewell
+appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
+career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
+chronicler,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
+     her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
+     fascinations.</p></div>
+
+<p>That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
+army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
+a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
+money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
+had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
+though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
+have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
+used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
+into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
+generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
+was too good.</p>
+
+<p>One day&mdash;it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale&mdash;Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
+came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
+diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
+Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
+its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: &quot;How happy I should be with such
+a splendid piece of jewellery!&quot; &quot;What is it worth?&quot; enquired her
+husband. &quot;I could not possibly part with it for less than &pound;15,000,&quot; the
+jeweller replied. &quot;Bring me a pen and ink,&quot; was the only remark of the
+doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
+delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore<br /></span>
+<span>Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this devotion&mdash;idolatry almost&mdash;lasted as long as life itself,
+reaching its climax in his will, in <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>which he left his actress-wife
+every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to &pound;900,000, &quot;for her
+sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
+deduction of a single legacy to any other person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
+of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
+retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
+Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
+Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
+her one June day in 1827.</p>
+
+<p>For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
+her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
+charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
+alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
+home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
+Queens.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory,&quot; Mr
+     Howitt records, &quot;her splendid f&ecirc;tes to Royalty, in some
+     of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
+     bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
+     trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
+     music.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
+proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
+she <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>possessed, a fortune now swollen to &pound;1,800,000, to Miss Angela
+Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
+a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
+proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
+vast wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
+stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
+Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
+into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX" /><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h4>A PEASANT COUNTESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
+traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
+which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
+the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
+under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
+was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
+of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.</p>
+
+<p>He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
+thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
+twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
+village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
+pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
+storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
+handsomely. &quot;I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on,&quot; added the
+weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
+to offer him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>Very well,&quot; said the farmer, relenting. &quot;Come in, and we'll do the
+best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
+out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that.&quot; And a few
+minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
+kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
+overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
+of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
+travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
+proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
+the man he was thus &quot;entertaining unawares,&quot; or all that was to come
+from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
+so entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
+man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
+the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
+his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
+and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
+their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
+famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
+Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
+<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;he had four places of residence&mdash;his lodgings at Court,
+     his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
+     his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
+     to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
+     London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
+     without counting those who attended him in public.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
+     tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
+     always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
+     Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
+     more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
+     royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
+     Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
+     cost between &pound;1,000 and &pound;2,000), the only wonder is that
+     his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
+     leave his son &pound;25,000 in money and valuable effects,
+     besides &pound;4,000 a year in landed estates.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
+raised to Earldoms&mdash;of Exeter and Salisbury&mdash;on the same day.</p>
+
+<p>Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms&mdash;that of
+Exeter&mdash;and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
+although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
+his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
+the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
+married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>Miss Vernon,
+who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
+far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
+liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
+months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.</p>
+
+<p>Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
+a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
+determined that if ever he took another wife she should be &quot;a plain,
+homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
+her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
+Queen.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
+knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
+&quot;beggar-maid&quot; who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
+not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
+could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
+of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
+village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
+his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
+was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
+of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
+of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>summers,
+with a complexion of &quot;cream and roses,&quot; with a wealth of brown hair, and
+lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
+good-looking stranger.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
+responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
+following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
+showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
+and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
+a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
+spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
+pay well for the hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
+pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
+they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
+were halcyon days for the world-weary man&mdash;delightful days of sketching
+in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
+spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
+the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
+Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
+butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
+outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
+heads in glory.</p>
+
+<p>To Sarah he was known as &quot;Mr Jones&quot;; and to her innocent mind it never
+occurred that he could be <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>other than the painter he professed to be.
+The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
+pleasant man who always gave them a cheery &quot;good-day,&quot; and gossiped with
+them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
+connected with him, all agreed. &quot;Painter chaps&quot; were notoriously poor,
+and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
+he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
+Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
+doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
+must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
+coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
+relieved of their valuables.</p>
+
+<p>Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
+village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
+house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a &quot;mint o' money.&quot; But Mr
+Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
+than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
+of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
+&quot;beggar-maid,&quot; and happiness was at last within his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
+good lady was indignant. &quot;Marry Sarah!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;What, to a fine
+gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>But the farmer for once put his foot down. &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;he shall
+marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
+too, and plenty of money to keep her?&quot; And thus it came to pass that one
+October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
+put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
+a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
+altar by her &quot;highwayman&quot; bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the
+fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh
+Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded,
+and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even
+appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while
+under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the
+village gossips, &quot;quite the lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this
+idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he
+had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the
+world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of
+peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the
+coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take
+them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the
+&quot;baubles,&quot; and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had
+turned his back?</p>
+
+<p>The struggle between duty and inclination was <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>long and bitter; but in
+the end duty carried the day. He would go to &quot;Burghley House by Stamford
+Town,&quot; and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his
+wife he merely said: &quot;To-morrow we must start on a journey to
+Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together,&quot; a
+proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see
+something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak next morning &quot;Mr Jones&quot; said good-bye to his kind hosts and
+relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting
+his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant
+Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they
+rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to
+the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some
+modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure
+artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he
+not her hero, one of &quot;Nature's gentlemen,&quot; and as such the equal of any
+man in the land?</p>
+
+<p>At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days,
+they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at
+sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, &quot;Oh, what a
+beautiful house!&quot; &quot;Yes,&quot; answered her husband, reining in his horse to
+enjoy the view; &quot;it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
+Sally, to be its mistress?&quot; Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
+&quot;Only fancy <i>me</i>,&quot; she said, &quot;<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>mistress of such a noble house! It's too
+funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
+live in it!&quot; &quot;I am so glad you like it, darling,&quot; answered her husband,
+as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; &quot;for it
+is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you&mdash;well, you are my
+Countess&mdash;and my Queen.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'<br /></span>
+<span>She believed him wild, but his words were truth,<br /></span>
+<span>For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, &quot;blow his horn with a
+lordly air&quot;; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
+Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Many a gallant gay domestic<br /></span>
+<span>Bow before him at the door;<br /></span>
+<span>And they speak in gentle murmur<br /></span>
+<span>When they answer to his call,<br /></span>
+<span>While he treads with footsteps firmer<br /></span>
+<span>Leading on from hall to hall.<br /></span>
+<span>And while now she wanders blindly,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor the meaning can divine,<br /></span>
+<span>Proudly turns he round and kindly,<br /></span>
+<span>'All of that is mine and thine.'&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
+chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
+army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
+county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
+by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
+heroine.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
+splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
+dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
+bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
+transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
+roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, &quot;like a lily
+drooping, she bowed down her head and died,&quot; tenderly and lovingly
+nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
+promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
+daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond&mdash;thus mingling the peasant blood
+of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot;&mdash;and survived
+until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable
+Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of
+Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic
+beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by &quot;Mr
+Jones, the highwayman,&quot; when George the Third was King.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI" /><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was
+already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to
+kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke
+contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere
+squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than
+Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry
+VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with
+ill-gotten gold, and paid for his enterprise with his head when the
+eighth Henry set himself to the paying off of old scores. His father,
+the knight, was that John Dudley, King Henry's trusted friend and
+executor of his will, Admiral and Earl Marshal of England, whose
+splendid gifts and boundless ambition won a dukedom for him, and made
+him for a time more powerful than his King.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-266-t.jpg" alt="ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER" title="ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Such was the parentage of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's
+fifth son, who inherited, with his grandfather's scheming brain and
+plausible <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>tongue, the ambition and love of splendour which made his
+father the most brilliant subject of two kings. And this great, if
+dangerous heritage was not long in manifesting itself in the young
+lordling, who was destined to add to his family's story a chapter more
+romantic and dazzling than that of which his father was the hero.</p>
+
+<p>As a boy in the schoolroom he was quick to show gifts of mind almost
+phenomenal in one so young. Latin and Italian, mathematics and abstruse
+sciences came as easily to this scion of the Dudleys as reading and
+arithmetic to less-dowered boys. And with this precocity of mind he
+developed physical graces and skill no less remarkable until, by the
+time he was well in his 'teens, few grown men could ride a horse, couch
+a lance, or speed an arrow with such skill as he.</p>
+
+<p>At the Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome
+boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
+promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
+still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
+Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
+who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
+precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
+accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
+the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
+as best man.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it was really a love-match or not is <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>open to doubt, perhaps;
+for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
+bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
+exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
+XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
+knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
+was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
+to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
+son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
+unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
+which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
+soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
+in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
+blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
+Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
+a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
+the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
+<i>entourage</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
+unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
+a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
+Edward, on his death-bed, to <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>nominate as his successor; and
+Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
+insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
+scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
+his daring project failed is well-known history&mdash;how the Princess Mary
+on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
+intercept her; how she equally outwitted Northumberland and his army,
+and made her triumphant entry into London as Queen; and how her
+vengeance fell on those who had sought to snatch the crown from her.</p>
+
+<p>From the Duke and Lady Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had
+conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided
+ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband
+were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those
+who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious
+hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of
+their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll
+disconsolately on the Tower leads by way of melancholy exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Robert, it is said, found many of these hours of duress far from
+unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the
+Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the
+throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there
+were many sweet and stolen meetings between the fair young Princess and
+the captive knight, when bribed warders turned a <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>blind eye on their
+dallying. And rumour even goes so far as to speak of secret nuptials,
+the fruits of which were, in late years, to bear such high names as my
+Lord of Essex and Francis Bacon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fairy tales,&quot; no doubt; but, stripped of such ornamental embellishment,
+there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that
+Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in
+whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should
+wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant to her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>A year of such pleasantly-qualified captivity, and Robert Dudley was a
+free man again, sent to purge his treason, by a Queen, indulgent to his
+youth and it may be to his good looks, by wielding a sword in the war
+then raging between Spain and France; and here he acquitted himself so
+valiantly for Mary's Spanish allies that, on his return in 1558, covered
+with glory, the ban on the Dudleys was removed; and Robert and his
+brothers and sisters were restored to all the rank and rights their
+father's treason had forfeited.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later Queen Mary died; and when Elizabeth ascended the
+throne, Dudley's sun burst into splendour. The romance which had been
+cradled amidst the fearful joys of prison-meetings, was now to flourish
+under vastly-changed conditions. That the new Queen had lost her heart
+to the handsome and accomplished cavalier, whose prowess in war had set
+the seal on the favour won by his graces <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>of person and mind and his
+ingratiating charm, there can be small doubt; and as little that Dudley,
+forgetful of the wife left to pine in solitude in her Norfolk home,
+returned the devotion of the lady, now his Sovereign, who had made his
+Tower prison a palace of delight.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Elizabeth make any concealment of her passion. She was a Queen;
+and none should question her right to smile on any man, be he subject or
+king. Before she had been a year on the Throne, Dudley was proudly
+wearing the coveted Garter; was a Privy Councillor and Master of Her
+Majesty's horse. She gave him fat lands and monasteries to add to the
+large possessions with which her brother Edward had endowed his
+favourite; and wherever she went on her Royal progresses, Robert Dudley
+rode gallantly at her right hand, a King in all but name. And no Queen
+ever had more splendid escort.</p>
+
+<p>He was, indeed, a man after her own heart, the <i>beau ideal</i> of a
+cavalier; a lover, like herself, of pomp and splendour, a past-master of
+the arts of pageantry and pleasure, and the owner of a tongue as skilled
+in the language of adroit flattery as in the use of honeyed words. Such
+was Robert Dudley who loved his Queen; and such the Queen who returned
+undisguised admiration for flattery, and love for love.</p>
+
+<p>That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's
+hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to
+press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her.
+Her hand was her own as much as <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>her Crown&mdash;she would dispose of it as
+she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her
+people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as
+indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could
+afford to smile at them all&mdash;and she did.</p>
+
+<p>And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the
+Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in
+Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then,
+and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to
+wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it;
+and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for
+deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice.
+Dudley's wife had been poisoned&mdash;by her husband, it was said with bated
+breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish
+Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that &quot;Lord
+Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a
+staircase.&quot; And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While
+Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his
+devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a
+staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.</p>
+
+<p>How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the
+questions that passed fear-fully <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>from mouth to mouth, from end to end
+of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on
+what must always remain more or less a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart
+(for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose
+early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and
+suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was
+staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair
+at Abingdon. &quot;As for me,&quot; she said, &quot;I shall be quite happy alone. I
+have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are
+enjoying themselves, even if I cannot.&quot; Eagerly responsive to such a
+welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the
+hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy
+Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose
+suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing,
+and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants
+returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.</p>
+
+<p>Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either
+conclusion, and gave as their verdict &quot;accidental death.&quot; That Amy
+Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret
+to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release
+death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting
+this <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley
+as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed
+one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall
+succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose
+that Amy Robsart by her own act&mdash;wilful, at the dictate of a brain
+disordered by grief, or accidental&mdash;removed the barrier to her husband's
+passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not
+actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no
+pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.</p>
+
+<p>His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the
+unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent
+than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to
+claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in
+no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to
+distraction by her caprices. One moment she would &quot;rap him on the
+knuckles,&quot; only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would
+flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection;
+the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing
+the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one
+Royal offer of marriage after another&mdash;now it was Philip, the Spanish
+King, now His Majesty of <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>Sweden&mdash;canvassing their respective merits and
+charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured
+to ridicule his august rivals.</p>
+
+<p>She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a
+match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a
+worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long
+dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester
+was no unfit husband for her &quot;Royal sister&quot;; certainly a much more
+possible personage than &quot;Sir Robert&quot; could have been. But she never
+intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was
+relieved&mdash;though she affected to be angry&mdash;when news came that Mary had
+chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's
+gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and
+power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced
+her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a
+princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her
+deputy&mdash;to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in
+her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
+the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the &quot;country squire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
+wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. &quot;I am
+spoken <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>of,&quot; she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, &quot;as if I
+were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
+because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
+young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
+they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
+it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
+calumny will not fasten on me for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
+allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
+which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
+once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
+from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.</p>
+
+<p>To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
+indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
+gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
+to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
+cunningly-devised entertainments&mdash;from the splendid pageantry of her
+welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
+bear-baiting&mdash;all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
+most gorgeous of Queens had never known.</p>
+
+<p>Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
+affections of his Sovereign&mdash;a pre-eminence which was never seriously
+endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>transferred to other
+women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
+outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
+she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
+Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
+aroused. &quot;If a man may flirt,&quot; she would mockingly say, &quot;why not a
+woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?&quot; And, of course, to this
+question there was no other answer for my lord than to &quot;kiss and be
+friends,&quot; and to promise to be more discreet in the future.</p>
+
+<p>But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
+all his vows could not long be true even to his Queen. He lost his heart
+to the lovely wife of Lord Sheffield; and when her husband died
+conveniently and mysteriously (it was said that Leicester, with his
+doctor's help, removed him by a dose of poison) it was not long before
+he wedded her in secret, only just in time to make her child, whose
+name, &quot;Robert Dudley,&quot; made no concealment of his parentage, legitimate.
+Before the child was many months old, however, the father was caught in
+the toils of another charmer, my Lady Essex, and after deserting his
+wife and, it is said, unsuccessfully trying to poison her, he made Lady
+Essex his Countess, in defiance of that secret wedding with Sheffield's
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that
+attended it, reached the Queen's ears, her rage knew no bounds. She
+vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his
+head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>only when her
+anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and
+she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her &quot;sweet
+Robin&quot; was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to
+resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies
+seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty
+and his love-making had ever done.</p>
+
+<p>These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed. When, in
+1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the
+struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the
+expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a
+quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and
+his fellow Princess-captive's side to give his sword its baptism of
+blood in Picardy. At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the
+great English Earl and friend of England's Queen was received with the
+rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.
+All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and
+before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at
+Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and
+insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land
+he had come to save.</p>
+
+<p>Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester's ambition to resist.
+Without troubling to consult his <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>Sovereign at home he accepted the
+&quot;throne&quot; that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had
+elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news
+of his promotion. Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed
+by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had
+heard news of her favourite's presumption, and her Royal anger blazed
+into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without
+consulting her pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the
+Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out
+the vials of her wrath on Leicester's head.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been
+     used,&quot; she wrote, &quot;you shall by the bearer understand. We
+     could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in
+     experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+     extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of
+     this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken
+     our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in
+     honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and
+     commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart,
+     you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey
+     and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you
+     to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will
+     answer the contrary at your uttermost peril.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>One can imagine Leicester's feelings on reading such words of Royal
+anger and reproach from the woman who had always shown such indulgence
+to him. His impulse was to resign his governorship <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>forthwith, and to
+hasten back to London to beg forgiveness on his knees; but before he
+could give effect to this decision he had learned that Burghley had
+interceded for him with the Queen to such effect that, supported by a
+petition from the States-General, he was to be allowed to retain his
+office with Elizabeth's reluctant consent.</p>
+
+<p>A few months of rule, however, were sufficient to disillusionise the
+Dutchmen. Leicester proved as incapable to govern a country, as to lead
+an army. His arrogance, his outspoken contempt for his subjects, his
+incompetence and his capricious temper, so thoroughly disgusted the
+nation that had welcomed him with open arms, that he was asked to resign
+his office as unanimously as he had been invited to accept it; and in
+November of 1587, the Earl returned ignominiously to England, eager to
+repair his damaged credit by at least making peace with his Queen.</p>
+
+<p>To his delight he was received with as much cordiality as if he had done
+naught at all to earn his Lady's displeasure. Elizabeth had undoubtedly
+missed her favourite, her right-hand man. She had in fact become so
+accustomed to him that she could not be long happy unless he was at her
+side; and it was by her side that he rode and shared the acclamations
+with which her soldiers greeted her when she paid that historic visit to
+the camp at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada.</p>
+
+<p>But Leicester's adventurous life was now drifting to its close. His
+health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588,
+he left <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking
+healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many letters to
+the Queen.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I most humbly beseech your Majesty,&quot; he wrote, &quot;to
+     pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending
+     to know how my gracious Lady doth and what ease of her
+     late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this
+     world I do pray for is for her to have good health and
+     long life. For my own poor case I continue still your
+     medicine, and find it amend much better than with any
+     other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find
+     perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my
+     wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation,
+     I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycott
+     this Thursday morning ready to take on my journey. By
+     your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant,&mdash;
+     R. LEYCESTER.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But the Earl was not destined to reach the baths. His course was run. He
+got as far on his journey as Coventry; and there, on the 4th of
+September, he drew his last breath. Some said that his end was hastened
+by a dose of poison administered by his Countess, eager to pursue
+unchecked her intrigue with Christopher Blount; others that she
+accidentally gave him a draught from a bottle of poison which he had
+designed for her. But neither suspicion seems to have any evidence to
+support it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus perished, little past the prime of life, a man who more than any
+other of his day drained the cup of pride and pleasure, to find its
+dregs exceeding bitter to the taste.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII" /><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h4>TWO IRISH BEAUTIES</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high
+excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of
+Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
+man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
+to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
+pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
+     like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
+     other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
+     drawn over them.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
+ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
+Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
+happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
+life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
+the time <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
+modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
+mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
+first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
+statement of fact. The young &quot;bloods&quot; of the capital were their slaves
+to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
+gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
+with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
+is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
+hugged each in turn, declared that she &quot;had never seen anything half so
+sweet&quot;; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
+the majesty of their beauty.</p>
+
+<p>It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
+they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
+birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
+danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
+and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
+on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
+sight.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;With Betty as with Maria,&quot; says Mr Frankfort Moore, &quot;the
+     art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
+     languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
+     movements of her feet and lithe <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>body, and the curves
+     made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
+     everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the
+     coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her
+     movements&mdash;all the graces and charms inwoven that make up
+     the poem of the minuet&mdash;became visible by the art of that
+     exquisite girl, until all other dancers became
+     common-place by comparison.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters
+were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests
+they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried
+away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot,
+appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected
+their rescue.</p>
+
+<p>But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs
+Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in
+their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl&mdash;certainly not an
+Irish squire or impoverished lord&mdash;was a fitting match for her
+daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with
+their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across
+the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike
+in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly
+brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a
+pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes
+and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less
+radiant than her dashing sister.<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Each was,&quot; to quote another description, &quot;divinely tall,
+     with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity
+     enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head.
+     Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with
+     their long, slender tapering fingers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in
+the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping
+lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory
+pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a
+gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took
+London by storm, and who &quot;made more noise than any of their predecessors
+since the days of Helen,&quot; in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was
+immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were
+the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house.
+Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision,
+and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one
+accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad &quot;they were beset by a
+curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters
+fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another
+occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from
+the mob.&quot; When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found
+themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>spectators, struggling
+to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the &quot;hem of their
+garments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was
+at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at
+bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited
+Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were &quot;lionising&quot;
+the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the
+apartment known as the &quot;Beauty Room,&quot; with the significant remark,
+&quot;<i>These</i> are the beauties, gentlemen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all
+the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were
+at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a
+coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted
+her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured
+wooer.</p>
+
+<p>Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, &quot;a grave
+young lord&quot; of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled
+himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria
+gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown
+into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to
+     Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite
+     beauty and of those accomplishments <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>which will add Grace
+     and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the
+     ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat
+     at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was
+beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by
+the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's
+Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour
+which was readily granted to &quot;the most beautiful woman in England,&quot;
+Thus, on one occasion, we are told,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange
+     procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone
+     to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front
+     marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped
+     the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband
+     and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke,
+     while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of
+discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age,
+was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. &quot;Are
+you not sorry,&quot; His Majesty enquired, &quot;that there are to be no more
+masquerades?&quot; &quot;Indeed, no,&quot; was the answer. &quot;I am quite weary of them
+and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really
+anxious to see, and that is a <i>coronation</i>!&quot; This unflattering wish she
+was not <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish
+beauty by a fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She
+spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and
+embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in
+adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which
+the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a
+wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching f&ecirc;te.
+The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots
+of the size of a shilling. &quot;And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr
+Selwyn?&quot; she archly asked. &quot;Why,&quot; he replied, &quot;you will look like change
+for a guinea.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-288-t.jpg" alt="MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY" title="MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating
+period of her vanity.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Yesterday after chapel,&quot; she writes, &quot;the Duchess
+     brought home Lady Coventry to feast me&mdash;and a feast she
+     was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome,
+     notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month;
+     she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence
+     that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made
+     for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it
+     trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced
+     handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine
+     mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that
+     just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in
+     the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended;
+     frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied
+     with pink and green ribbon&mdash;a head-dress that would<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a> have
+     charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and
+     prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at
+     the corners, but fine for all that.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by
+Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was
+splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom
+long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride
+consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of
+pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was
+doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and,
+with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last
+dregs.</p>
+
+<p>She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its
+decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave
+smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable
+end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the
+murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and
+     most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement
+     of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what
+     surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but
+     one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been
+     ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She
+     was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of
+     eyes' with her former flame, <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>Lord Bolingbroke, an
+     unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to
+     make her the victim of his passion.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Her levities,&quot; says a chronicler of the time, &quot;were very
+     publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to
+     her which were greatly believed. However, they were never
+     brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped
+     with only a little private scandal, which generally falls
+     to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is
+     envied by the rest of her sex.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in
+her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Until the last few days,&quot; says Mr Horace Bleackley, &quot;the
+     pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her
+     hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of
+     her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was
+     unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had
+     vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for
+     the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn,
+     permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken
+     cheeks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly
+realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on
+October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last
+homage to her in Pirton churchyard.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger
+sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic
+conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the
+annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man
+who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had
+heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.
+The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very
+unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had
+drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he
+should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical
+wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful
+excesses.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable
+rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade
+that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this
+jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of
+being introduced he was, Walpole says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my
+     Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at
+     pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank
+     nor his own cards, which were of &pound;300 each. He soon lost
+     a thousand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom
+she was to marry&mdash;a man <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>who, even in the thraldom of a violent love,
+could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed
+was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our
+entertaining gossip again,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while
+     her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found
+     himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The
+     doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or
+     ring&mdash;the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At
+     last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain,
+     at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
+     The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty
+     has had its effect.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should
+have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had
+achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen
+had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter
+would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was
+&quot;debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person,&quot; he was her very
+slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have
+borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed,
+have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a &quot;dilapidated
+farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland,&quot; so naturally did <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>she take to her
+new <i>r&ocirc;le</i>. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her
+curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the
+     drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at
+     her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her
+     chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre
+     when it is known that she will be there.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride
+to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal
+bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire
+route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds
+struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story
+had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When
+they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, &quot;seven hundred people,&quot; we
+are told, &quot;sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the
+Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
+that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
+strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
+cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
+could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The Duke of Hamilton,&quot; says Walpole, to whom the world
+     is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
+     sisters, &quot;is the abstract of Scotch pride. <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>He and the
+     Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
+     their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
+     table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
+     the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed,&quot; the genial old
+     chatterbox adds, &quot;one wonder how they could get anybody,
+     either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
+     all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
+     guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
+     to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence&mdash;the
+     insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
+     is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
+     life.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
+with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
+&quot;dear, dirty&quot; city she had known in the days of her poverty and
+obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
+house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
+budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
+triumph. &quot;No Queen,&quot; she said, &quot;could have been more handsomely
+treated.&quot; Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
+glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
+could win a smile from the &quot;darlint Duchess&quot; who had brought so much
+glory to old Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
+foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
+but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
+life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
+three months <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
+Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
+fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
+he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the
+only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John
+Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of
+Argyll; and she gave her hand to &quot;handsome Jack&quot; within twelve months of
+weeping over the grave of her first husband.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It was a match,&quot; Walpole says, &quot;that would not disgrace
+     Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in
+     some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most
+     pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they
+     could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English
+     weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life,
+     when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their
+     subjects and their sheep.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her
+second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.
+Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her
+next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel
+Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of
+stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time
+her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As she is not quite so charming as she was,&quot; says
+     Walpole, &quot;I do not know whether it is not better<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a> to
+     change her title than to retain that which puts one in
+     mind of her beauty.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social
+prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte;
+and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess
+Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband,
+George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of
+the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs
+of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon
+which the frightened young Princess remarked, &quot;My dear Duchess, you may
+laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me.&quot; Her
+life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of
+roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the
+beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she
+contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually
+written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of
+its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, &quot;Though <i>I</i>
+wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
+Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
+Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
+drawing-room and announced his name,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the Duchess,&quot; he says, &quot;who was sitting with her
+     daughter and some other ladies, took not the least<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>
+     notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
+     coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
+     world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
+     had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
+     Duke.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
+she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
+deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
+to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous &quot;I fancy you must be a
+Methodist.&quot; In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
+had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
+famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
+doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
+hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
+Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, &quot;I know
+nothing of Mr Boswell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
+Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
+of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
+years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
+behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.</p>
+
+<p>To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
+of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
+others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
+Argyll.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII" /><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS</h4>
+
+
+<p>A century and a half ago the &quot;Douglas cause&quot; was a subject of hot debate
+from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
+and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
+families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
+generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
+the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
+into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
+Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
+ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
+he was nothing of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. &quot;Sir, sir,&quot;
+Johnson said to his friend and biographer, &quot;don't be too severe upon the
+gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
+was <i>not</i> his mother.&quot; &quot;Whereupon,&quot; Boswell says, &quot;he roused my zeal so
+much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>nothing of the
+cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case.&quot; For seven years
+the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
+and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
+pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
+remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
+throne.</p>
+
+<p>Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
+Boswell declares, &quot;shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
+foundation,&quot; the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
+Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed&mdash;a girl who
+combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
+vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
+rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
+was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
+Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
+estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
+one day inherit.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
+had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
+evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
+of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
+Aberdeen and Panrnure, <i>cum multis aliis.</i> However this may be, we know
+that she had several love <a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>romances; and that one at least nearly led to
+the altar while Jean was still a &quot;wee bit lassie.&quot; The favoured suitor
+was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
+man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, &quot;of mean
+understanding and meaner habits,&quot; but who was at least devoted to her
+ladyship, and in many ways a desirable <i>parti</i>. The Duchess of Buccleuch
+was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
+Jean Douglas, &quot;a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
+saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her&quot;; and, no doubt, the
+fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
+the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
+was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
+Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court&mdash;a letter in which the
+Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
+a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
+that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
+humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
+which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
+that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
+however tempting.</p>
+
+<p>During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
+appears to have lived alone at <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
+she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
+and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
+hospitality&mdash;paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
+Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
+eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
+her. That the Duke, who is described as &quot;a person of the most wretched
+intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
+unforgiving,&quot; was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
+which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
+Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
+ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
+especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the poor Duke,&quot; to quote Woodrow, &quot;who for many years
+     had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
+     persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
+     in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
+     stabbed him as he was sleeping.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
+was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
+although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
+delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
+warrant to &quot;confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
+and <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>take possession of it,&quot; he was generous enough to make her a
+liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
+&quot;they would heir his estate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
+Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
+enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
+unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
+insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
+&quot;villain of the play,&quot; makes his appearance on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
+repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
+then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
+later, to &quot;captivate my heart at the first sight of her.&quot; She was,
+moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
+with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
+handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
+suitors; and the &quot;Colonel,&quot; who had never won any army rank higher than
+that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
+for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
+gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
+opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
+cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him &quot;one of the
+worst of men&mdash;a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>villain&quot;&mdash;and his
+career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
+description.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
+test&mdash;and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
+     telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
+     came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
+     acknowledge it publicly if I chose. <i>Enfin</i>, I was
+     allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
+     months after she honoured me with her hand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
+some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
+least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
+hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors&mdash;a man broken
+in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
+defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
+would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
+manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
+union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
+furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
+of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
+withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
+nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, &quot;appearing,&quot; we are told, &quot;at least
+fifteen years younger than she really was&quot;; and thus might well have
+looked for a <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a>eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
+add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
+brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
+had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
+the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
+favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
+small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
+August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
+lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
+retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
+female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
+belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
+to her man of business, Mr Haldane:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
+     the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
+     certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
+     never should have once thought of doing it; but since
+     this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
+     it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
+     backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
+     something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
+     therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
+     which has proved more happy than I could well have
+     expected.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
+assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish &quot;to do something for her
+family,&quot; which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
+Douglas lands&mdash;an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
+must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.</p>
+
+<p>Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
+Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Li&egrave;ge, and many another Continental town appear
+in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
+Jean's <i>maitre d'hotel</i>, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
+every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
+and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
+flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
+succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
+shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to &quot;lend to my Lady Jean, who
+is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
+remittances.&quot; Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
+admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
+learning from her lips that he is &quot;the man alive I would choose to be
+most obliged by.&quot; Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
+keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
+about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
+addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
+while her husband stakes his <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a>golden louis on the green cloth and
+drinks costly wines.</p>
+
+<p>Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
+devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
+her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
+Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
+must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I can assure your Grace,&quot; his lordship writes, &quot;she does
+     great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
+     respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
+     acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
+     marks of an only brother to an only sister.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
+Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
+present: &quot;Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
+virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
+going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister&mdash;I believe
+she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
+woman in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the very time&mdash;so inconsistent was this singular woman&mdash;that Lord
+Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
+brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
+Lady Wigton, she declared with tears <a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>that it was an &quot;infamous story
+raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
+against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
+pension&quot;; and she begged Lady Wigton &quot;when she went to England to
+contradict it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
+supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
+wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
+she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
+had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
+escaping&mdash;<i>unless</i> the birth of a child might soften her brother's
+heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
+years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
+critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
+coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
+to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
+than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
+hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
+and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
+years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir&mdash;or &quot;to make
+assurance doubly sure,&quot; in Lady Jean's case&mdash;heirs.</p>
+
+<p>As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
+order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
+since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a>she was
+then living, were &quot;as ignorant as brutes.&quot; And so to the French capital
+she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
+public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
+been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
+the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
+the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
+written by Mrs Hewit, &quot;produced two lovely boys,&quot; one of whom was so
+weak and puny that the doctor &quot;begged it might be sent to the country as
+soon as possible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
+such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
+trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
+mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
+begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
+the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
+imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
+in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
+wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
+contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
+would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
+proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
+neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
+<a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a>taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
+lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
+without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
+place.</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
+declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
+Brune, a nurse&mdash;but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
+them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
+made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
+infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
+spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
+that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
+them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
+Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child&mdash;a puny infant,
+but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
+The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
+Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
+the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
+Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
+Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
+the Colonel <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a>at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
+proved that a &quot;foreign gentleman,&quot; exactly answering his description,
+had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
+peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?</p>
+
+<p>To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
+later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
+children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
+in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
+birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
+no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
+visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.</p>
+
+<p>On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
+that she had been blessed with &quot;two boys,&quot; one of which she begged his
+permission to call by his name&mdash;a letter which only had the effect of
+rousing His Grace's &quot;high passion and displeasure,&quot; with a threat to
+stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
+was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
+trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
+journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
+the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
+time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
+purchased from its parents in Paris by a &quot;strange monsieur&quot; who, if not
+the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it <a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>not strange that this
+late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
+robust brother, as the purchased child was?</p>
+
+<p>At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
+on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
+prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
+set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
+possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
+doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
+Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
+high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
+their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
+procured from the King a pension of &pound;300 a year, which she sorely
+needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt &quot;within
+the Rules&quot; of the King's Bench.</p>
+
+<p>Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
+the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
+against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
+loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
+and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.</p>
+
+<p>To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
+have nothing to do either with his sister or the two &quot;nunnery children&quot;
+which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
+Jean only succeeded in getting deeper <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>and deeper involved in debt,
+until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
+her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
+pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
+children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.</p>
+
+<p>One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
+     through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
+     told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
+     children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
+     Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
+     acquainted his Grace.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
+still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
+see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
+letter in which she begged &quot;to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
+and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
+inflict what punishment you please upon me,&quot; he returned no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
+Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
+cried out in her deep distress: &quot;O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
+could but have died for you!&quot; This last blow of fate seems to have
+completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
+hopeless <a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
+her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: &quot;May God bless you, my dear
+son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
+despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
+as some of your ancestors.&quot; Then, but a few moments before drawing her
+last breath, she said to those around her: &quot;As one who is soon to appear
+in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
+the two children were born of my body.&quot; Thus passed &quot;beyond these
+voices&quot; a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
+sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
+her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
+motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
+protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
+man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
+his cousin, &quot;Peggy Douglas, of Mains,&quot; a lady of strong character who
+had long vowed that &quot;she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry&quot;;
+and in Duchess &quot;Peggy&quot; Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
+gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
+many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the &quot;brat&quot; to perdition
+one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
+to her <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
+that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
+Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;DEAR JACK,&mdash;I have not had time till now to acquaint you
+     of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
+     brother Archie his whole estate.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
+stilled in death.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
+history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
+justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
+rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
+the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
+Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
+Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
+latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
+set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
+twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
+on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
+Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
+detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
+Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
+judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The judges,&quot; we are told, &quot;took up no less than eight<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>
+     days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
+     last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
+     solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
+the grave, declaring, just before his death:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
+     Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
+     in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
+     Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
+     were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
+     Archibald is the only one in life now.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
+appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
+reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.</p>
+
+<p>Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
+and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
+position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
+although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
+in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
+to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
+laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV" /><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of
+antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to
+lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their
+haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their
+family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and
+ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to
+be distinguished as &quot;Black Schulenburgs&quot; and &quot;White Schulenburgs,&quot; as
+our own Douglases were &quot;black&quot; and &quot;red.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the
+family name to such an eminence&mdash;a bad eminence&mdash;as one of its plainest
+daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full,
+imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a Duchess of
+England, but to be &quot;as much a Queen as ever there was in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der
+Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day,
+<a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></a>were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.
+The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by
+common consent, the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; of the family&mdash;abnormally tall,
+angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany
+equipped for conquest in the field of love.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad
+to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence
+procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of
+Hanover. At any rate she was provided for&mdash;an important matter, for the
+Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud&mdash;and she was too
+unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often
+happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes
+on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in
+love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust
+of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To
+George&mdash;an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose
+morals&mdash;the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of
+beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and
+before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed
+mistress&mdash;one of many.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just look at that mawkin,&quot; the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady
+Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, &quot;and think of her
+being my <a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></a>son's mistress!&quot; But to any other than his mother, George's
+taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross
+appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife
+possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness
+of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von
+Kielmansegg&mdash;who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way&mdash;a
+lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>She had, he recalls,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two
+     lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with
+     crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not
+     distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part
+     of it restrained by stays. No wonder,&quot; he adds, &quot;that a
+     child dreaded such an ogress!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
+of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
+English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these
+ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his
+time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted
+wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with K&ouml;nigsmarck, which
+was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment
+in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's
+Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of
+her&mdash;a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the
+tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered
+enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded,
+self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She
+moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she
+was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while
+she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal
+lover&mdash;daughters who were called her &quot;nieces,&quot; although the fiction
+deceived nobody&mdash;and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to
+her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of
+Queen Anne made &quot;the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover,
+rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland.&quot; The sluggish
+sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned
+to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such
+reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks
+the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new
+and exalted <i>r&ocirc;le</i>&mdash;and finally they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>But even then he had not counted on the &quot;fair&quot; Ehrengard. She refused
+point-blank to go with him to that &quot;odious England,&quot; where chopping off
+heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was <a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></a>quite happy in Hanover,
+and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace
+gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to
+the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert
+them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind. If her great rival
+would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day's start, she
+raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with
+open arms. The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick &quot;that
+Kielmansegg woman&quot; had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and,
+taking her &quot;nieces&quot; with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal
+lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of
+embarking for England.</p>
+
+<p>George was now happy and reconciled to his fate, for his retinue was
+complete. And what a retinue! When the King landed at Greenwich with his
+grotesque assortment of Ministers, his hideous Turks, his two
+mistresses&mdash;one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat&mdash;and
+his &quot;nieces,&quot; the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted
+the &quot;menagerie&quot; with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed
+Schulenburg the &quot;Maypole,&quot; and Kielmansegg the &quot;Elephant,&quot; and pursued
+the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goot peoples, vy you abuse us?&quot; asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt
+head and shoulders <a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>through the carriage window. &quot;Ve only gom for all
+your goots.&quot; &quot;And for all our chattels, too, &mdash;&mdash; you!&quot; came the
+stinging retort from a wag in the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>But Schulenburg soon realised that she could afford to smile and shrug
+her scraggy shoulders at the insolence of those &quot;horrid Engleesh.&quot; She
+found herself in a land of Goshen, where there were many rich plums to
+be gathered by far-reaching and unscrupulous hands such as hers. If she
+could not love the enemy, she could at least plunder them; and this she
+set to work to do with a good will, while the plastic George looked on
+and smiled encouragement. There were pensions, appointments,
+patents&mdash;boons of all kinds to be trafficked in; and who had a greater
+right to act as intermediary than herself, the King's <i>ch&egrave;re amie</i> and
+right hand?</p>
+
+<p>She sold everything that was saleable. As Walpole says, &quot;She would have
+sold the King's honour at a shilling advance to the best bidder.&quot; From
+Bolingbroke's family she took &pound;20,000 in three sums&mdash;one for a Peerage,
+another for a pardon, and the third for a fat post in the Customs. Gold
+poured in a ceaseless and glittering stream into her coffers. She
+refused no bribe&mdash;if it was big enough&mdash;and was ready to sell anything,
+from a Dukedom to a Bishopric, if her price was forthcoming. She made
+George procure her a pension of &pound;7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
+long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
+she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
+coronets&mdash;and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
+Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
+not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
+George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
+Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
+induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess&mdash;of Eberstein.
+Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
+graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
+who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
+woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
+of less degree. She might be a &quot;maypole&quot;&mdash;hated and unattractive&mdash;but at
+least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
+beauties of her &quot;Consort's&quot; Court.</p>
+
+<p>When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
+splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
+witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
+Company, whether its object was to &quot;carry on a thing that will turn to
+the advantage of the concerned,&quot; &quot;the breeding and providing for natural
+children,&quot; or &quot;for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
+silk-worms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
+and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
+her <a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></a>exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
+and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
+that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
+played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
+harm her. Only one of her many puppets&mdash;Knight, the Treasurer of the
+South Sea Company&mdash;could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
+arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
+sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
+too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
+Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
+the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.
+While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in
+solitude in distant Ahlden, the German &quot;Maypole&quot; was Queen in all but
+name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if
+iron hand. It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of
+George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than
+the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain
+that this &quot;old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess&quot; was more England's
+Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.</p>
+
+<p>She was present at every consultation between the King and his
+Ministers&mdash;indeed the conferences were <a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>invariably held in her own
+apartments, every day from five till eight. She understood and humoured
+every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent
+even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while
+she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an
+extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every
+Sunday. The only rival she had ever feared&mdash;and hated&mdash;Madame
+Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington
+was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling
+her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.</p>
+
+<p>When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia
+Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was
+the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been
+loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in
+the Palace of Osnabr&uuml;ck, in which he had drawn his first breath
+sixty-seven years earlier.</p>
+
+<p>A French fortune-teller had warned him that &quot;he would not survive his
+wife a year&quot;; and, as he neared Osnabr&uuml;ck, the home of his brother, the
+Prince Bishop, his fatal illness overtook him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;When he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic;
+     his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung
+     out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life
+     by continually crying out, as well as he could
+     articulate, 'Osnabr&uuml;ck!' 'Osnabr&uuml;ck!'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As night fell the sweating horses galloped into <a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></a>Osnabr&uuml;ck; an hour
+later George died in his brother's arms, less than twelve months after
+his wife had drawn her last breath in her fortress-prison of Ahlden.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Kendal was disconsolate.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She beat her breasts and tore her hair, and, separating
+     herself from the English ladies in her train, took the
+     road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion
+     about three months.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Returning to England, to the only solace left to her&mdash;her
+money-bags&mdash;she spent the last seventeen years of her life alternating
+between her villas at Twickenham and Isleworth. George had promised her
+that if she survived him, and if it were possible, he would revisit her
+from the spirit world.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;When,&quot; to quote Walpole again, &quot;one day a large raven
+     flew into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth,
+     she was persuaded that it was the soul of the departed
+     monarch, and received and treated it with all the respect
+     and tenderness of duty, till the Royal bird or she took
+     their last flight.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, shorn of all her powers and splendour, in obscurity, and hoarding
+her ill-gotten gold, died the most remarkable woman who has ever figured
+in the British Peerage. Her vast fortune was divided between her two
+&quot;nieces,&quot; one of whom, created by her father, George, Countess of
+Walsingham, became the wife of that polished courtier and heartless man
+of the world, Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV" /><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES</h4>
+
+
+<p>Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of
+our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of
+volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of
+the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance
+in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often
+reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees
+flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying
+from view the humble roots from which they derive their lordly growth.</p>
+
+<p>Although Cobden's assertion that &quot;the British aristocracy was cradled
+behind city counters&quot; errs on the side of exaggeration, there is no
+doubt that in the veins of scores of the proudest English peers runs the
+blood of ancestors who served customers in City shops.</p>
+
+<p>When, a couple of centuries ago, John Baring, son of the Bremen Lutheran
+parson, Dr Franz Baring, opened his small cloth manufactory on the
+outskirts of Exeter, his most extravagant ambition was to build up a
+business which he could hand over to <a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></a>his sons, and to provide a few
+comforts for his old age; if any one had told him that he was laying the
+foundations of four families which should hold their heads proudly among
+the highest in the land he would no doubt have laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Yet John Baring lived to see his only daughter wedded to John Dunning,
+who made a Baroness of her. Of his four sons, Francis was created a
+Baronet by William Pitt, and found a wife in the cousin and co-heir of
+his Grace of Canterbury. The second son of this union, Alexander, was
+raised to the Peerage as Baron Ashburton, won a millionaire bride in the
+daughter of Senator Bingham, of Philadelphia, and, from the immense
+scale of his financial operations, was ranked by the Duc de Richelieu as
+&quot;one of the six great powers of Europe&quot;&mdash;England, France, Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia being the other five. Sir Francis's eldest
+grandson, after serving in the exalted offices of Chancellor of the
+Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, was created Baron Northbrook,
+a peerage which his son raised to an earldom; a second grandson
+qualified for a coronet as Baron Revelstoke; and a third is known to-day
+as Earl Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, with half an alphabet of high
+dignities after his name.</p>
+
+<p>At least three dukes (Northumberland, Leeds, and Bedford) count among
+their forefathers many a humble tradesman. Glancing down the pedigree of
+his Grace of Northumberland, we find among his direct ancestors such
+names as these, William le Smythesonne, of Thornton Watlous, husbandman;
+<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>William Smitheson, of Newsham, husbandman; Ralph Smithson, tenant
+farmer; and Anthony Smithson, yeoman. It was this Anthony whose son,
+Hugh, left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and
+William Robinson, London haberdashers, and thus to take the first step
+of that successful career which made him a Baronet and a man of wealth.
+From Hugh, the London 'prentice sprang in the fourth generation, that
+other Hugh who won the hand of Lady Elizabeth Seymour, and with it the
+vast estates and historic name of Percy.</p>
+
+<p>Some years before Hugh Smithson, the farmer's son, set foot in London
+streets, Edward Osborne left the modest family roof at Ashford, in Kent,
+to serve his apprenticeship to, and sit at the board of, William Hewitt,
+a merchant of Philpot Lane, who shortly after moved his belongings to a
+more fashionable home on London Bridge. One day it chanced that while
+his only daughter, the fair &quot;Mistress Anne,&quot; was hanging her favourite
+bird outside the parlour window she lost her balance and fell into the
+river, then racing in high tide under the arches of the bridge.
+Fortunately for Mistress Anne the young apprentice saw the accident;
+quick as thought he threw off his shoes and surcoat, and, plunging into
+the swollen waters, caught the maiden by her hair as she was being swept
+away, and with difficulty dragged her to a passing barge, on which both
+found safety.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one proper sequence to this romantic incident; Mistress
+Anne lost her heart to <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>her gallant rescuer, the grateful parents smiled
+on his wooing, and one fine August morning, not many months later, the
+wedding-bells of St Magnus Church were spreading far and wide the news
+that young Osborne had found a bride in one of the fairest and richest
+heiresses of London town. In due time Osborne became, as his
+father-in-law had been before him, Lord Mayor of London; the son of this
+romantic alliance was knighted for prowess in battle; Edward Osborne's
+grandson was made a Baronet; and his great-grandson, Sir Thomas, added
+to the family dignities by becoming in turn, Baron, Viscount, Earl and
+Marquis, and, finally, Duke of Leeds. Thus only two generations
+separated the 'prentice lad of Philpot Lane from his descendant of the
+strawberry-leaves, the first of a long and still unbroken line of
+English dukes, whose blood has mingled with that of many noble families.</p>
+
+<p>The noble house of Ripon has its origin in Yorkshire tradesmen who
+carried on business in York, some of whom were Lord Mayors of that city
+two or three centuries ago. These early Robinsons added to their fortune
+and enriched their blood by alliances with some of the oldest families
+in the north of England&mdash;such as the Metcalfes of Nappa and the
+Redmaynes of Fulford&mdash;and slowly but surely laid the foundation of one
+of the wealthiest and most distinguished of great English houses. For
+four generations the head of the family was a Cabinet Minister, while
+one of them was Prime Minister of England.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"></a>The Marquises of Bath derive descent from one John o' th' Inne, who
+was, probably, a worthy publican of Church Stretton, and who was
+descended in the seventh generation from William de Bottefeld, an
+under-forester of Shropshire in the thirteenth century; while, through
+his mother, the late Marquis of Salisbury derived a strain of 'prentice
+blood from Sir Christopher Gascoigne, the first Lord Mayor of London to
+live in the Mansion House.</p>
+
+<p>Until a few years ago there might be seen in the main street of the
+village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
+better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
+It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
+husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
+far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
+and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
+way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as &quot;My lord,&quot; in his
+character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
+boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
+Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
+Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
+kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
+Appletrewick.</p>
+
+<p>The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
+his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
+mercer, <a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"></a>and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
+we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
+whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
+names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
+a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
+was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
+centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
+ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
+Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
+daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.</p>
+
+<p>The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
+poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
+a fortune as a London jeweller.</p>
+
+<p>In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
+citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
+himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
+tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
+accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
+anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
+they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
+George III. departed for once from his rule never to raise a man of
+<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>business to the Peerage, by converting Robert Smith into Baron
+Carrington. His successor abandoned the patronymic Smith for his
+title-name; and the present-day representative of John Smith, the
+Nottingham draper is Charles Robert Wynn Carrington, first Earl
+Carrington, P.C., G.C.M.G., and joint Hereditary Lord Chamberlain of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>When William Capel left the humble paternal roof at Stoke Nayland, in
+Suffolk, to see what fortune and a brave heart could do for him in
+London, it certainly never occurred to him that his name would be handed
+down through the centuries by a line of Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
+Fortune had indeed strange experiences in store for the Suffolk youth;
+for, while she made a Knight and Lord Mayor of him, she consigned him on
+a life sentence to the Tower for resisting the extortions of the
+mercenary Henry VII. Sir William's son won his knightly spurs on French
+battlefields, wedded a daughter of the ancient house of Roos of Belvoir,
+and became the ancester of the Barons Capel, Viscounts Malden, and Earls
+of Essex.</p>
+
+<p>The Earls of Radnor owe their rank and wealth to the enterprise which
+led young Laurence des Bouveries from his native Flanders to a
+commercial life at Canterbury in the days of Queen Bess. From this
+humble Flemish apprentice sprang a line of Turkey merchants, each of
+whom in turn added his contribution to the family dignities and riches,
+until Sir Jacob, the third Baronet, blossomed into a double-barrelled
+peer as Lord Longford and Viscount Folkestone. Not the least, by any
+means, <a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>of the descendants of Laurence des Bouveries was Canon Pusey,
+the great theologian, who was grandson of the first Lord Folkestone.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Harewood springs from a stock of merchants who accumulated great
+wealth in the eighteenth century; and Lord Jersey owes much of his
+riches to Francis Child, the industrious apprentice who, in Stuart days,
+married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, the goldsmith, who
+lived one door west of Temple Bar.</p>
+
+<p>Other peers who count London apprentices among their ancestors are Lord
+Aveland and Viscount Downe, both descendants of Gilbert Heathcote, whose
+commercial success was crowned by the Lord Mayoralty in 1711; the
+Marquis of Bath, a descendant of Lord Mayor Heyward, whose sixteen
+children are all portrayed in his monument in St Alphege Church, London
+Wall; and also of Richard Gresham, mercer, who waxed rich from the
+spoils of the monasteries, and whose son was founder of the Royal
+Exchange. The Earl of Eldon owes his existence to that runaway exploit
+which linked the lives of John Scott, the Newcastle tradesman's son, and
+Miss Surtees, the banker's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>If George III. during his lengthy reign only raised one business man to
+the Peerage, later years have provided a very liberal crop of coroneted
+men of commerce. To mention but a few of them, banking has been
+honoured&mdash;and the Peerage also&mdash;by the baronies granted to Lords
+Aldenham and Avebury; Lords Hindlip, Burton, Iveagh, and Ardilaun owe
+<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"></a>their wealth and rank to successful brewing; Baron Overtoun was
+proprietor of large chemical works; Lord Allerton's riches have been
+drawn from his tan-pits; Lord Armstrong's millions come from the
+far-famed Elswick engine-works at Newcastle; and Lord Masham's from his
+mills at Manningham. The Viscounty of Hambleden has sprung from a modest
+news-shop in the Strand; the Barony of Burnham was cradled in a
+newspaper office; and Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona were shepherd
+boys seventy years or more ago, before they found their way through
+commerce to the Roll of Peers.</p>
+
+<p>Although these lowly origins are as firmly established as Holy Writ, and
+are in most cases as well known to the noble families who trace rank and
+riches from them as to the expert in genealogy, they are often as
+carefully excluded from the family tree as the poor and undesirable
+relation from the doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage
+extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted
+blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families
+strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some
+obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in
+many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their own
+pedigrees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are pedigrees worth?&quot; asks Professor Freeman. &quot;I turn over a
+'Peerage' or other book of genealogy, and I find that, when a pedigree
+professes to be traced back to the times of which I know most in detail,
+it is all but invariably false. As a rule <a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>it is not only false, but
+impossible. The historical circumstances, when any are introduced, are
+for the most part not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
+which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This scathing criticism refers to pedigrees which profess to be based on
+existing records; what shall we say, then, of those family trees which
+have their ambitious roots in the dark centuries which no ray of
+genealogical light can possibly pierce? Take, for instance, that amazing
+pedigree of the Lyte family of Lytes Cary, at the head of which is
+&quot;Leitus (one of the five captains of Beotia that went to Troye),&quot; whose
+ancestors came to England first with Brute, &quot;the most noble founder of
+the Britons.&quot; (It is only fair to say that the present representative of
+this really ancient family, Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte, an expert genealogist,
+turns his back resolutely on the Beotian captain, and even on Brute
+himself, and generally lops his family tree in a merciless but most
+salutary fashion.)</p>
+
+<p>The College of Arms, among many amazing pedigrees, treasures one of a
+family &quot;whose present representative is sixty-seventh in descent in an
+unbroken male line from Belinus the Great (Beli Mawr), King of Britain,&quot;
+which actually exhibits the arms of Beli, who, poor man, died long
+centuries before heraldry was even cradled.</p>
+
+<p>Of families who derive descent from Charlemagne the name is legion; but
+even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity
+compared with <a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>others which have at their head no other progenitor than
+Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum
+roll, twenty-one feet long, of pedigrees, some of which &quot;are traced back
+to 'Adam, Son of God,' without any conscious sense of the incongruous&quot;;
+and these records, we must remember, are in the hand of &quot;a man
+thoroughly trustworthy as to the matters of his own time.&quot; There is in
+the College of Arms a similar family tree which commences boldly with
+Adam and the Garden of Eden; and an authority on Welsh pedigrees
+declares,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;A Welshman whose family was in any position in the
+     sixteenth century can, as a rule, without much trouble
+     find a pedigree thence to Adam; an Englishman who is
+     unable to do the same has a natural tendency to regard
+     all Welsh pedigrees with distrust, not to say contempt.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr Horace Round gives some startling examples of flagrant dishonesty,
+where forgery is only one of the implements used. Take, for example,
+that shameful story of the &quot;Shipway frauds,&quot; which is thus referred to
+by a clergyman of the parish.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;In the fall of 1896, by an elaborate system of impudent
+     frauds, an unscrupulous attempt was made to claim these
+     monuments for one who was an entire stranger to the
+     parish. An agent from London was employed in a search for
+     a pedigree. He, by fraudulent means, concocted a very
+     plausible story. Genealogies were manufactured, tombs
+     were desecrated, registers were falsified, wills were
+     forged&mdash;in a word, various outrages were committed, with
+     many <a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>sacred things in this parish and elsewhere. These
+     two figures, as part of the pedigree, were deposited in a
+     niche in the chantry; on either side were huge brass
+     tablets on which were engraven various untruthful and
+     unfounded statements.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another case Hughenden Church was desecrated to gratify the vanity of
+a family of Wellesbourne, anxious to trace their descent from the
+Montforts.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;They caused a monumental effigy of an imaginary ancestor
+     to be carved in the style of the thirteenth century
+     ...they adapted the plate-armour effigy to their purpose
+     by cutting similar arms on the skirts, and they had three
+     rude effigies fabricated by way of filling up the gaps
+     between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>To give but two more out of many cases of similar imposture, the
+Deardens, many years ago, actually had a family chapel constructed in
+Rochdale Church with sham effigies, slabs, and brasses to the memory of
+wholly fictitious ancestors; while in two Scottish churches altar-tombs
+were placed to the memory of successive apocryphal lairds of Coulthart.
+Such are the lengths to which a craze for ancestry has carried some
+unprincipled persons; and there is no doubt that the arts of the forger
+are still enlisted in the service of people who crave long descent and
+do not scruple as to the methods by which they attain it.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such
+extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather
+amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian <a name="Page_338" id="Page_338"></a>and
+obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or
+at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons
+(a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are &quot;a branch of the
+baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in
+Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century.&quot; The first Cooper was not,
+as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of
+that name&mdash;no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one
+of whom was &quot;Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King&quot;; Pindar,
+the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
+the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are &quot;probably descended from
+William, a Norman of distinction&quot;; while at least one family of Brownes
+springs lineally from &quot;Turulph, a companion of Rollo,&quot; founder of the
+Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
+that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from <i>Smeeth</i>, &quot;a level
+plain&quot;; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
+certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;a particle which has been all but unknown in England
+     since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
+     has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
+     character which the French nation have chosen to assign
+     to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
+     restorations in the modern Gothic manner.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
+surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
+De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.</p>
+
+<p>This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
+the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
+it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
+accepted with a quite childlike credence:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
+     train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
+     flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
+     from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
+     Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
+     patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
+     the famous Dane....&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (<i>sic</i>) of
+     Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
+attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
+actually named &quot;Hugh Lupus&quot; at the baptismal font, while his younger
+brother was labelled Richard &quot;de Aquila&quot;; and yet it is an indisputable
+fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
+Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
+who has no more traceable <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>connection with Rollo than with the Man in
+the Moon.</p>
+
+<p>The Ducal House of Fife, we are told, &quot;derives from Fyfe Macduff, a
+chief of great wealth and power, who lived about the year 834, and
+afforded to Kenneth II., King of Scotland, strong aid against his
+enemies, the Picts.&quot; The present Duke, however, has the good sense to
+disclaim any hereditary connection with the old Earls of Fife, and to
+place at the top of his family tree one Adam Duff, who laid the
+foundation of the family prosperity in the seventeenth century. The
+Spencers, it is claimed, spring lineally from the old baronial
+Despencers, &quot;being a branche issueing from the ancient family and
+chieffe of the Spencers, of which sometymes were the Earles of
+Winchester and Glocester, and Barons of Glamorgan and Morgannocke.&quot;
+This, no doubt, is a very distinguished origin; but, alas! the earliest
+provable ancestors of this &quot;noble&quot; family were respectable and
+well-to-do Warwickshire graziers, and the first authentic title on the
+true pedigree is the knighthood conferred on John Spencer in 1519, less
+than four centuries ago. Similarly the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, are
+said to be derived from one Hugh de Russell, or Rossel (who took that
+name from his estate in Normandy), one of the Conqueror's attendant
+barons on his invasion of England. Here, again, facts fail lamentably to
+support the descent claimed, since the earliest known progenitor of this
+&quot;great house&quot; was that Henry Russell who was sent to Parliament to
+represent <a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>Weymouth in the fifteenth century, and whose great-grandson
+blossomed into the first Earl of Bedford. (It may, perhaps, be well to
+state that, although the pedigrees here criticised are those that have
+been or are widely accepted, they are not necessarily approved by the
+families whose descent they profess to give.)</p>
+
+<p>Another Norman ancestor who must go overboard is the alleged founder of
+the &quot;noble&quot; house of Bolingbroke&mdash;that &quot;William de St John who came to
+England with the Conqueror as grand master of the artillery and
+supervisor of the wagons and carriages,&quot; since it can be positively
+shewn that the St John family first set foot in England a good many
+years after William I. was safely underground; and with this mythical
+William must also go that equally nebulous progenitor of the Fortescue
+family, &quot;who&quot; according to the venerable and almost uniform tradition,
+&quot;landed in England with his master in the year 1066, and, protecting him
+with his shield from the blows of an assailant, was graciously dubbed
+'Fortescu,' the man of the stout shield.&quot; The Stourtons, so the
+&quot;Peerages&quot; say, were &quot;of considerable rank before the Conquest, and
+dictated their own terms to the Conqueror&quot;; but, as Canon Jackson, the
+learned antiquary, truly points out, &quot;of this there is no evidence. The
+name is found, apparently for the first time, among Wiltshire
+landowners, in the reign of Edward I., when a Nicholas Stourton held one
+knight's fee under the Lovells of Castle Cary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>The Duke of Norfolk has a family tree of very stately growth, and can
+well afford to repudiate a good many of the ancestors provided for him
+by &quot;Peerage&quot; editors. Certainly, if he ever read the following statement
+he must have smiled aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The Duke's proudest boast is that his name of Howard is
+     merely that of an ancestor, Hereward the Wake, whose
+     representative, Sir Hereward Wake, is still in
+     Northamptonshire.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, his Grace's earliest known ancestor was Sir William
+Howard, &quot;who was a grown man and on the bench in 1293, whose real
+pedigree is very obscure&quot;; and who, no doubt, would have laughed as
+heartily as his descendant of to-day at his imaginary derivation from
+the Conqueror's stubborn foe of the fens, Hereward the Wake.</p>
+
+<p>In the Fitzwilliam pedigree we encounter another nebulous knight of the
+Conqueror. &quot;The Fitzwilliams,&quot; we are informed, &quot;date so far back that
+their record is lost, but Sir William, a knight of the Conqueror's day,
+married the daughter of Sir John Elmley,&quot; and so on; and further, that
+at Milton Hall, Peterborough, one may actually look on an antique scarf
+which &quot;was presented to a direct ancestor of the Fitzwilliams by William
+the Conqueror.&quot; The most skilled of our genealogists have sought in vain
+for an authentic trace of this gallant knight of Conquest days; and
+Professor Freeman does not hesitate to dismiss the story of his
+existence as &quot;pure fable.&quot; But if Sir William of Normandy must fall from
+the family tree, <a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>his place is most creditably taken by Godric, a Saxon
+Thane, who, as a forefather, is at least as respectable as any Norman
+warrior in William's train.</p>
+
+<p>The house of Fitzgerald is credited with an ancestor, one Dominus Otho,
+&quot;who is supposed to have been of the family of the Gherardini of
+Florence. This noble passed over into Normandy, and thence, in 1057,
+into England, where he became so great a favourite with Edward the
+Confessor that he excited the jealousy of the Saxon Thanes.&quot; Dominus
+Otho must too pass, with many another treasured ancestor, into the
+crowded genealogical land of the rejected; for the real founder of the
+Fitzgerald house was Walter, son of &quot;Other,&quot; whose name is first met
+with in Domesday Book in 1086. The Otho story is shown to be &quot;absolute
+fiction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In view of such examples of misplaced ingenuity exhibited by the makers
+of pedigrees for our noble families, one can almost read without a smile
+that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;there were Heneages at Hainton in the time of King Edwy;
+     they doubtless took part in the revolt which brought
+     Edgar to the throne, and it is not impossible that some
+     of them were in the train of Wulfhere, King of Mercia;&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>or that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord Alington comes of a family of ancient lineage, one
+     of his ancestors being Sir Hildebrand de Alington, who
+     was marshal to William the Conqueror at the battle of
+     Hastings,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>though we may know full well that the Sturt pedigree <a name="Page_344" id="Page_344"></a>really begins in
+the seventeenth century, and that the earliest known Heneage lived and
+died some three centuries before.</p>
+
+<p>But &quot;noble&quot; families have no monopoly of misguided genealogy. &quot;The
+immense majority of the pedigrees of the landed gentry,&quot; says a
+well-known officer of arms, &quot;cannot, I fear, be characterised as
+otherwise than utterly worthless. The errors of the 'peerage' are as
+nothing to the fables which we encounter everywhere;&quot; and the same may
+be said of many another collection of pedigrees which is a treasured
+possession in countless British homes.</p>
+
+<p>Some even justly famous men have not been proof against this insidious
+form of vanity and pretence. Edmund Spenser was ungenerous enough to
+&quot;dismiss his known ancestry of small Lancashire gentry and plant himself
+modestly in the shadow of the newly discovered shield of arms of the
+noble house of Spencer, 'of which I meanest boast myself to be.'&quot; And
+Lord Tennyson, whose ultimate ascertainable forefather was an eighteenth
+century Lincolnshire apothecary, was provided with a slightly
+differenced cadet's version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison, with whom
+he had no connection whatever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" /><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li>  Aberdeen, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Affleck, Lady, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Misses, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  Alava, General, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+<li>  Albemarle, Lord, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+<li>  Aldenham, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Alexander, Emperor, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Alington, Lord, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Hildebrand, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Allerton, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Almack's, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Andrews, Mr, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li>  Anglesey, Earl of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li>  Anne, of Austria, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Princess, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Queen, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Ardilaun, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Argyll, Duke of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Arlington, Lady, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li>  Armstrong, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Arran, Lord, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+<li>  Ashburton, Lord, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Atholl, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Avebury, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Aveland, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Aylesbury, Lady, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li>  Barillon, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Baring, Alexander, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Francis, Sir, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Franz (Dr), <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Barnard, Dr, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+<li>  Bath, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Beaconsfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  Beauchamp, Earl, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Beaufort, Duc de, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  Becher, Sir William W., <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li>  Bedford, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Dukes of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Bentinck, Lord George, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li>  Berkeley, Annie May, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li>  Bilton, Miss Belle, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Bingham, Senator, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Blantyre, Lord, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  Blessington, Countess of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+<li>  Blount, Christopher, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Boleyn, Godfrey, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Bolingbroke, Lord, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+<li>  Bolton, Duke of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary Catherine, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li>  Boothby, Brook, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Boswell, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li>  Bottefeld, William de, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Bouveries, Laurence des, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Bracegirdle, Mrs, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Bridges, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+<li>  Bridgewater, Duke of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Bristol, Earl of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  Broke, Lord, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Brougham, Lord, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Browne, family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Brunton, Louisa, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li>  Buccleuch, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  Buller, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Bunbury, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+<li>  Burke, Sir Bernard, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Burleigh, Lord, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li>  Burney, Dr Charles, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Burnham, Barony, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Burrell, Mrs Drummond, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Burton, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Bute, Countess of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+<li>  Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Cadogan, Earl of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>  Campbell, Colonel John, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Canning, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  Capel, William, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Cardigan, Earl of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Carhampton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  Carlingford, Lord, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li>  Carnegie, James, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+<li>  Caroline, Princess, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>  Carrington, Lords, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Castlemaine, Lady, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Castlereagh, Lady, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li>  Catherine, Empress, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Queen, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, the Great, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>  Cecil, Henry, (Earl of Exeter), <a href="#Page_256">256</a>-<a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord Thomas, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Chaffinch, Barbara (Countess of Jersey), <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  Charles I., <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li>
+<li>  Charles II., <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li>  Charlotte, Queen, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>  Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Child, Anne, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Francis, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  Christina, Queen of Sweden, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Chudleigh, Colonel, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>  Churchill, Arabella, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Winston, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+<li>  Clarendon, Chancellor, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li>  Cobden, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+<li>  Cochrane, Lady Susanna, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+<li>  Compton, Lady, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  Congreve, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Conolly, Lady Louisa, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li>  Coombe, William, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Cooper family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Coutts, Thomas, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Coventry, Countess of, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>  Cowper, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Cradock, Mr, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+<li>  Craven, Earl of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Crawford, Lord, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>  Creevey, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+<li>  Cromer, Earl, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Crosby, Sir John, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Cumberland, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li></li>
+
+<li>  Dalkeith, Earl of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  Dalrymple, Mr, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  D'Arblay, Madame, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Darlington, Countess of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Darnley, Lord, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+<li>  Dashwood, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  D'Aubigny, Duchesse, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li>  Dearden family, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+<li>  De Bathe, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  De Beauchamp, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  De Freville, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Delany, Mrs, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li>  De Moleyns, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Denbigh, Earls of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Derby, Earl of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  De Reti, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  De Rodes, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  De Trafford, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  De Vere, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Devonshire, Duke of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  De Winton, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Dibdin, Charles, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Digby, Francis, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li>  Dillon, Colonel, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+<li>  Disraeli, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  Doran, Dr, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  D'Orsay, Count, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Dorset, Duke of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Douglas, Archibald, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, James, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Jean (Lady), <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sholto, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+<li>  Downe, Viscount, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Dryden, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  Dudley, Earls of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Edmond, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Guildford, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert (Earl of Leicester), <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Duff, Adam, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Dundalk, Baroness of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Dundonald, Earl of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Eberstein, Princess von, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Edward VI., <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li>  Eglinton, Lady, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Eldon, Earl of, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Errington, Mr Sheriff, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+<li>  Errol, Lord, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Essex, Countess of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Esterhazy, Princess, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Prince Paul, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Evelyn, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Exeter, Earl of, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Fane, Lady Sarah Sophia, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  Farmer, Captain, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+<li>  Farren, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Fenton, Lavinia, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  Ferrers, Earl of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+<li>  Feversham, Countess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Fielding, Sir Godfrey, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Fife, Dukes of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Fitzgerald, Henry Gerald, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Fitzwilliam family, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>-<a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Folkestone, Viscount, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Foote, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>  Forbes, George, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Susan Janet, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Forneron, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li>  Fortescue, Mr, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Frederick, The Great, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+<li>  Freeman, Professor, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Gainsborough, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li>  Galloway, Earl of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li>  Gardiner, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Gascoigne, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  George I., <a href="#Page_317">317</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; II., <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; III., <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; IV., <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+<li>  Gilchrist, Miss Constance, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Glastonbury, Baroness of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Gloucester, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of (Richard), <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Godefroi, M., <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Godric, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Gordon, Lord William, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+<li>  Graeme, Colonel, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+<li>  Gramont, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>  Granville, Lady, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Gresham, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Greville, William, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Grey, Lady Jane, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li>  Gronow, Captain, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+<li>  Grosvenor, Countess, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Guise, Comte de, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li>  Gunning, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Maria, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+<li>  Gwynn, Nell, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Haldane, Mr, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+<li>  Halhed, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+<li>  Hambleden, Viscounty of, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Hamilton, Betty (Lady), <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Colonel, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Count, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-<a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>-<a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, George, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Susanna (Lady), <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li>  Hanmer, Mrs, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+<li>  Harewood, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Harrington, Earl of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Hastings, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-<a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li>  Hatton, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Hay, Mr, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  Heathcote, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Heneage family, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+<li>  Henri IV., <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  Henrietta Maria, Queen, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  Hereford, Lady, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Hereward, the Wake, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Hervey, Hon. Augustus, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>-<a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li>  Hewit, Mrs, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Hewitt, Anne, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Heyward, Lord Mayor, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Hill, Captain Richard, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Hillsborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+<li>  Hindlip, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Hoggins, Sarah (Countess of Exeter), <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Holland, Lady, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>  Home, Earl of, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  Hopetoun, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Horton, Christopher, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+<li>  Howard, Bernard, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Captain Thomas, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir William, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Ibbetson, Captain, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  Irnham, Lord, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  Iveagh, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Jackson, Canon, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Jennings, Frances, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John (Sir), <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sarah, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Squire, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+<li>  Jermyn, Henry, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  Jerrold, Douglas, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Jersey, Earl of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Countess of (Sarah), <a href="#Page_41">41</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li>  Johnson, Dr, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mr John, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Kemble, John, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+<li>  Kendal, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Kent, John, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+<li>  Ker, Captain, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li>  Kerr, Captain, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li>  Kielmansegg, Baroness von, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>-<a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Kildare, Lady, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+<li>  Killigrew, Harry, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Tom, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+<li>  King, Colonel, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir John, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary (Hon.), <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li>  Kingsborough, Lady, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Viscount, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  Kingston, Earl of, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>  K&ouml;nigsmarck, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  La Brune, Madame, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Lauder, Farmer, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Leeds, Duke of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Leicester, Earl of, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Countess of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Lennox, Lady Sarah, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Lieven, Princess of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Lindores, Lord, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Linley, Elizabeth Ann, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+<li>  Long, Mr, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+<li>  Louis XIV., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Napoleon (Prince), <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Lovelace, Lord, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Luttrell, Anne, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Colonel, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  Lyndhurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Lyon of Brigton, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li>  Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+<li>  Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Macartney, Major-General, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+<li>  Madden, Dr, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Mancini, Hortense de, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li>  Mann, Sir Horace, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>  Mansfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Manvers, Lord, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  March, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li>  Marsante, Comte de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+<li>  Mary, Queen, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, &mdash;&mdash; of Scots, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+<li>  Masham, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Matthews, Major, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li>  Mazarin, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Meath, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Mellon, Harriet, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>  Meredith, Sir William, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+<li>  Merrill, Mr, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+<li>  Messalina, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Metcalfes, of Nappa, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Michele, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Mohun, Charles Lord, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir William de, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li>  Monaldeschi, Count, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Monmouth, Duke of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Montagu, Edward Wortley, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+<li>  Montford, Jack, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Montgomery, Mr, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Miss, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Moore, Dr, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+<li>  More, Hannah, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Morland, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Mornington, Lady, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+<li>  Mount Stephen, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Munster, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Murray, Captain, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Napier, Hon. George, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+<li>  Napier, Lord, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+<li>  Neave, Sir Digby, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  Newbattle, Lord, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>  Newcastle, Duke of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  Ney, Marshal, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Norfolk, Duke of, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Northbrook, Lord, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Northumberland, Duke of, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  O'Neill, Eliza, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li>  Orleans, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+<li>  Ormond, Duke of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+<li>  Ormonde, Lord, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Osborne, Edward, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Osnabr&uuml;ck, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  &quot;Other,&quot; <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Otho, Dominus, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Overtoun, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Page, Mr, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li>  Paget, Lady Florence, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+<li>  Panmure, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Parker family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Payne, George, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+<li>  Peach, Joseph, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+<li>  Pelham, Mr, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Pepys, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Peterborough, Earl of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Pierce, Mr, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>  Pierrepoint, Hon. H.M., <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Pindar, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Pope, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+<li>  Portland, Duke of, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li>  Portsmouth, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li>  Power, Edmund, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Marguerite, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Pulteney, Mr, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li>  Pusey, Canon, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Queensbury, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>,</li>
+<li>  Querouaille, Louise de, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Radnor, Earls of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Radzivill, Prince, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li>  Raikes, Mr T., <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Rawlins, Colonel Giles, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+<li>  Redmaynes (of Fulford), <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Revelstoke, Baron, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Reynolds, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li>  Richelieu, Duc de, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Richmond, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Ripon, Marquesses of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Robinson, Anastasia, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Robinsons, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Robsart, Amy, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li>  Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>  Rollo, Duke of Normandy, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Rotier, Phillipe, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+<li>  Round, Mr Horace, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+<li>  Rowe, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Ruvigny, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+<li>  Ryder, Lady Susanna, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  St Albans, Duke of, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>  St Aldegonde, Count, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  St Evremond, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  St John family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  St Simon, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+<li>  Salisbury, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Sandwich, Earl of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>  Sault, Comte de, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+<li>  Schulenburg, Ehrengard von der, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mathias (Count), <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+<li>  Scott, John, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Sedley, Catherine, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+<li>  Sefton, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Selkirk, Earl of, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  Selwyn, George, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li>  Sentinelli, Count, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Seymour, Lady Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+<li>  Shaw, Lady, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Sheffield, Lord, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Sheridan, Charles, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs (E. Linley), <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Richard Brinsley, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas (Dr), <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+<li>  Shipway frauds, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+<li>  Shirley, Lady Barbara, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Laurence, (Earl of Ferrers), <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+<li>  Shrewsbury, Anna Maria, Countess of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  Smith, Albert, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, General, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Smithson, Hugh, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+<li>  Smythesonne, Smitheson, etc., <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Dorothea of Zell, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Southwell, Lord, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+<li>  Spencer, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Standish, Charles, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Stanley, Lord, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  Stephens, Catherine, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li>  Stewart, Andrew, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Colonel John, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  Stourton, family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Stow, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+<li>  Strangways, Lady Susan, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Strathcona, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Strathmore, Earl of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li>  Stuart, La belle, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady Louisa, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Madame, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Walter, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li>  Sturt pedigree, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Suffolk, Lady, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+<li>  Surtees, Miss, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Taafe, Mr, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+<li>  Talbot, Sir John, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Richard, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  Tenison, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Tennyson, Lord, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Thackeray, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>  Thormanby, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+<li>  Thurlow, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Edward, Lord, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li>  Tripp, Baron, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Turenne, Marshal, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+<li>  Tyrconnel, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Vaillant, Sheriff, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+<li>  Vend&ocirc;me, Philippe de, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Vernon, Miss, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+<li>  Villiers, Adela, Lady, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Barbara, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Clementina, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir George, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, George, Earl of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Wake, Sir Hereward, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Wales, Prince of (Henry Frederick), <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Walsingham, Countess of, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Warburton, General, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Ward, Mr Plumer, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Warwick, Earl of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Wellesbourne family, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+<li>  Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Wentworth, Lord, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+<li>  Westmorland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Wigton, Lady, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>  Wilberforce, William, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Wilkes, John, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li>  William III., <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  Willis, Mr, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+<li>  Wilton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Wood, Major, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+<li>  Woodrow, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  York, Duke of (James), <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14193 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14193 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14193)
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+Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Love Romances of the Aristocracy
+
+Author: Thornton Hall
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14193]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Morgan and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY
+
+By
+
+THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.
+
+
+BARRISTER-AT-LAW
+
+AUTHOR OF "LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS," ETC. ETC.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+LONDON
+
+T. WERNER LAURIE
+
+CLIFFORD'S INN
+
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON]
+
+
+_TO_
+
+MRS TOM HESKETH
+
+
+_L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as
+possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that
+those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of
+books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the
+compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy,
+with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its
+follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable
+reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I
+have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a
+labour which has been to me a delight.
+
+THORNTON HALL.
+
+
+_As love plays a prominent part in at least twenty of these stones, and
+is only really absent from one or two of them, I venture to hope that my
+good friends, the reviewers, who have been so kind to my previous books,
+will not find fault with my title, which, more accurately than any other
+I can think of, describes the nature and scope of my book_.
+
+T.H.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAP. PAGE
+      I. A PRINCESS OF PRUDES                          1
+     II. THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH                      21
+    III. THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS                  36
+     IV. THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON          51
+      V. A GHOSTLY VISITANT                           62
+     VI. A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY       74
+    VII. A PROFLIGATE PRINCE                          87
+   VIII. THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS                        96
+     IX. A QUEEN OF COQUETTES                        110
+      X. THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER     127
+     XI. A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELOPEMENT               136
+    XII. TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF                       148
+   XIII. THE WICKED BARON                            165
+    XIV. A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_                         177
+     XV. THE MERRY DUCHESS                           195
+    XVI. THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER            207
+   XVII. THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM          222
+  XVIII. A NOBLE VAGABOND                            231
+    XIX. FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS                     243
+     XX. A PEASANT COUNTESS                          256
+    XXI. THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN                    266
+   XXII. TWO IRISH BEAUTIES                          282
+  XXIII. THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS                        298
+   XXIV. THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS                         316
+    XXV. THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES                 326
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON           _Frontispiece_
+  FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND         _to face page_ 18
+  MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON                 98
+  SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH                      110
+  LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH                      184
+  HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS                      252
+  ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER                   266
+  MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY                        288
+
+
+
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A PRINCESS OF PRUDES
+
+
+Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the "Merrie
+Monarch's" passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
+day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him "sitting
+and toying with his concubines," there was, it is said, only one of them
+all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
+simplest, and most designing of prudes, _La belle Stuart_.
+
+When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
+queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
+girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
+future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
+carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
+Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
+blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of France, where
+he had found a fresh field for his valour.
+
+Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
+Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
+frequently "lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre," and even a
+crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
+brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
+mother's pride.
+
+Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
+established herself as the pet _par excellence_ of the Court of France.
+With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
+every gallant, from "Monsieur" to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
+romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
+King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
+her "big sweetheart." So devoted was His Majesty to _La belle Ecossaise_
+that, when her mother talked of taking her away to England, he begged
+that she would not remove so fair an ornament from his Court, and vowed
+that he would provide the child with a splendid dower and a noble
+husband if she would but allow her to remain.
+
+But Madame Stuart had other designs for her pretty daughter; and when
+Henrietta Maria took boat to England to shine again at the Court of
+Whitehall, under her son's reign, Frances Stuart joined her retinue, and
+found herself transported from the schoolroom to the most brilliant and
+dangerous court in Europe. When this transformation came in her life
+Walter Stuart's daughter was just blossoming into as sweet and fragrant
+a flower as ever bloomed in woman's guise. Fair and graceful as a lily,
+with luxuriant brown hair, eyes of violet, and a proud, dainty little
+head, she had a figure which, although yet not fully formed, was
+faultless in its modelling and its exquisite grace. And these physical
+charms were allied to an unspoiled freshness, which combined the artless
+fascinations of the child with the allurements of the woman.
+
+Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of
+Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can
+scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England,
+the French "Mademoiselle," as she was called, was hailed as a new
+revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the
+bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.
+
+To the "Merrie Monarch's" senses, sated with riper beauties and more
+stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose
+compared with exotic hot-house flowers. She was, he vowed, so "dainty,
+so fresh, so fragrant," that none but the sourest of anchorites could
+resist her--and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well. Almost at
+sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her
+the battery of all his fascinations. Was ever maid placed, on the
+threshold of life, in so dangerous a predicament? For the King, who was
+her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a
+past-master in the conquest of woman. But, in response to all his
+advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a
+merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the
+gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another "big
+playfellow" to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did
+not wish to know more. He might kiss her--_vraiment_--why not? and that
+Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told
+that "he would kiss her for half an hour at a time," caring little who
+looked on.
+
+And all her other Whitehall lovers--a legion of them, from the Duke of
+Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the
+same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish
+prudery? "She was a child," says Count Hamilton, "in all respects save
+playing with dolls"--a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet,
+one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper
+than is usually associated with so much simplicity.
+
+She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.
+Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new
+era of nursery games which she inaugurated. Jaded gallants and sedate
+Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in
+blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper with the Stuart maid as Lady of
+Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked--or affected to
+be--one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting
+on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at "I love my love with an
+A because he is Amorous"; "I hate him with a B because he is Boring,"
+and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for,
+Pepys says, "some of them were very witty."
+
+The little madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred
+environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
+exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
+big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
+castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
+toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
+and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
+no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
+Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
+hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
+with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
+unseemly goings-on.
+
+And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
+of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
+had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
+Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
+all his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
+for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
+by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
+summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp--until what was
+"play to the child" began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
+world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
+elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
+ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
+away and not be so naughty again.
+
+Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
+treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
+playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
+Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
+stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
+himself more to win the favour of a maid.
+
+     "Having provided himself," says Hamilton, "with a great
+     number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
+     obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
+     them; at the same time offering her his most humble
+     services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
+     her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
+     of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
+     Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of
+     laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the
+     room. Thus ignominiously was sounded the death-knell of
+     Arlington's hopes!"
+
+George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in
+England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and
+tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of
+them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic;
+and for a time she revelled in his comradeship. He first won her heart
+in the following fashion. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting
+and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and
+hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. "I can do better than that,"
+exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. "Give me two candles." The candles
+were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious
+mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were
+extinguished, while _La belle Stuart_ paraded after him, clapping her
+hands and laughing in her glee.
+
+Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour. Rollicking George
+was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was
+privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had
+ever enjoyed.
+
+     "Since the Court has been in the country," he confessed,
+     "I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You
+     know that the _déshabille_ of the bath is a great
+     convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to
+     their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all
+     their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully
+     acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all
+     other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any
+     lady at Court for a well-turned arm and a fine leg, but
+     she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
+     After all, a man must be very insensible to remain
+     unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions."
+
+It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless
+encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest
+where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont,
+taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of
+flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and
+persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.
+
+Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her
+riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.
+
+     "I followed them," he says, "up into Whitehall, and into
+     the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked,
+     talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and
+     changing and trying one another's by one another's heads
+     and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse,
+     with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes,
+     little Roman nose, and excellent _taille_, is now the
+     greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if
+     ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least
+     in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which
+     I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady
+     Castlemaine."
+
+How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her
+girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know
+that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis
+Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry,
+in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.
+
+And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her
+witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other
+than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her
+Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that
+she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged
+Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a
+rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an
+artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was
+carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the
+cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of
+throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked
+on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments,
+between the pair--"with ring and all other ceremonies of church service
+and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking,
+evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion
+with great spirit."
+
+And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely
+saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.
+
+     "The King," to quote Hamilton again, "who seldom
+     neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom
+     failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most
+     indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment;
+     however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's
+     appearing with her in such a situation, being confident
+     that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all
+     the advantages which these opportunities could afford
+     Miss Stuart."
+
+As a matter of fact Charles's _maitresse en titre_ regarded the
+"Mademoiselle" as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
+"She is a lovely little thing," she once said patronisingly, "but she is
+only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest
+lover in the world." But she was not long left in this unsuspicious
+Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the "child" had made a conquest
+of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held
+the throne of his heart.
+
+Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by
+Gramont with "the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a
+'calash') that had ever been seen." The Queen herself and Lady
+Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to
+take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to
+create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and
+eloquence to secure this concession from the King.
+
+     "Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested
+     to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen
+     retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King
+     was driven to distraction between the cajoling and
+     threats of the two rival beauties."
+
+It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's
+unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in
+the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.
+
+According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the
+"prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she
+was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a
+King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a
+dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a
+bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever
+found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of
+Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as _La belle Stuart;_
+though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition "to be a
+Duchess" that she declared she was "ready to marry any gentleman of
+fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour."
+
+And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so
+cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his
+passion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she
+treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.
+
+     "Mr Pierce tells me," Pepys writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he
+     do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of
+     all business in the world, and to the open slighting of
+     the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by
+     while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in
+     her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him
+     going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or
+     any of the Nobles, when they would ask where the King is,
+     they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
+     meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly
+     disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court."
+
+Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were
+her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which
+she moved a splendid, but unassailable Queen, for every man who came
+within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
+One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the
+youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to
+England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration
+of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was
+asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe
+Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace
+of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in
+love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of
+his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on
+millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the
+faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the
+verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.
+
+It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the
+handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most
+insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good
+looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such
+a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
+who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
+maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.
+
+Small in stature, deformed in figure--a caricature of a man, His Grace
+of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
+Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
+butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
+should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
+England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
+The Court was struck with consternation--and convulsed with laughter.
+Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
+experience. But there could be no doubt about it. _La belle Stuart_, who
+had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
+gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, was not only
+smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
+assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
+reputation a King had been powerless to sully.
+
+Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
+vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
+old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
+had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
+night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
+Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
+pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
+triumph, told him that at the moment _La belle Stuart_ turned him away
+from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
+rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.
+
+Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. "Come with me," Lady
+Castlemaine answered, "and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
+truth;" and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
+his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
+sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
+open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King
+
+     "found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
+     Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
+     probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
+     King, who of all men was usually one of the most mild
+     and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of
+     Richmond in such terms as he had never used before. The
+     Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his
+     master and King justly irritated. The first transports
+     which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous. Miss
+     Stuart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge,
+     the Thames flowing close beneath it. He cast his eyes
+     upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and
+     fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable
+     of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying
+     a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces
+     that were poured on him."
+
+But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart showed a very
+different metal. She was furious at the indignity of the King's
+intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as
+his Royal ears had never listened to. She was no slave, she said, with
+flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to
+receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with
+honourable intentions. She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as
+she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no
+power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and
+throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was
+denied her in his Court! And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by
+pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, "to leave
+her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night."
+
+Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his
+heart. He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he
+would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be
+revenged. On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled,
+and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an
+audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging
+her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a
+convent. So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen
+and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine
+promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.
+
+One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost
+to him for ever. He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the
+Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large
+revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his
+_maitresse en titre_; but to all his seductions and bribes the
+inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye. No future, however
+dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.
+"I hope," said the King at last, "I may live to see you old and
+willing," as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with
+the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his
+sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the
+offence.
+
+But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind. It had long been her
+ambition--from childhood, it is said--to be a Duchess, and she was not
+going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world. What
+might come after was another matter. A Duchess's coronet and a
+wedding-ring were her immediate goal. Thus it came to pass that one dark
+night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to
+London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach. Through the
+night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long
+before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.
+Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles's long intrigue had
+ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.
+
+On hearing the news the King was beside himself with anger. He forbade
+the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court--he even dismissed
+his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a hand in the
+plot.
+
+But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
+presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
+honeymoon. Within a year--so powerless is anger against love--Charles
+summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
+Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
+splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
+a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
+says Pepys,
+
+     "she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the
+     Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
+     to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
+     out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn."
+
+How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's "nose
+out of joint" must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
+doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
+maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
+coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
+prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
+maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
+Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
+Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
+shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
+tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once "did take a
+pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
+Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
+himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
+horrid shame."
+
+[Illustration: FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]
+
+But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To the
+consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with small-pox,
+
+     "by which," to quote Pepys again, "all do conclude she
+     will be wholly spoiled, which is the greatest instance of
+     the uncertainty of beauty that could be in this age; but
+     then she hath had the benefit of it to be first married,
+     and to have kept it so long, under the greatest
+     temptations in the world from a King, and yet without the
+     least imputation."
+
+That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to Louis
+XIV., in which he says that "her matchless beauty was impaired beyond
+recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever."
+During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with anxiety,
+visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
+sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of
+her was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.
+
+With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
+to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
+the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the "Sun-King" had
+sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
+Louis's favour; and _La belle Stuart_ was not slow to realise that at
+last her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least
+until the Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of
+Lady of the Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the
+scene of so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.
+
+For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books
+and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of
+years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her ducal
+robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her
+nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with
+part of it an estate, to be known as "Lennox's Love to Blantyre"; and to
+this day "Lennox-Love" perpetuates, like the Britannia of our coins, the
+memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women who have ever
+driven men to distraction by their beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH
+
+
+A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
+allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the
+haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
+rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms,
+statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell
+mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure
+or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares
+and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the
+moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish
+found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.
+
+But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common
+consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth
+Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at
+the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. She was,
+as all the world knew, only the daughter of Thomas Linley,
+singing-master and organiser of the concerts, a man who had plied
+chisel and saw at the carpenter's bench before he found the music that
+was in him; but, obscure as was her birth, she reigned supreme by virtue
+of a loveliness and a gift of song which none of her sex could rival.
+
+It is thus little wonder that Elizabeth Linley's fame had travelled far
+beyond the West Country town in which she was cradled. George III. had
+summoned her to sing to him in his London palace, and had been so
+overcome by her gifts of beauty and melody that, with tears streaming
+down his cheeks, he had stroked her hair and caressed her hands, and
+declared to the blushing girl that he had never seen any one so
+beautiful or heard a voice so divinely sweet.
+
+Charles Dibdin tried to enshrine her in fitting verse, but abandoned the
+effort in despair, vowing that she was indeed of that company described
+by Milton:
+
+    "Who, as they sang, would take the prisoned soul
+    And lap it in Elysium."
+
+The Bishop of Meath, in his unepiscopal enthusiasm, declared that she
+was "the link between an angel and a woman"; while Dr Charles Burney,
+supreme musician and father of the more famous Madame d'Arblay, wrote
+more soberly of her:
+
+     "The tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting
+     as her countenance and conversation. With a
+     mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation,
+     she was possessed of the double power of delighting an
+     audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of
+     brilliant execution, which is allowed to very few
+     singers."
+
+To her Horace Walpole also paid this curious tribute:
+
+     "Miss Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The
+     king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in
+     so holy a place as oratorio."
+
+Such are a few of the tributes, of which contemporary records are full,
+paid to the fair "Nightingale of Bath," whom Gainsborough and Reynolds
+immortalised in two of their inspired canvases--the latter as
+Cecilia--her face almost superhuman in its beauty and the divine rapture
+of its expression--seated at a harpsichord and pouring out her soul in
+song.
+
+It was inevitable that a girl of such charms and gifts--"superior to all
+the handsome things I have heard of her," John Wilkes wrote, "and withal
+the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen"--should have
+lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if
+not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a
+foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty
+compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and
+rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean
+her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of
+pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold
+shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had promised her hand to an
+elderly, unattractive wooer called Long, a man almost old enough to be
+her grandfather.
+
+That her heart had not gone with her hand we may be sure. We know that
+it was only under the strong compulsion of her father that she had given
+her consent; for Mr Long had a purse as elongated as his name, and to
+the eyes of the poor singing-master his gold-bags were irresistible. Her
+elderly wooer loaded his bride-to-be with costly presents; he showered
+jewels on her, bought her a trousseau fit for a Queen; and was on the
+eve of marrying her, when--without a word of warning, it was announced
+that the wedding, to which all Bath had been excitedly looking forward,
+would not take place!
+
+Mr Linley was furious, and threatened the terrors of the law; but the
+bridegroom that failed was adamant. It was said that, in cancelling the
+engagement, Mr Long was acting a chivalrous part, in response to Miss
+Linley's pleading that he would withdraw his suit, since her heart could
+never be his, and by withdrawing shield her from her father's anger.
+However this may have been, Mr Long steadily declined to go to the
+altar, and ultimately appeased the singing-master by settling £3,000 on
+his daughter, and allowing her to keep the valuable jewels and other
+presents he had given her.
+
+It was at this crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was
+ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome
+by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his
+appearance at Bath--a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined
+to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of
+love was none other than Richard Brinsley Sheridan, grandson of Dean
+Swift's bosom friend, Dr Thomas Sheridan, one of the two sons of another
+Thomas, who, after a roaming and profitless life, had come to Bath to
+earn a livelihood by teaching elocution.
+
+This younger Thomas Sheridan seems to have inherited none of the wit and
+cleverness of his father, Swift's boon companion. Dr Johnson considered
+him "dull, naturally dull. Such an excess of stupidity," he added, "is
+not in nature." But, in spite of his dulness, "Sherry"--as he was
+commonly called--had been clever enough to coax a pension of £200 a year
+out of the Government, and was able to send his two boys to Harrow and
+Oxford.
+
+The Sheridan boys had been but a few days in Bath when they both fell
+head over heels in love with Elizabeth Linley, with whom their sister
+had been equally quick to strike up a friendship. But from the first,
+Charles, the elder son, was hopelessly outmatched.
+
+     "On our first acquaintance," Miss Linley wrote in later
+     years, "both professed to love me--but yet I preferred
+     the youngest, as by far the most agreeable in person,
+     beloved by every one."
+
+Indeed, from a boy, Richard Sheridan seemed born to win hearts. His
+sister has confessed:
+
+     "I admired--I almost adored him. He was handsome. His
+     cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes--the finest in
+     the world--the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a
+     tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same
+     playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that
+     was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
+     delighted the family circle."
+
+Such was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when, in the year 1769, he first set
+eyes on the girl, who, after many dramatic vicissitudes, was to bear his
+name and share his glories. From the first sight of her he was
+hopelessly in love, although none but his sister knew it. He was little
+more than a school-boy, and was content to "bide his time," worshipping
+mutely at the shrine of the girl whom some day he meant to make his own.
+
+He gave no sign of jealousy when his elder brother made love to her
+before his eyes--only to retire quickly, chilled by a coldness which he
+realised he could never thaw; or even when his Oxford chum, Halhed, his
+dearest friend and the colleague of his youthful pen, fell a victim to
+Elizabeth's charms, and, in his innocence, begged Sheridan to plead his
+suit with her. Halhed, too, had to retire from the hopeless suit; and
+Richard Sheridan, still silent, save, perhaps, for the eloquence of
+tell-tale eyes, held the field alone.
+
+It was at this stage of our story that a grave element of danger entered
+Elizabeth Linley's life, with the arrival at Bath of a Major Matthews, a
+handsome _roué_, with a large rent-roll from Welsh acres, and a
+dangerous reputation won in the lists of love. At sight of the fair
+Nightingale in the Assembly Rooms this hero of many conquests was
+himself laid low. He was frantically in love, and before many days had
+passed vowed that he would shoot himself if his charmer refused to smile
+on him. Her coldness only fanned his ardour; and his persecution reached
+such a pitch that in her alarm she appealed to young Sheridan for help.
+
+Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young lover than such an
+appeal and the necessity for it. It was a tribute to her esteem, and to
+his budding manliness, which delighted him. Moreover, it gave him many
+opportunities of meeting her, and talking over the situation with her.
+At any cost this persecution must end; and the result of the conferences
+was that an excellent plan was evolved. Richard was to worm himself into
+the confidence of the Major, and, in the character of friend and
+well-wisher, was to advise him, as a matter of diplomacy, to cease his
+attentions to Miss Linley for a time. Meanwhile arrangements were to be
+made for the Nightingale's escape to France, where she proposed to enter
+a convent until she was of age--thus finding a refuge from the
+persecution to which her beauty constantly subjected her, and also from
+the scandal which the Long fiasco had given rise to, and which was still
+a great source of unhappiness to her.
+
+The plot was cunningly planned and worked smoothly. The Major was
+induced by subtle pleading to leave Miss Linley in peace for a time;
+and, to quote Miss Sheridan:
+
+     "At length they fixed on an evening when Mr Linley, his
+     eldest son and Miss Mary Linley were engaged at the
+     concert (Miss Linley being excused on the plea of
+     illness) to set out on their journey. Sheridan brought a
+     sedan-chair to Mr Linley's house in the Crescent, in
+     which he had Miss Linley conveyed to a post-chaise that
+     was waiting for them on the London road. A woman was in
+     the chaise who had been hired to accompany them on this
+     extraordinary elopement."
+
+For elopement it really was, although ostensibly Sheridan was merely
+playing the part of a friendly escort to a distressed lady, whatever
+deeper scheme, unknown to her, may have been in his mind. After a brief
+stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
+towards Lille.
+
+It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
+hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
+could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
+had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
+and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
+the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.
+
+To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
+her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
+Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had travelled
+many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
+make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
+the convent at the altar.
+
+     "It was not," she wrote to him later, "your person that
+     gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
+     tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
+     that were the motives which induced me to love you."
+
+The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
+duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
+anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
+left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
+to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
+discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
+_Chronicle_:--
+
+     "Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for
+     that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away
+     from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and
+     that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my
+     knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters,
+     nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid
+     himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a
+     gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a
+     treacherous Scoundrel.--THOMAS MATTHEWS."
+
+Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue. Sheridan
+promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the
+Major was compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult. But,
+so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a
+second meeting--and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.
+
+The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few
+furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were
+struggling together on the ground. Matthews, however, being much the
+stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken
+sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face. "Beg your life, and I will
+spare it," he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man. "I will
+neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain," was the unflinching
+answer.
+
+     "Matthews then renewed the attack, and, having picked up
+     the point of one of the swords, ran it through the side
+     of the throat and pinned him to the ground with it,
+     exclaiming, 'I have done for him.' He then left the
+     field, accompanied by his second, and, getting into a
+     carriage with four horses which had been waiting for him,
+     drove off."
+
+Sheridan, unconscious and apparently dying, was driven from the Downs to
+a neighbouring inn, "The White Hart," where for a time he hung betwixt
+life and death. On hearing of his condition Miss Linley (who at the time
+was singing at Cambridge) travelled post-haste to his bedside; and,
+tenderly nursed by his wife and his sister, the wounded man slowly
+fought his way back to strength.
+
+One would have thought that, after such a tragic experience and
+observing the mutual devotion of the young couple, their parents would
+have relented and given their approval of the union, however improvident
+and inexcusable it might appear to them. But, on both sides, they were
+obdurate; and Mr Sheridan carried his opposition to the extent of
+extracting from his son a promise that he would not even see his wife.
+
+But love laughs at parents' frowns and usually triumphs in the end. When
+Elizabeth Linley went away to London to sing in oratorio, her husband
+followed her; and, in the _rôle_ of hackney coachman, had the pleasure
+of driving not only his wife but her father, home nightly from the
+concert-room, without either of them suspecting his identity. When at
+last he revealed himself to his wife, her delight was so great as to
+leave no doubt of the sincere love she bore him. Many a secret meeting
+followed; a final joint appeal ultimately broke down the obduracy of the
+parents; and once again Sheridan led his bride to the altar, to make her
+finally and securely his own.
+
+For a time Richard Sheridan and his Nightingale found a haven in a
+remote, rose-covered cottage at East Burnham. These were days of
+unclouded happiness, when, the "world forgetting and by the world
+forgot," they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
+were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
+of Mr Long's £3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
+now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
+voice--she actually refused offers of nearly £4000 for one short
+season--but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice for his
+own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
+back on fame and fortune.
+
+But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
+such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
+began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
+destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
+which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
+Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
+country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
+Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.
+
+Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
+extravagances more suited to an income of £5000 a year than the paltry
+£150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
+and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
+song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
+dinners and to attend his wife's _soirées_. Sheridan was in his element
+in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
+would gladly have changed it all for "a little quiet home that I can
+enjoy in comfort," as she told her husband--above all, for the Burnham
+cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.
+
+Perhaps if Sheridan had never left the cottage and the roses, his name
+would never have been known to fame. His ambition needed some such
+stimulus as this spasm of extravagance to wake it to activity. He must
+now make money or be submerged by debts; and under this impulse of
+necessity it was that he wooed fortune with _The Rivals_, and awoke to
+find himself famous and potentially rich. Other comedies followed
+swiftly from his eager and inspired pen--_The School for Scandal_, _The
+Duenna_, and _The Critic_--each greeted with enthusiasm by a world to
+which such dramatic triumphs were a revelation and a delight. Sheridan
+was not only the "talk of the town"; he was hailed universally as the
+brightest dramatic star of the age.
+
+It is needless to say that Sheridan's fame was a delight to his wife.
+
+     "Not long ago," she wrote to a friend, "he was known as
+     'Mrs Sheridan's husband.' Now the tables are turned, and,
+     henceforth, I expect I shall be just Mr Sheridan's wife.
+     Nor could I wish any more exalted title. I am proud and
+     thankful to be the wife of the cleverest man in England,
+     and the best husband in the world!"
+
+That Mrs Sheridan adored her husband is evident from every letter she
+wrote to him. She addresses him as "my dearest Love" and "my darling
+Dick," and vows that she cannot be happy apart from him. "I cannot love
+you," she declares, "and be perfectly satisfied at such a distance from
+you. I depended upon your coming to-night, and shall not recover my
+spirits till we meet." But through her letters runs the same hankering
+after the old simple, peaceful days--the days of love in a cottage. "I
+could draw," she writes, "such a picture of happiness that it would
+almost make me wish the overthrow of all our present schemes of future
+affluence and grandeur."
+
+But greatly as he loved his wife, Sheridan was now too much wedded to
+his ambition to listen to such tempting. He had conquered fame with his
+pen; now he aspired to subdue it with his tongue. In 1780, while he was
+still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages;
+and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow
+law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the
+oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries.
+Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he
+had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever
+been heard in our tongue--notably by his historic speech in the trial of
+Warren Hastings, to the preparation of which his wife had devoted
+herself body and soul.
+
+Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband
+in Westminster Hall, she wrote:--
+
+     "It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the
+     astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the
+     breasts of every class of people. Every party prejudice
+     has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence
+     and goodness.... What my feelings must be, you can only
+     imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some
+     difficulty that I can 'let down my mind,' as Mr Burke
+     said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.
+     But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this
+     moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last
+     week."
+
+But Mrs Sheridan's day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near
+to its close. She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of
+fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his
+marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal
+seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved
+sister, began to show themselves in her. Her illness was as swift as it
+was, happily, painless. She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly
+watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was
+pitiful to see.
+
+     "During her last days," says Mrs Canning, her devoted
+     friend, "she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
+     sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
+     niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
+     out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
+     a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
+     an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
+     and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
+     poor heart would have burst in the conflict."
+
+And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
+a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
+"choir invisible." Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
+Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
+the world has ever known "between an angel and a woman." As for Sheridan
+he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
+to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS
+
+
+The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
+far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
+George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
+"threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
+the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
+Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
+was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
+of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
+in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
+wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
+career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
+assassin's knife.
+
+His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
+second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
+playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which in
+its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
+not, as Pope says,
+
+    "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,"
+
+at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
+Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
+Arran, said: "There is not so much as one farthing towards defraying the
+expense of his funeral."
+
+Nor have the men of Villiers' blood had any monopoly of adventure. Their
+wives and daughters have seldom been content to lead the unromantic life
+which happily contents so many of their sex. From Barbara Chaffinch,
+whose intrigues secured the Earldom of Jersey for her husband in William
+III.'s reign, to the Lady Adela Villiers who ran away with Captain
+Ibbetson, a handsome young officer of Hussars, to Gretna Green and the
+altar, they have played many diverse and sensational _rôles_ on the
+stage of their time.
+
+It was but fitting that George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey, should
+make a Countess of the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, in whose veins was an
+adventurous strain as marked as in his own; for she was the fruit of one
+of the most dramatic unions recorded in the annals of our Peerage. A
+year before she was cradled her mother was Anne Child, the richest
+heiress in England--the only daughter of Robert Child, head of the great
+banking firm at Temple Bar, and a descendant of Francis Child, the
+industrious London apprentice who married the daughter of his master,
+William Wheeler, goldsmith, whose riches and business he inherited.
+
+"Old Child," as Anne's father was familiarly known, had many
+aristocratic clients who used his cheques and overdrew their accounts;
+but the most prodigal, as also the most ingratiating, of them all was
+the young Earl of Westmorland, who, not content with making large
+demands on the banker's exchequer and patience, had the audacity to
+aspire to all his wealth through his daughter's hand.
+
+Anne was perhaps as naturally flattered by the attentions of a lord as
+she was fascinated by his handsome face and figure and his courtly
+manners; but the father had other designs for his heiress than marrying
+her to a prodigal young nobleman. "Your blood, my lord, is good," he
+once told him; "but money is better."
+
+Lord Westmorland was not, however, the man to be turned aside from the
+gilded goal on which he had set his heart. If he could not wed the
+heiress with her father's blessing, he would dispense with the
+benediction. That he _would_ marry her he was determined; and Anne was
+just the girl to assist a bold lover in such an ambition.
+
+One day, so the story is told, Lord Westmorland decided to bring the
+matter to a crisis. He had been dining with Mr Child, and, after the
+wine had circulated freely, he said, "Now, sir, that we have discussed
+business thoroughly, there is another matter on which I should be
+grateful for your opinion." "What's that?" enquired the banker, beaming
+benevolently on his guest, as a man who has dined well and is at peace
+with the world. "Well, sir, suppose you were deeply in love with a girl
+who returned your love, and that her father refused his consent. What
+would you do?" "What should I do?" laughed the banker, "why, run away
+with her, of course, like many a better man has done!"
+
+What more direct encouragement could an ardent lover want? It is
+possible that the next morning the banker had completely forgotten the
+conversation, and his vinous approval of runaway matches; but, two days
+later, he was destined to have a rude awaking. In the middle of the
+night he was aroused by the watchman to learn that his front door had
+been found open; and a little later the alarming discovery was made that
+his daughter had flown. His suspicions fell at once on that "rascally
+young lord"; and they were confirmed when he found that the Earl, too,
+had disappeared, and that a chaise, with four galloping horses, had been
+seen dashing northwards as fast as whip and spur could drive them.
+
+The banker was furious. He raged and stormed as he ordered his servants
+to procure the fastest horses money could command; and with lavish
+promises of reward to the postboys he set out in hot pursuit of the
+fugitives. Luckily they had no long start; and, with better horses, more
+frequent changes, and a heavier purse, he had little doubt that he would
+soon overtake them. But the chase was sterner and longer than he had
+imagined. Cupid lends wings to runaway lovers. Fast as Mr Child's
+sweating horses raced, they gained but little on the pursued. Through
+the long night, the next day, and the following night the desperate race
+continued--through sleeping villages and startled towns, over hill and
+moor, until the borderland grew near. Then, between Penrith and
+Carlisle, the quarry was at last sighted.
+
+Mr Child's horses, urged to a final effort by the postboys, slowly but
+surely reduced the interval; and now inch by inch they draw abreast of
+the runaway chaise. The moment of triumph has come. Mr Child, with body
+half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt,
+shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand
+waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's
+near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes
+later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
+which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.
+
+Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
+runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
+pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
+street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.
+
+For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
+and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
+his daughter won her way back into his heart, and to her he left the
+whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
+than £100,000 a year.
+
+It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
+who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
+the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
+dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
+she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
+noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
+tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
+luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
+lily.
+
+It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
+looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
+prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
+to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
+aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
+rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
+the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
+to, resist. And one May day in 1804--almost twenty-two years to the day
+after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green--the Lady Sarah
+became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.
+
+From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
+more than a child) took the position of a Queen, to which her rank,
+wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
+unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her _salon_ was a second Royal
+Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
+to the "Empress of Fashion." She entertained kings with a regal
+splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
+and the Tsar Nicholas I. were all delighted to do honour to a hostess so
+captivating and so queenly.
+
+At Middleton Park, her lord's Oxfordshire seat, she dispensed a
+hospitality which was the despair of her rivals. Her retinue of servants
+seldom numbered less than a hundred, and many a week her guests, with
+their attendants, far exceeded a thousand. Money was squandered with a
+prodigal hand. The very servants, it is said, drank champagne and hock
+like water; her housemaids had their riding horses, and dressed in silks
+and satins. Among her thousands of guests were such men as Wellington
+and Peel, Castlereagh and Canning, all humble worshippers at her shrine;
+and Lord Byron who, in his gloomy moods, would shut himself in his
+bedroom for days, living on biscuits and water, and stealing out at dead
+of night to wander ghost-like through the neighbouring woods. These
+moods of black despondency he varied by turbulent spirits, when he would
+be the gayest of the gay, and would challenge his fellow-guests to
+drinking bouts, in which he always came off the victor.
+
+Lady Jersey had no more ardent admirer than Byron, whose muse was
+inspired to many a flight in honour of
+
+                          "The grace of mien,
+    The eye that gladdens and the brow serene;
+    The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
+    Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair."
+
+And among her army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could
+stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was
+such superabundant energy enshrined in a form so beautiful and stately.
+
+     "Shall I tell you what Lady Jersey is like?" wrote
+     Creevey. "She is like one of her numerous gold and silver
+     dicky-birds that are in all the showrooms of this house.
+     She begins to sing at eleven o'clock, and, with the
+     interval of the hour when she retires to her cage to
+     rest, she sings till twelve at night without a moment's
+     interruption. She changes her feathers for dinner, and
+     her plumage both morning and evening is the most
+     beautiful I ever saw."
+
+She seemed indeed incapable of fatigue. Tongue and body alike never
+seemed to rest, from rising to going to bed.
+
+     "She is really wonderful," says Lady Granville; "and how
+     she can stand the life she leads is still more wonderful.
+     She sees everybody in her own house, and calls on
+     everybody in theirs. She is all over Paris, and at all
+     the _campagnes_ within ten miles, and in all _petites
+     soirées_. She begins the day with a dancing-master at
+     nine o'clock, and never  rests till midnight.... At ten
+     o'clock yesterday morning she called for me, and we never
+     stopped to take breath till eleven o'clock at night, when
+     she set me down here more dead than alive, she going to
+     end the day with the Hollands!"
+
+A life that would have killed nine women out of ten seemed powerless to
+touch her. When far advanced in the sixties she was acknowledged to be
+still one of the most beautiful women in England, retaining to an
+amazing degree the bloom and freshness of youth. And when she appeared
+at a fancy-dress ball arrayed as a Sultana, in a robe of sky-blue with
+coral embroideries and a turban of gold and white, she was by universal
+consent acclaimed as the most beautiful woman there. It may interest my
+lady readers to learn that she attributed her perpetual youth to the use
+of gruel as a substitute for soap and water.
+
+Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most
+fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair
+fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and
+repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity.
+So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage
+alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of
+men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. "Diable!" laughed the
+General, "you must be very little sure of yourself if you are afraid to
+be alone with little Lord John!"
+
+She was merciless to any of her lady friends who lapsed from virtue, or
+in any way, however slight, offended the proprieties. But the vials of
+her fiercest anger were reserved for her mother-in-law, the
+Dowager-Countess, whose shameless intrigue with the Prince Regent
+scandalised the world in an age of lax morals; and the outraged Princess
+Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have
+anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to
+the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was
+the Regent at this slight that "the dotard with corrupted eye and
+withered heart," as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the
+Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned to its owner.
+
+A few days later, however, the Countess had her revenge. At a party in
+Cavendish Square she was walking along a corridor with Samuel Rogers
+when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
+himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
+stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
+contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
+and laughingly said, "I did that well, didn't I?"
+
+It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of "Almack's" that Lady Jersey
+won her chief fame--Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
+in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
+hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
+however great, were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
+which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.
+
+Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
+and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
+to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
+at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
+Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
+doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
+face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
+of fashion and conquest--for, by the rules of the club, male members
+were selected by the ladies, and _vice versâ_. But beyond all doubt the
+destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
+Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club--Princess Esterhazy,
+Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
+Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
+counted.
+
+     "Three-fourths even of the nobility," says a writer in
+     the _New Monthly Magazine_, "knock in vain for admission.
+     Into this _sanctum sanctorum_, of course, the sons of
+     commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
+     'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
+     have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
+     themselves."
+
+     "Many diplomatic arts," writes Captain Gronow, "much
+     _finesse_, and a host of intrigues were set in motion to
+     get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
+     rank and fortunes entitled them to the _entrée_ anywhere,
+     were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
+     for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
+     and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is
+     needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was
+     not innocent of abuses."
+
+The fair ladies who ruled supreme over this little dancing and gossiping
+world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at
+the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+_chapeau bras._ On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to
+ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when
+the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped
+forward and said, "Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers," whereupon
+the Duke, who had a great respect for orders and regulations, quietly
+walked away.
+
+Another inflexible rule of the club was that no one should be admitted
+after eleven o'clock; and it was a breach of this regulation that once
+overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington with humiliation. One evening, the
+Duke, who had promised to meet Lady Mornington at Almack's, presented
+himself for admission. "Lady Jersey," announced an attendant, "the Duke
+of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted." "What o'clock
+is it?" she asked. "Seven minutes after eleven, your Ladyship." She
+paused for a moment, and then said with emphasis and distinctness, "Give
+my compliments--Lady Jersey's compliments--to the Duke of Wellington,
+and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of
+exclusion is such that, hereafter, no one can complain of its
+application. He cannot be admitted." And the Duke, whom even Napoleon
+with all his legions had been powerless to turn back, was compelled to
+retreat before the capricious will of a woman.
+
+Such an autocrat was this "Queen of Almack's."
+
+     "While her colleagues were debating," says the author of
+     the "Key to Almack's," "she decided. Hers was the
+     master-spirit that ruled the whole machine; hers the
+     eloquent tongue that could both persuade and command. And
+     she was never idle. Her restless eye pried into
+     everything; she set the world to rights; her influence
+     was resistless, her determination uncontrollable."
+
+"Treat people like fools, and they will worship you," was her favourite
+maxim. And as Bryon, her intimate friend, once said, "She was the
+veriest tyrant that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to
+shake their cap and bells as she willed."
+
+It was at Almack's, it is interesting to recall, that Lady Jersey first
+introduced the quadrille from Paris.
+
+     "I recollect," says Captain Gronow, "the persons who
+     formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
+     They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
+     Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
+     Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti."
+
+It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
+shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.
+
+     "What scenes," writes Mr T. Raikes, "have we witnessed in
+     these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
+     _débutantes_ at the commencement of a waltz, what
+     giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
+     owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
+     opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
+     of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
+     cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
+     became a scene of feud and contention."
+
+But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
+divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
+many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
+victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
+Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
+twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
+waltz.
+
+For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
+world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
+inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
+her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a
+tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
+abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What ---- nonsense Lady Jersey talks!"
+and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor
+humour." But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
+and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
+and personal charm.
+
+The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
+sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
+her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
+her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
+bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
+unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the
+darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the
+slayer of her hopes was not stayed. Her husband, whose devotion had so
+long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest
+son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the
+crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken
+from her.
+
+For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one
+January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the
+world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have
+ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON
+
+
+The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the
+far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly
+seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud
+'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain,
+and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.
+
+Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley "a low wretch, a mad
+assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He
+was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by
+devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in
+his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle,
+whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the
+Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And
+this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy,
+and ended it in tragedy.
+
+As a boy, he was subject to violent attacks of rage, when it was not
+safe to approach him; and his madness grew with his years. Strange tales
+are told of him as a young man. We are told that he would spend hours
+pacing like a wild animal up and down his room, gnashing his teeth,
+clenching his fists, grinning diabolically, and uttering strange
+incoherent cries. He would stand before a mirror, making horrible
+grimaces at his reflection, and spitting upon it; he walked about armed
+with pistols and dagger, ready at a moment to use both on any one who
+annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
+and hatred of all around him.
+
+When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
+into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
+Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
+with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
+petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
+obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
+appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.
+
+Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
+calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
+became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
+and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.
+
+     "I still retain," writes a Mr Cradock in his "Memoirs,"
+     "a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
+     who, with the Ladies Shirley, his sisters, frequented
+     Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
+     the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
+     character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
+     but in the evening he became the terror of the
+     inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
+     to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
+     was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
+     behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
+     afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
+     My father's house was situated midway between Lord
+     Ferrers's lodgings and the Town Hall, where the race
+     assemblies were then held. He had, as was supposed,
+     obtained liquor privately, and then became outrageous;
+     for, from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to
+     the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a
+     silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies. He was
+     then secured for that evening. This was the last time of
+     his appearing at Leicester, till brought from
+     Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.
+
+     "It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady
+     Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him,
+     no greater precaution had been used with respect to his
+     own safety as well as that of all around him. Whilst
+     sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always
+     urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters
+     ventured to come with him to the races, they had an
+     absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises."
+
+Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
+lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
+surrounded himself with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
+both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
+eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
+tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
+from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
+figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.
+
+But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
+became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
+wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
+such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
+or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
+the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
+And this is how it came.
+
+The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
+received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
+his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
+lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
+this delicate post--for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
+such a "tool" he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
+who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
+his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
+Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
+was possessed of a conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
+could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.
+
+In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
+adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
+it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
+unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
+hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
+his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
+the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
+to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.
+
+One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
+steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
+was on a Friday; and punctually at two o'clock, the hour appointed, Mr
+Johnson made his appearance, and was ushered into his Lordship's study.
+Unknown to him, Lord Ferrers had sent away his housekeeper and his
+menservants on various pretexts; and, apart from the Earl and the
+steward (the spider and the fly), there was no one in all the great
+house but three maidservants, whose chief anxiety was to keep as far
+away as possible from their mad master.
+
+With a courteous greeting Lord Ferrers invited Mr Johnson to take a
+seat; and then, placing before him a document, which proved to be a
+confession of fraud and dishonesty in his office of receiver, he
+commanded his steward to sign his name to it.
+
+On reading the confession which he was ordered to sign, Mr Johnson
+indignantly refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. "You
+refuse to sign?" asked the Earl with ominous calmness. "I do," was the
+emphatic reply. "Then," continued his lordship, producing a pistol, "I
+command you to kneel." Mr Johnson, now alarmed and awake to his danger,
+looked first at the stern, cold eyes bent on him, and then at the pistol
+pointed at his heart, and sank on one knee. "Both knees!" insisted the
+Earl. Mr Johnson subsided on the other knee, looking calmly at his
+would-be murderer, though beads of perspiration were standing on his
+forehead. A moment later a shot rang out in the silent room, and the
+steward fell to the floor mortally wounded. Laying down the smoking
+weapon, Lord Ferrers opened the door and called loudly for assistance.
+The horrified servants, who had heard the report, came, huddled and
+fearful, at his bidding. One he despatched for a doctor, and, with the
+assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom.
+When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside,
+trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's
+chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours
+at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on
+the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in
+agony at his house, a mile away.
+
+     "As soon as it became known," to quote the account given
+     by an eye-witness in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, "that
+     Mr Johnson was really dead, the neighbours set about
+     seizing the murderer. A few persons, armed, set out for
+     Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard they saw the
+     Earl going towards the stable, as they imagined, to take
+     horse. He appeared to be just out of bed, his stockings
+     being down and his garters in his hand, having probably
+     taken the alarm immediately on coming out of his room,
+     and finding that Johnson had been removed. One
+     Springthorpe, advancing towards his lordship, presented a
+     pistol, and required him to surrender; but his lordship
+     putting his hand to his pocket, Springthrope imagined he
+     was feeling for a pistol, and stopped short, being
+     probably intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to escape
+     back into the house, where he fastened the doors and
+     stood on his defence.
+
+     "The crowd of people who had come to apprehend him beset
+     the house, and their number increased very fast. In about
+     two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the garret window, and
+     called out: 'How is Johnson?' Springthorpe answered: 'He
+     is dead,' upon which his lordship insulted him, and
+     called him a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody
+     but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again assured that
+     he was dead, he desired that the people might be
+     dispersed, saying that he would surrender; yet, almost in
+     the same breath, he desired that the people might be let
+     in, and have some victuals and drink; but the issue was
+     that he went away again from the window, swearing that he
+     would not be taken.
+
+     "The people, however, still continued near the house, and
+     two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one,
+     Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a
+     blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but
+     Curtis, so far from being intimidated, marched boldly up
+     to him, and his lordship was so struck with the
+     determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that
+     he suffered him to seize him without making any
+     resistance. Yet the moment that he was in custody he
+     declared that he had killed a villain, and that he
+     gloried in the deed."
+
+The tragedy is now hastening to its close. The assassin was kept in
+custody at Ashby until a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful
+Murder" against him, when he was transferred to Leicester, and a
+fortnight later to London, making the journey in his own splendid
+equipage with six horses, and "dressed like a jockey, in a close
+riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt." He was lodged in
+the Round Tower of the Tower of London, where, with a couple of warders
+at his elbow night and day, with sentries posted outside his door, and
+another on the drawbridge, he passed the last weeks of his doomed life.
+
+In mid-April he was duly tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of
+Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to
+prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
+dissentient voice, pronounced "Guilty," and sentenced to be "hanged by
+the neck until he was dead," when his body should be handed over to the
+surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed--pitiful salve to his
+pride--that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
+his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
+course.
+
+One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
+other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
+o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey--the
+most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
+a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
+as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
+horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.
+
+Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
+of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
+procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
+spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
+journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
+of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_,
+
+     "of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
+     silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
+     after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
+     perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
+     but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
+     then began in the following order: A very large body of
+     constables of the county of Middlesex, preceded by one of
+     the high constables; a party of horse grenadiers, and a
+     party of foot; Mr Sheriff Errington, in his chariot,
+     accompanied by his under-Sheriff, Mr Jackson; the landau
+     escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers and
+     foot; Mr Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which was
+     Under-Sheriff Mr Nichols; a mourning-coach and six, with
+     some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
+     six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
+     from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.
+
+     "The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
+     hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
+     whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
+     though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
+     saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
+     through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
+     death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
+     the King, begging that he might suffer where his
+     ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered--namely, on
+     Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
+     obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
+     part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
+     and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
+     the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
+     As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
+     particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
+     and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did."
+
+At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
+handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
+muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
+amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
+exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
+coin in his hand.
+
+Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, not even a struggle marking the moment when life left him.
+After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
+Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
+exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
+resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
+Church.
+
+Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
+the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
+mad beyond all doubt, and "knew not what he did"; and in the eyes of all
+charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
+remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
+two centuries ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A GHOSTLY VISITANT
+
+
+There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more
+tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting
+climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly
+visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this
+singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear
+and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson
+declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I
+am willing to believe it."
+
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished
+poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of
+Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the
+county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his
+clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute
+age.
+
+     "Of his morals," Sir Bernard Burke says, "we may judge by
+     the fact of his having died the victim of the coarsest
+     debauchery, and leaving behind him a diary more
+     disgustingly licentious than the pages of Aratine
+     himself."
+
+William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had
+his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his _Diaboliad_ "to the
+worst man in His Majesty's Dominions," and when he penned those terrible
+lines:--
+
+    "Have I not tasted every villain's part?
+     Have I not broke a noble parent's heart?
+     Do I not daily boast how I betrayed
+     The tender widow and the virtuous maid?"
+
+From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse
+lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until
+that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, "I
+awoke, and behold I was a lord!"
+
+     "From the time when," Mr Stanley Makower writes,
+     "although no more than a youth of nineteen, his
+     engagement to General Warburton's daughter had been
+     broken off on the discovery of the vicious life he had
+     led in his travels in France and Italy, he had been a
+     source of shame and trouble to his family.... To measure
+     the depths of Lyttelton's vices, it is necessary to read
+     his own letters, in which the literary style is as
+     perfect as the fearless admission of fault is
+     bewildering."
+
+Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the
+brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.
+
+With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of
+person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
+Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
+was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
+boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
+literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
+have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
+statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
+and high position in the arena of politics.
+
+Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
+Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
+to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
+itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
+plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
+the pleasure he loved.
+
+Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
+still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
+nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
+pleasure.
+
+And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
+of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
+his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
+London home.
+
+     "He found," to quote the words of his lordship's
+     stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
+     on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
+     cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
+     I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
+     two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
+     of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
+     Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
+     said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
+     their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
+     gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'"
+
+How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
+would be lying among the "vulgar fellows" who die in their youth at
+five-and-thirty!
+
+And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
+for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
+of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp--the speech of a man in
+the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the
+spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were
+followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely
+killing him.
+
+It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord
+Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful
+life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a
+fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party,
+including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host
+could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his
+depraved tastes, Lord Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination--a
+wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.
+
+During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following
+incident--which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events
+that followed--took place.
+
+     "Lord Lyttelton," to quote Sir Digby Neave, "had come to
+     Pit Place in very precarious health, and was ordered not
+     to take any but the gentlest exercise. As he was walking
+     in the conservatory with Lady Affleck and the Misses
+     Affleck, a robin perched on an orange-tree close to them.
+     Lord Lyttelton attempted to catch it, but failing, and
+     being laughed at by the ladies, he said he would catch it
+     even if it was the death of him. He succeeded, but he put
+     himself in a great heat by the exertion. He gave the bird
+     to Lady Affleck, who walked about with it in her hand."
+
+On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so
+pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what
+was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the
+following startling statement:--"Last night," he said, "after I had been
+lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping
+of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about
+my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these
+strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in
+white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking
+towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for death, for I
+had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I
+enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three
+days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'"
+
+Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his
+guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer
+him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the
+despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction
+that he was a doomed man. "You will see," was all the answer he would
+vouchsafe, "I shall die at midnight on Saturday."
+
+But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to
+which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton
+did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the
+preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he
+was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day--a speech which
+should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He
+spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences,
+and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as
+full of confidence as of his subject.
+
+Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
+eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
+his hearers.
+
+     "Cast your eyes for a moment," he declared, amid
+     impressive silence, "on the state of the Empire.
+     America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
+     us as a commercial and maritime people--lost--for ever
+     lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
+     part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
+     her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
+     Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
+     hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
+     world for the preservation of freedom.'"
+
+It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
+the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," Lord Lyttelton felt that he
+had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
+laurels of the patriot and the orator.
+
+On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
+James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, "with the idleness of one who has
+never known what occupation means."
+
+"Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
+you such fine compliments on your speech?" he asked.
+
+Lyttelton smiled faintly. "No, it was not of that I was thinking," he
+answered. "Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
+majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
+minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
+lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
+of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
+thinking--of death."
+
+Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the story of Lyttelton's
+dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
+of uneasiness.
+
+"No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have," continued
+Lyttelton. "But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
+nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
+thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
+true that I have not more than three days to live--"
+
+"You take the thing too seriously," interposed his cousin.
+
+"Join me at Pit Place to-morrow," said Lyttelton. "Then you shall see if
+I take it too seriously."
+
+During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
+boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
+the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
+and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"
+
+During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
+at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
+high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
+"Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
+hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
+silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.
+
+As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
+but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
+to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
+passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
+retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
+knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
+house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to
+deceive him into comfort."
+
+Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
+curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
+mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
+fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
+to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
+that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
+straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
+to go--half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve--and nothing
+happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
+watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
+laughter--discordant, jubilant, defiant.
+
+"This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find," he said to his
+valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. "And
+now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer." The valet proceeded to
+mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
+at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. "You dirty fellow!" his
+lordship exclaimed. "Go down and fetch a spoon."
+
+When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror,
+his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
+He ran downstairs again, shouting, "Help! Help! My lord is dying!" The
+alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
+host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
+watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
+died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
+of three nights previously.
+
+Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
+statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
+would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
+to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
+say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
+former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
+question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
+remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
+exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
+three days before the event.
+
+Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
+was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
+Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
+often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
+his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
+come and inform you."
+
+The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
+Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
+the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
+lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
+his house at Dartford, in Kent.
+
+When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's "Illustrations of Human
+Life," he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
+twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
+in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
+to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
+Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
+the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
+chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
+occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
+Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find--his slippers.
+The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
+egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
+out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
+there, however.
+
+Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
+strictly searched. _The door was locked on the inside_, yet no Lord
+Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
+servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not arrived. The man answered:
+"No, sir." "You may depend upon it," said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
+mystified and out of humour, "that he is somewhere in the house. He was
+here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
+tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
+the inn if he likes."
+
+After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
+Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
+too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
+following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
+night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
+midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
+ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
+swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
+"he was not himself or a man again for three years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
+recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
+Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
+while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
+bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
+this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
+dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
+or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
+least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.
+
+No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
+virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
+Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
+honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
+nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
+blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
+easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
+eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
+or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
+until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
+any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.
+
+And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
+herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
+which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
+indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
+succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
+favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
+contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.
+
+Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
+he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
+Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
+were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
+a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
+I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
+indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
+elastic conscience.
+
+As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
+honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in
+the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
+capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
+the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
+seek a fresh conquest.
+
+To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
+Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
+for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
+for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
+her charms, ensnared him with her _beauté de diable_, and then,
+satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.
+
+Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
+watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
+quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment--the shedding
+of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
+join her at a _petit souper_ at Spring Gardens, a favourite
+pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
+commenced when the _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted by the appearance of
+none other than the "invincible Jermyn," one of the handsomest and most
+notorious _roués_ of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
+most ardent lovers.
+
+Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
+Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
+invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
+what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
+dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
+brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
+flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
+his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
+Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
+of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
+his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
+climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
+marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
+in its sheath.
+
+Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
+before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
+friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
+satisfaction--a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
+who vowed he would "wipe the young puppy out." The duel took place in
+the "Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall," and proved to be of
+as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
+desired.
+
+On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:--
+
+     "Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
+     nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
+     Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, and the first
+     mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
+     Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
+     another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
+     could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
+     the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
+     But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
+     before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
+     Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
+     tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know."
+
+If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
+and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
+Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
+of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
+described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
+appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
+years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.
+
+The Court, as Pepys records, was "much concerned in this fray"; but it
+was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
+the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
+fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
+Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
+varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
+the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth and lower
+tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
+roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
+lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.
+
+Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
+brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
+day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
+practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
+heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
+himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
+well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
+merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
+painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
+the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an
+attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was
+crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were."
+
+Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
+jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
+enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
+have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
+a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
+as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
+the most foul-mouthed, evil-living man in London, whose very contact
+was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
+inveigled into his company and that of the "jolly blades," who were his
+boon companions; "but Lord!" the diarist says ingenuously, "their talk
+did make my heart ache!"
+
+That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a _liaison_ astonished even
+those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
+passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
+his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
+in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over "his lady's
+most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
+as much as he knew himself."
+
+Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
+of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
+he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
+from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
+most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
+was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
+man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
+libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
+any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
+with the bitterest invectives; "painted a frightful picture of her
+conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
+into defects." The Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
+vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
+begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
+him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
+brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.
+
+But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
+and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
+furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
+with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
+in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
+limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
+Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
+screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
+duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
+tells the following story:
+
+"Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
+Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
+Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
+Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
+mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
+and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
+and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
+through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his
+armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
+measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
+Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
+about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
+mistress."
+
+It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
+lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
+sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
+the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
+transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
+Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
+betrayal.
+
+From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
+his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
+of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
+his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
+and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
+crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
+execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
+the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
+storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
+flaunted their amour in the face of the world.
+
+Now that the Countess's husband had been removed from their path the
+shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
+must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
+and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
+opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
+to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
+enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
+Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
+distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
+witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
+who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,
+
+     "by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
+     out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
+     from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
+     Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
+     from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
+     murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
+     he was thought dead."
+
+The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
+Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
+himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
+his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
+of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
+retired into the obscurity in which alone he could feel safe from such
+a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
+unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
+favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
+of their lust and their triumphs.
+
+    "Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
+     The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"
+
+the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
+standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
+almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
+duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
+course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
+effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
+revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
+himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he
+
+     "found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
+     revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
+     than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
+     mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
+     Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."
+
+It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
+alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
+he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
+the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
+to enter into security to the King in the sum of £10,000 apiece. Thus
+ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
+Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
+his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
+friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.
+
+    "No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
+     No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+     There reft of health, of fortune, friends,
+     And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
+
+To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
+marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
+England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
+hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
+haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
+penitence.
+
+But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
+of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
+across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
+shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
+Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
+proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
+of wedding bells "Messalina's" history practically ended as far as the
+world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
+life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of her passion had now
+died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
+political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
+as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
+years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.
+
+Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
+herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
+young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
+of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
+if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
+man, whom William III. had called "the soul of honour," stood branded to
+the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
+to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.
+
+This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
+of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
+will, in the service of the devil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A PROFLIGATE PRINCE
+
+
+Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
+Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
+abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in
+spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
+Each brother had his amours--many of them highly discreditable; but for
+unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
+unenviable palm.
+
+Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
+solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
+placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
+soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
+left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
+was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
+whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
+aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.
+
+And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no woman was ever wooed
+with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.
+
+     "My dear Angel," he once wrote to her, "I got to bed
+     about ten. I then prayed for you, my dearest love, kissed
+     your dearest little hair, and lay down and dreamt of you,
+     had you ten thousand times in my arms, kissing you and
+     telling you how much I loved and adored you, and you
+     seemed pleased.... I have your heart, and it is warm at
+     my breast. I hope mine feels as easy to you. Thou joy of
+     my life, adieu!"
+
+In another letter he exclaims:
+
+     "Oh, my dearest soul ... your dear heart is so safe with
+     me and feels every motion mine does. How happy will that
+     day be to me that brings you back! I shall be unable to
+     speak for joy. My dearest soul, I send you ten thousand
+     kisses."
+
+So irrepressible was his passion that it burst the bounds of prose, and
+gushed forth in verses such as this:
+
+    "Hear, solemn Jove, and, conscious Venus, hear!
+     And thou, bright maid, believe me while I swear,
+     No time, no change, no future flame shall move
+     The well-placed basis of my lasting love."
+
+When the fair and frail Countess, in a fit of alarm, took refuge at
+Eaton Hall, her Royal lover followed her in disguise, installed himself
+at a neighbouring inn, and continued his intrigue under the very nose of
+her jealous husband, who at last was driven to sue for divorce. He won
+an easy verdict, and with it £10,000 damages--a bill which George III.
+himself had ultimately to pay. Within a few months the incorrigible Duke
+had another "dearest little angel" in his toils, and pursued his
+gallantries without a thought of the Countess he had left to her shame.
+
+Such was this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of
+his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771,
+at Brighton--a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded
+her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for fresh conquests.
+
+Anne Luttrell, as the widow had been known in her maiden days, was one
+of the three lovely daughters of Lord Irnham, in later years Earl of
+Carhampton, and a member of a family noted for the beauty of its women,
+and the wild, lawless living of its men. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell,
+was the most reckless swashbuckler and the deadliest duellist of his
+time--a man whose morals were as low as his temper and courage were
+high.
+
+At seventeen Anne had become the wife of Christopher Horton, a
+hard-drinking, fast-living Derbyshire squire, who left her a widow at
+twenty-two, in the prime of her beauty, and eager, as soon as decency
+permitted, to enter the matrimonial lists again.
+
+About this time Horace Walpole, who had a keen eye for female charms,
+describes her as
+
+     "extremely pretty, very well-made, with the most amorous
+     eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette
+     beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, and completely
+     mistress of all her passions and projects. Indeed,
+     eyelashes three-quarters of a yard shorter would have
+     served to conquer such a head as she has turned."
+
+In another portrait Walpole says:
+
+     "There was something so bewitching in her languishing
+     eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she
+     pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and
+     yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through
+     it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced
+     divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric
+     kind."
+
+Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious
+young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at
+Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit
+of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General
+Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his
+attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at
+the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to
+her grave plain "Mrs Smith" when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to
+boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.
+
+For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the
+Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside
+when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this
+she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours--after a
+period of coquetry and coy reluctance--were at his disposal; but the
+price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring--nothing less. And such was
+the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke--flinging scruples and
+fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, and
+were there made man and wife. The widow had caught her Prince and meant
+the world to know she was a Princess.
+
+For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing
+his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager
+Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more. But his Duchess
+was inexorable. She declined to play any longer the _rôle_ of "virtuous
+mistress" in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of
+the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the
+throne.
+
+Between his wife's tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the
+Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his
+exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to
+make the plunge--to break the news to the King. Had he but known how
+inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back
+to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by
+trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic
+the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged
+with danger and unrest. And when the quaking Duke presented himself
+before his brother as he was moodily walking in his palace garden,
+George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of
+worries.
+
+No sooner had the King read the ill-spelled, clumsily-worded note which
+the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
+flame. "You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!" he shouted, purple in
+face and hoarse with passion. "I tell you that woman shall never be a
+Royal Duchess--she shall never be anything." "What must I do, then?"
+gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. "Go abroad until I
+can decide what to do," thundered the King, waving his brother
+imperiously away.
+
+It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
+upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
+this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
+would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her--before
+her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
+Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
+Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
+world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
+smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
+through his Chamberlain that "there was no road between Cumberland House
+and Windsor Castle--that the Castle doors would be closed against any
+who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law."
+
+There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
+paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
+a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
+perfection her new and exalted _rôle_ of Princess. "No woman of her
+time," says Lord Hervey, "performed the honours of her drawing-room with
+such grace, affability, and dignity." And, in spite of George's frowns,
+the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
+Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
+was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in
+beauty, was received with open arms at the Castle, and drew to her court
+all the greatest in the land.
+
+She even made overtures to her rival and enemy, and proposed that they
+should appear together in the same box at the opera--an overture to
+which the Duchess of Gloucester retorted contemptuously: "Never! I would
+not smell at the same nosegay with her in public!"
+
+By sheer effrontery Duchess Anne at last forced her way into the Royal
+Court and public recognition as a member of George's family; and the
+fact that both the King and the Queen snubbed her mercilessly for her
+pains, detracted little from her triumph and gratification. What her
+Grace of Gloucester had won by submission and ingratiating arts, she had
+won by brazen defiance and importunity. But the goal, though so
+differently reached, was the same. Her triumph was complete.
+
+To her last day, however, she never forgave the King and Queen. While
+they had smiled on the sempstress's daughter, who had been guilty of
+precisely the same offence as herself--that of wedding a Royal Prince
+without the King's sanction--they had scorned her, a Luttrell, the
+daughter of a noble house; and terrible was the revenge she took. She
+deliberately set herself to debase the Prince of Wales--a youth whose
+natural tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him
+in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his
+passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he
+himself was a past-master--drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious
+profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would
+have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the
+hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the
+Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his Consort for their slights;
+and her shameless reward was when she witnessed their grief at the moral
+degradation of their eldest son.
+
+But even in the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell
+was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the
+social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was
+empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and
+flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family
+circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome
+stranger; and such homage as she received was conceded to her rank and
+not to herself. "Of all princesses," she once wrote to a friend, "I
+really think I am the most miserable."
+
+Her husband died at the age of forty-five, worn out with excesses,
+regretted by none, execrated by many. Of his father it had been written
+by way of epitaph:--
+
+    "He was alive and is dead,
+    And, as it is only Fred,
+    Why, there's no more to be said."
+
+Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand,
+would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of
+years--unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in
+name--harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of
+coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose
+failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the
+Duchess.
+
+The fate of Elizabeth--one of the "three beautiful Luttrells"--is among
+the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister
+died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and
+actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her
+liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower
+depths--was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the
+streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set
+her free from her fetters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS
+
+
+If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
+been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
+into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous"
+figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
+certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
+and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
+one of his most amiable characteristics.
+
+The Irish squire was a proud man--proud of his pretty and shiftless
+wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
+his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
+husbands--one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
+proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
+he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
+Marguerite, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and with no
+gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.
+
+But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
+waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
+though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
+neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
+and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
+Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as "Buck Power" and
+"Shiver-the-Frills"; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
+Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
+a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
+wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
+his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
+life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
+of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.
+
+Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
+day to dazzle the world as the "most gorgeous Lady Blessington."
+
+As with many another "ugly ducking" Marguerite Power's beauty was only
+dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
+long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
+flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
+other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
+had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
+charm--Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
+stationed at Clonmel. To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
+and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
+encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
+offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
+wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
+moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
+showed the utmost aversion. "I hate him," she protested in tears to her
+father, who supported his suit; "and I would rather die a hundred times
+than marry him."
+
+But "Beau Power" was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
+child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
+family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
+indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
+biggest scoundrel in Tipperary--a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and
+a father's ambition.
+
+[Illustration: MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON]
+
+The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
+followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
+young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
+Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
+from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
+days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.
+
+After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
+station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
+no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her
+home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
+almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
+left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
+the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
+to shield and care for her.
+
+How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
+must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
+at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
+England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
+though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
+scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
+We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
+struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
+in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
+her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,
+
+     "she received at her house only those whose age and
+     character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
+     others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
+     could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
+     Blessington, then a widower."
+
+Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
+charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
+at its close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
+as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
+during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
+this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
+ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
+and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy--or, as
+some say, in a drunken quarrel--had flung himself to his death through a
+window of his gaol.
+
+Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
+squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
+would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
+widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
+of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
+prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The "ugly
+duckling" had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
+happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
+radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.
+
+Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
+alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
+landlords, with a rent-roll of £30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
+extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
+for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous
+furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
+wife seems to have shared.
+
+When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
+revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of "crimson Genoa
+silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
+equal richness." But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
+childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
+her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
+months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
+_salon_ all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
+her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.
+
+Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
+his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
+worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
+of mind.
+
+Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
+yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
+and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
+retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
+have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
+d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
+Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
+charming a cavalier as this "Admirable Crichton" of Georgian days.
+
+     "Count d'Orsay," says Charles James Mathews, the famous
+     comedian, who knew him well, "was the beau-ideal of manly
+     dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
+     conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
+     handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
+     degree; highly educated, and of great literary
+     acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
+     mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
+     conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
+     instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
+     swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
+     horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age."
+
+Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
+Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
+its tragic close.
+
+From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
+with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
+spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
+sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
+From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
+ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
+received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
+lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, "fit for any
+queen." And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
+pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
+and its colonnade, "supporting a terrace covered with flowers"; its
+marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
+long gallery, "filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi."
+
+     "On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at
+     the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
+     and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
+     charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
+     gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
+     grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
+     tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
+     delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
+     rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
+     architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
+     oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
+     consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
+     the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
+     splendour."
+
+Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
+ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
+indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
+splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
+years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
+d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
+galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
+Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
+nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.
+
+From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
+her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
+her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
+daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
+few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
+protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
+London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
+for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
+Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
+even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
+thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.
+
+The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
+indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."
+
+     "The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
+     rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
+     exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
+     alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
+     living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
+     with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
+     and from the columns that support the frieze of the
+     recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
+     hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
+     the room opposite the fireplace--pale blue carpets,
+     silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."
+
+Her bath was of white marble; her _salle de bain_ was draped with white
+muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
+Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
+lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
+keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
+to the gilt consoles, marble-topped _chiffonières_, and _fauteuils_
+"richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
+curtains."
+
+This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
+lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
+before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
+in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
+years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
+of his £30,000 a year was an annual income of £600, which went to his
+illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of £2,000 a year
+was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
+future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
+for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
+contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
+with which he had always surrounded her.
+
+It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
+solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
+which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
+found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of
+Beauty" were an instantaneous success--they made a strong appeal to the
+flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
+Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
+fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
+glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
+travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.
+
+In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
+jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
+so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
+_fauteuil_ of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
+and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
+her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
+and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
+gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
+tassel, and his shower of ringlets.
+
+But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
+lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
+magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
+she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
+well advanced in the forties--and this she found at Gore House, in
+Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
+and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
+spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
+within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.
+
+Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
+who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
+hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
+finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
+commands to a Court-ball.
+
+"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
+interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
+moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
+men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
+without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
+Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
+hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
+hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
+greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
+or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
+than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
+never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
+dearly-loved and devoted son.
+
+Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below £4,000 a year, it
+was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
+this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
+reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
+D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
+mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
+incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _ménage_--until he found
+himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding £100,000,
+and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
+a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
+rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
+smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
+avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of
+flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
+resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
+safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
+had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
+magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.
+
+A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right
+Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were
+put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
+through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous--among
+them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
+goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
+effects brought absurdly low prices, realised £12,000--a smaller sum
+probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
+pictures.
+
+This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady
+Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
+auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
+grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She
+was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother--a true, loving mother to me."
+Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the
+Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
+designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
+graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A QUEEN OF COQUETTES
+
+
+The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
+calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
+Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
+Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
+crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
+of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
+lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
+sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
+boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH]
+
+And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under
+the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
+clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
+twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
+opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
+little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
+birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the
+restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
+splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
+of the Sandridge baby.
+
+If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
+live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
+counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
+Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
+come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
+country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
+management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
+man in the moon.
+
+His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
+Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
+when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
+accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
+a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
+John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
+and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
+Pole.
+
+Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
+little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
+loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
+as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
+when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
+York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
+splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.
+
+The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
+her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
+speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
+notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
+promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
+but the disdainful beauty dropped the _billets-doux_ on the floor for
+any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
+was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.
+
+James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
+gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
+in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
+after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
+hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
+raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
+Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
+pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
+sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
+of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.
+
+While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
+madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
+rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
+toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
+lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
+was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
+innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
+sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
+where a very different life awaited her.
+
+She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
+the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
+glimpse of it. Her more modest _rôle_ was to be playfellow and companion
+of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne--a shy, backward child, a
+few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
+eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
+education to her.
+
+To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
+Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
+country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
+passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
+romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
+between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
+playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.
+
+It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into
+young womanhood--little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
+infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character--an
+imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
+inflexible will within the circle of the Court.
+
+While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
+John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
+closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
+ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
+made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
+Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
+handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
+in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
+ten years' superiority in age.
+
+John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
+one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
+aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
+who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
+hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
+of his lands and a fine of £4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
+own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
+a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
+Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
+John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
+daughter Arabella.
+
+From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
+Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
+handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
+once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
+of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
+person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
+many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
+might not have been his without the asking.
+
+Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
+the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all
+Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
+what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
+net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
+love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
+conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
+trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
+singular spectacle--that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
+and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
+an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
+lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
+inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.
+
+One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities
+were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
+packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
+before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of £5,000
+with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an
+annuity of £500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
+foundation of his subsequent fortune."
+
+A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
+to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
+proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
+under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
+under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
+of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
+who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
+outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
+handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
+that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome
+Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
+of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
+Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
+thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
+had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
+the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.
+
+It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
+Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
+as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
+queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
+at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
+towers over meaner flowers. And--such are the strange ways of love--from
+that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
+power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
+bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
+graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
+life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic--never
+has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
+
+But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man--even by a
+lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
+romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
+battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
+and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
+She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
+Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
+man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
+amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his
+ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.
+
+Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
+have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
+years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
+indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
+soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
+handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
+recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
+and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
+for at least a smile or a look of kindness.
+
+     "Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite
+     indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
+     anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
+     conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
+     ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
+     know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."
+
+But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
+is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
+him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the
+headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
+vows, in his pain,
+
+     "by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
+     my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
+     could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess,"
+     he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if
+     she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
+     chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
+     drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
+     shall come."
+
+At last the iceberg thaws a little--though it is only to charge him with
+unkindness! She assumes the _rôle_ of virtue; and, with a woman's
+capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
+she herself has visited on him.
+
+     "Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy,
+     for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
+     am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."
+
+Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
+her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
+word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses _him_ of
+unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
+temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.
+
+     "That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if
+     cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would
+     be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
+     your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
+     until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
+     without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
+     come to me without any prejudice to your health."
+
+At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
+if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
+take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
+of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.
+
+But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
+was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
+on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
+for his ambitious purpose--one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
+friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
+unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
+no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
+alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
+love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
+penniless beauty.
+
+For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
+though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
+temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
+it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
+marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
+greatness!
+
+No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
+flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she
+raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love
+amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
+wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.
+
+     "As for seeing you," she wrote, "I am resolved I never
+     will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
+     for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
+     order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
+     surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
+     creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
+     shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
+     and give God thanks, though too late I see my error."
+
+Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
+for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
+shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
+divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
+man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
+Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
+done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
+battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
+negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
+solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
+came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.
+
+But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
+did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life--that he
+adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.
+
+     "I vow to God," he wrote, "you do so entirely possess my
+     thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
+     your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
+     that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
+     despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
+     you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
+     breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
+     you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
+     will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
+     adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
+     how I may deserve, though not have, your love."
+
+Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
+seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
+of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
+had merely written it to amuse himself, and to "make her think that he
+had an affection for her when she was assured he had none." At last,
+however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
+him that
+
+     "if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
+     so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
+     ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
+     be made ridiculous to the world."
+
+Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
+wrote:
+
+     "I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
+     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
+     better pleased with your happiness than my own,"
+
+she answered:
+
+     "If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
+     you say you have, you would find out some way to make
+     yourself happy--it is in your power. Therefore press me
+     no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
+     approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
+     consider who was the cause of it."
+
+At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
+veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these--"you
+would find out some way to make yourself happy--_it is in your power_."
+And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
+following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
+advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
+by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
+his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
+and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
+answering that she did it "that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
+hearing from you more!"
+
+Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
+to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
+in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought
+her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
+actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.
+
+     "Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
+     she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
+     would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
+     which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
+     my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
+     her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
+     she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
+     it, and not use me thus like a footman."
+
+In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
+innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
+deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
+poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.
+
+     "If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
+     enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
+     should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
+     However," she continued, "if you can be so well contented
+     never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
+     will believe you, though I have not other people."
+
+No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
+contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
+merciless manner she charges him with "being content never to see her."
+Although she had never uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
+for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
+less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
+or lover so patient under so much provocation?
+
+She further accused him of laughing at her when he was "at the Duke's
+side," to which he retorted "I was so far from that, that had it not
+been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who
+avoided _her_; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
+shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I
+would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."
+
+But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
+forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
+strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
+her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
+when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
+shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
+first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!
+
+Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
+Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
+portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
+lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
+could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
+to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
+re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
+wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
+eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of
+offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
+annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
+so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
+in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
+could sully her.
+
+Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
+Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
+preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
+won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
+rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
+was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
+in danger.
+
+Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
+daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
+unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
+Mitchelstown nursery--one of a dozen brothers and sisters--a wholesome,
+merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
+the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
+luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.
+
+Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
+Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
+thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
+Mary's senior--indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
+married man--had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
+children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
+"big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
+a young man of remarkable physical gifts--tall, of splendid figure, and
+strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
+of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
+young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
+He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
+dances--in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
+parents began to grow alarmed.
+
+One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
+weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
+blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the
+effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
+friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
+missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
+bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
+overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
+ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
+soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
+on her fate.
+
+From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
+description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
+handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
+In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
+large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
+Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
+no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
+deed--a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
+family of the girl he had abducted.
+
+When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
+infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
+from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
+deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
+restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
+this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
+runaway than her abductor.
+
+For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
+until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
+to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
+at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
+fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
+young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
+girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
+the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.
+
+"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the
+gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and
+handsome----" began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
+walked Fitzgerald himself. "Why," exclaimed the servant, as with
+startled eyes she looked at the intruder, "that's the very gentleman who
+visits the lady!"
+
+For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
+turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
+against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
+boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
+within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
+on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
+demanded a meeting on the following morning.
+
+The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
+Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
+alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
+surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
+dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
+placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
+man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
+remained uninjured.
+
+After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
+between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
+second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: "You are a ---- villain, and
+I will not hear a word you have to offer!" Once more the duellists took
+up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
+effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
+combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
+next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
+and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.
+
+Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
+lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
+at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
+Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
+vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
+Mary into his power.
+
+Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
+enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
+his plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
+literally "bargained without his host," who chanced to be an old trusted
+retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
+suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
+day and walked abroad at night.
+
+No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
+been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to
+communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
+"up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
+back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
+suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
+inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.
+
+Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
+of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
+from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
+Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
+Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
+spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
+newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
+room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
+he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
+voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.
+
+Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
+and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
+oaths, they broke in the door--and found themselves face to face with a
+brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
+stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
+at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
+combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
+play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
+last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
+head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
+fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
+daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.
+
+The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
+distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
+But wherever it travelled--from the shebeens of Connemara to the
+coffee-houses of Cheapside--it carried with it a wave of compassion for
+the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
+confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
+it had been done by some other hand than mine!"
+
+As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
+murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
+salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
+Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be
+brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
+the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
+rank--including that of trial by his Peers.
+
+In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
+took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
+appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
+Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
+small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
+procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
+of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.
+
+Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
+Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried
+"by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to
+Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of
+persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,"
+no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
+One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my
+honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
+congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.
+
+And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
+this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
+important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
+subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to
+join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
+her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
+she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
+is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
+made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
+mind.
+
+Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
+many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
+her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
+names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
+pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
+the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.
+
+Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
+produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express
+such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now,
+I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be
+Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
+lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
+complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
+became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
+no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
+had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT
+
+
+In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
+better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
+Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
+raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.
+
+From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
+in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
+on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
+succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
+years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
+business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
+Everything he touched seemed to "turn to gold"; before he had reached
+middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as "Rich Spencer"; and
+by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
+in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
+which a century earlier Stow had described as "very large and
+beautiful, and the highest at that time in London."
+
+Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
+had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
+stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
+When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
+Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
+which, to quote Sir Thomas More, "he lodged himself, and little by
+little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
+crowded and King Henry's left desolate"; and it was in one of its
+magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
+the Crown of England.
+
+Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
+has immortalised it in "Richard III."; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
+than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
+there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
+when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
+as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
+Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
+the historic and splendid home in which "Rich Spencer" dispensed
+hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.
+
+Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
+his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
+leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in Canonbury
+Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
+It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
+event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
+the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the
+Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
+who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
+to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
+failed is told by Papillon.
+
+     "Rich men," says this chronicler, "are commonly the prey
+     of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
+     spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
+     is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
+     Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
+     twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
+     which, if he had done, £50,000 ransom had not redeemed
+     him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
+     musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
+     left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
+     with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
+     hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
+     came always to his house. But by the providence of God--I
+     have this from a private record--Sir John, upon some
+     extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
+     night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
+     fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
+     to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
+     This," adds Papillon, "was a desperate attempt."
+
+But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
+still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
+she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
+of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
+she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
+city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
+window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
+her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had "the sweetest face I have seen
+in my City of London."
+
+That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
+suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
+inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
+England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
+coronet laid at her feet before she had well left her school-books. But
+to all these offers, dazzling enough to a merchant's daughter, Elizabeth
+turned a deaf, if dainty ear. "It is not me they want," she would
+laughingly say, "but my father's money. I shall live and die, like the
+good Queen, my namesake, a maid."
+
+And so has many another much-sought maiden said in the pride of an
+untouched heart; but to them as to her the "Prince Charming," before
+whom all her defences crumble, comes at last. In Elizabeth Spencer's
+case, the conquering prince was William, second Lord Compton, one of the
+handsomest, most accomplished and fascinating young men in London. In
+person, as in position, he was alike unimpeachable--an ideal suitor to
+win even the richest heiress in England; and it is little wonder that
+the heart of the tradesman's daughter began to flutter, and her pretty
+cheeks to flame when this gallant, whose conquests at the Royal Court
+itself were notorious, began to pay marked homage to her charms.
+
+That his reputation in the field of love was none of the best, that he
+was as prodigal as he was poor, mattered little to her--probably such
+defects made him all the more romantic in her eyes, and his attentions
+all the more welcome. To Sir John, however, who was even more jealous of
+his treasure than of all his gold, the young lord's reputation and,
+above all, his poverty were fatal flaws in any would-be son-in-law of
+his. As soon as he realised the danger he put every obstacle in the way
+of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of
+locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover.
+"If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank," he told him in
+no ambiguous terms; "and if your fortune matched your family, I should
+have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly,
+I would rather see my girl dead than wedded to such as you."
+
+To his daughter's tears and pleading he was equally obdurate. She might
+ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were
+half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he
+encouraged such folly as this. But Spencer's daughter, when she found
+conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong
+as her father's; she told him to his face that with or without his
+sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton. "I will marry him," she
+declared with flushed face and panting breast, "even if you make me a
+beggar." "And that, madam," the defied and furious father retorted, "I
+can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord
+Compton's wife ever have."
+
+For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John's anger;
+and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least,
+whatever others might follow, was at an end. But how little he knew his
+daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.
+
+One day, a few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker,
+carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he
+soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the
+garden, and giving him a respectful "good day." "A civil young man," Sir
+John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; "his face seems
+somehow familiar to me." And well might it be familiar; for the baker
+who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace,
+Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the
+merchant's only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this
+daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her
+parent.
+
+It was not long before Sir John's disillusionment came. His daughter
+was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her
+whereabouts. Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury
+against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had
+outwitted him. Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of
+the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to
+fail in execution. Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again--now
+becomingly penitent--she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife
+of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.
+
+To "Rich Spencer" the blow was crushing, humiliating. It was bad enough
+to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter;
+but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such
+undesirable hands was bitter beyond words. His home and his heart were
+alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would
+never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his
+should ever go into the Compton coffers.
+
+In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full
+year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend,
+at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he
+remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was
+prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his
+bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.
+
+"I have summoned you, Sir John," Her Majesty said, "to ask a great
+favour of you. I do not often stoop, as you know, to beg a favour of
+any man; nor should I now, did I not know that I have no more dutiful
+subject than yourself, and that to ask of you is to receive. I am
+interested in two young people who have had the misfortune to marry
+against the wishes of the lady's father, and who have thus forfeited his
+favour. And I wish you to give me and the youthful couple pleasure by
+taking his place and standing sponsor to their first child."
+
+To such a request made by his Sovereign Sir John could but give a
+delighted consent. He would do much more than this, he vowed, to give
+her a moment's gratification; and he not only attended the baptismal
+ceremony, but on the suggestion of the Queen, who was also present,
+allowed the child to bear his own Christian name. "More than this, your
+Majesty," he declared, "as I have now no child of my own, I will gladly
+adopt this infant as my heir."
+
+"Your goodness of heart, Sir John," Her Majesty answered, beaming with
+pleasure, "shall not go unrewarded; for the child you have now taken to
+your heart and made inheritor of your wealth is indeed of your own flesh
+and blood--the first-born son of your daughter, and my friend, Elizabeth
+Compton."
+
+Such was the dramatic plight into which "Rich Spencer's" loyalty and
+generosity had led him. He had innocently pledged himself to adopt as
+his heir, the son of the daughter he had disowned for ever. "And now,
+Sir John," continued the Queen, "that you have conceded so much to make
+me happy, will you not go one step farther and take your wilful and
+penitent daughter to your heart again?" What could the poor merchant do
+in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour
+what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older
+he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with
+her graceless husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, full of years, Sir John died in 1609, his obsequies were worthy of
+his wealth and fame. He was followed to his grave in St Helen's Church
+by a thousand mourners, clad in black gowns; and three hundred and
+twenty poor men, we are told, "had each a basket given them, containing
+a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle
+of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a
+black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen points, two red herrings, four
+white herrings, six sprats and two eggs"--a quaint and lavish symbol of
+his charity when alive.
+
+So enormous was the fortune he left, that it is said Lord Compton, on
+hearing its amount (£800,000) "became distracted, and so continued for a
+considerable length of time, either through the vehement apprehension of
+joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take up
+and dispense of it."
+
+That my Lady Compton, who a few years after her father's death blossomed
+into a Countess, proved a devoted and dutiful wife to her lord there is
+no reason to doubt; but that she had an adequate idea of her own
+importance and a determination to have her share of her father's
+money-bags is shown by the following letter, which is sufficiently
+remarkable to bear quotation in full.
+
+     "My sweet life,--Now that I have declared to you my mind
+     for the settling of your estate, I suppose that it were
+     best for me to bethink what allowance were best for me;
+     for, considering what care I have ever had of your
+     estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those which
+     both by the laws of God, nature, and civil policy, wit,
+     religion, government, and honesty, you, my dear, are
+     bound to, I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your
+     most kind and loving wife, the sum of one thousand pounds
+     per an., quarterly to be paid.
+
+     "Also, I would, besides that allowance for my apparel,
+     have six hundred pounds added yearly for the performance
+     of charitable works; these I would not neither be
+     accountable for. Also, I will have three horses for my
+     own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow; none
+     lend but I, none borrow but you. Also, I would have two
+     gentlewomen, lest one should be sick; also, believe that
+     it would be an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand
+     mumping alone, when God has blest their Lord and Lady
+     with a great estate. Also, when I ride hunting or
+     hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have
+     them attending, so for each of those said women I must
+     have a horse. Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen,
+     and will have two coaches; one lined with velvet to
+     myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my
+     women lined with sweet cloth, orelaid with gold; the
+     other with scarlet, and laced with watchet lace and
+     silver, with four good horses. Also, I will have two
+     coachmen, one for myself, the other for my women. Also,
+     whenever I travel, I will be allowed not only carroches
+     and spare horses for me and my women, but such carriages
+     as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my
+     things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor
+     theirs with washmaids.
+
+     "Also, laundresses, when I travel; I will have them sent
+     away with the carriages to see all safe, and the
+     chambermaids shall go before with the grooms, that the
+     chambers may be ready, sweet, and clean.
+
+     "Also, for that it is indecent for me to croud myself
+     with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him have
+     a convenient horse to attend me either in city or
+     country; and I must have four footmen; and my desire is
+     that you will defray the charges for me.
+
+     "And for myself, besides my yerely allowance, I would
+     have twenty gowns apparel, six of them excellent good
+     ones, eight of them for the country, and six others of
+     them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my
+     purse two thousand and two hundred pounds, and so you to
+     pay my debts. Also, I would have eight thousand pounds to
+     buy me jewels, and six thousand pounds for a pearl chain.
+
+     "Now seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you,
+     I pray you to find my children apparel, and their
+     schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their
+     wages.
+
+     "Also, I will have all my houses furnished, and all my
+     lodging-chambers to be suited with all such furniture as
+     is fit, as beds, stools, chairs, cushions, carpets,
+     silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings,
+     etc.; and so for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I
+     will have them delicately furnished with hangings, couch,
+     canopy, cushions, carpets, etc.
+
+     "Also, my desire is that you would pay your debts, build
+     up Ashby House and purchase lands and lend no money (as
+     you love God) to the Lord Chamberlain, which would have
+     all, perhaps your life from you; remember his son, my
+     Lord Wildan, what entertainments he gave me when you were
+     at the Tilt-yard. If you were dead, he said, he would be
+     a husband, a father, a brother, and said he would marry
+     me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little
+     wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely; also, he fed
+     me with untruths concerning the Charter-House; but that
+     is the least; he wished me much harm; you know how. God
+     keep you and me from him, and such as he is.
+
+     "So now I have declared to you my mind, what I would
+     have, and what I would not have; I pray you, when you be
+     Earl, to allow a thousand pounds more than now I desire
+     and double allowance.--Your loving wife, ELIZABETH COMPTON."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF
+
+
+In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once
+so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so
+tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of
+Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever
+has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.
+
+When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it
+was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
+and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
+leading _rôle_. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
+lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
+brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
+estates and a princely rent-roll.
+
+But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
+often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
+gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenviable
+reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
+were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness"
+was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
+was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
+roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
+tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
+manifested themselves in a dangerous form.
+
+While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
+from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
+or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
+was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
+bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for £13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
+which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
+was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
+and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
+of a hansom.
+
+But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
+Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of
+half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully
+embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged
+venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him,
+in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the
+Earl carried off the Grand Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to
+1867 the Marquess won over £60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings
+in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that
+he only spoke the truth when he boasted, "I could easily make £30,000 a
+year by backing other men's horses." Indeed on one race, Lecturer's
+Cesarewitch, he cleared £75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a
+racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.
+
+In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new
+deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his
+appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales
+himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed
+hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was
+regal in its prodigality.
+
+     "As he canters on to the course," we are told, "he
+     slackens speed as he passes through the line of
+     carriages, from which come shrill, plaintive cries, 'Dear
+     Lord Hastings, do come here for one second,' and others
+     to like purpose. Conveniently deaf to the voice of the
+     charmers, he rides straight into the horseman's circle,
+     and takes up his position on the heavy-betting side.
+     'They're laying odds on yours, my lord,' exclaims a
+     bookmaker. 'What odds?' blandly asks the owner. 'Well, my
+     lord, I'll take you six monkeys to four!' 'Put it down,'
+     is the brief response. 'And me, three hundred to two--and
+     me--and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
+     clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'--the
+     bets are booked as freely as offered. 'And now, my lord,
+     if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
+     thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
+     is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
+     genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
+     with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
+     four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
+     Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
+     and away they dash."
+
+Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
+fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose £50,000
+on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
+of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
+to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
+and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
+inroads on even his enormous resources.
+
+The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
+through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
+to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
+had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
+laid against him.
+
+Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
+story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
+Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
+who was passionately devoted to her, little dreaming that another had
+stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for
+escort, drove to Messrs Swan & Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but
+the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She
+entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord
+Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away
+while her _fiancé_ patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at
+the opposite side of the building.
+
+When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on
+him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace
+of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less
+than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His
+opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord
+Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and
+Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for
+once--and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950
+guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.
+
+At the time he little realised--nor did he much care--what a bargain he
+had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St
+Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them
+£300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred
+Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at
+having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds against Hermit
+so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and
+Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over £100,000.
+
+It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the
+longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a
+smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the
+course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he
+seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling
+this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, "Hermit fairly broke my
+heart. But I didn't show it, did I?"
+
+That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely
+needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of
+more than £100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was
+only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate
+of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised £300,000. When the doors of
+Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present
+themselves were his agents, who handed over £103,000 in settlement of
+all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored
+heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival
+had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was
+due.
+
+When next his lordship appeared on a race-course--it was at Ascot, a few
+months later--he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the
+bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, which must have
+taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this
+merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further
+disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first--at the
+Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park
+Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so
+much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great
+part of his Derby losses.
+
+When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the
+winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He
+uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to
+fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was
+helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. "Tell me how I stand,"
+asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The
+Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy,
+answered: "You have lost £23." And he, who could thus calmly calculate
+so trifling a loss, was £50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the
+Plate!
+
+He knew well that he was a ruined man--worse than this, unutterably
+galling to his proud spirit--he knew that he was a disgraced man. His
+vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not £50,000 in the world to
+pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face
+of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an
+English gentleman and a sportsman.
+
+He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters and hounds, and
+all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the
+wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful £10,000. His last sovereign was
+gone, and he was £40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he
+next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the
+echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero
+of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a
+defaulter!
+
+And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were
+being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of
+Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to
+suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was
+unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the
+Marquess stood to win £35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.
+
+The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in
+the columns of the _Times_; and although Lord Hastings denied that there
+was "one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses,
+correctly stated," and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the
+public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.
+
+So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and
+his good name that his health--undermined no doubt by excesses--broke
+down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among
+the northern seas in search of health; but no sea-breezes could bring
+back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man
+before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near
+its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt
+that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the
+last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster
+races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on
+crutches.
+
+The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the
+Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and
+straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been
+his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled
+from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal,
+and lovingly patted her glossy neck.
+
+Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his
+former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for
+life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but,
+almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up
+the struggle and drew his last breath--"leaving neither heir to his
+honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in
+spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a
+perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted his first pony another
+meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and
+been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.
+
+
+Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and
+loved as "Lord George," who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was
+the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won
+the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in
+his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too
+brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his
+own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win
+the coveted "blue riband," he sold every horse in his stables at a word,
+and abandoned the Turf in despair.
+
+     "Lord George Bentinck," wrote Thormanby, a few years ago,
+     "was the idol of the sportsmen of his own day. The
+     commanding personality of the man threw a spell over all
+     with whom he was brought into contact; they were
+     half-fascinated, half-awed--judgment and criticism
+     surrendered to admiration. There are still veterans left,
+     like old John Kent, who talk with bated breath of Lord
+     George as a superior being, a god-like man, a king of
+     men."
+
+From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the
+tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and
+brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and,
+like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting into hot
+water--and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such
+little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr
+exclaimed aloud: "If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself,
+Colonel, I will." Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: "Captain
+Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off."
+
+Such was the youth and such the man--gay, debonair, and popular to the
+highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman
+he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course
+being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have
+envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale
+of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he
+often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud
+numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his
+out-of-pocket expenses ran to £50,000 and more a year. To provide the
+money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of
+1843, for instance, he stood to win £150,000 on his horse Gaper, and
+actually pocketed £30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his
+net winnings on bets reached £100,000; and he thought nothing of staking
+his entire year's private income on a single race.
+
+One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him--some many
+times--but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby,
+always eluded his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty.
+So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness
+of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of
+pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.
+
+"I'll sell you the lot," he impulsively said to George Payne at
+Goodwood, "from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey),
+for £100,000. Yes or no?" Payne offered him £300 to have a few hours to
+think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next
+morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was
+sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: "I'll take the
+lot, Bentinck, at £10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on
+the course." "If you please," was Lord George's placid answer; and thus
+ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.
+
+And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of
+pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's
+Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his
+hand and had let it go!
+
+How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage
+in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:
+
+     "A few days before--it was the day after the Derby, May
+     25, 1848--the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the
+     library of the House of Commons. He was standing before
+     the bookshelves with a volume in his hand, and his
+     countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolution in
+     favour of the Colonial interest, after all his labours,
+     had been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd; and on
+     the 24th, his horse, Surplice, whom he had parted with
+     among the rest of the stud, had won that paramount and
+     Olympic stake, to gain which had been the object of his
+     life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
+     sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him
+     before a heart, which he knew at least could yield him
+     sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.
+
+     "'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what
+     have I sacrificed it?' he murmured. It was in vain to
+     offer solace.
+
+     "'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned.
+
+     "'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the Turf.'
+
+     "'It is the Blue Riband of the Turf,' he slowly repeated
+     to himself; and, sitting down at a table, buried himself
+     in a folio of statistics."
+
+Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found
+lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very
+morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in
+the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord
+Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on
+his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never
+made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about
+midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
+the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.
+
+What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
+to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
+"Died by the visitation of God--to wit, a spasm of the heart." Thus
+vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
+ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
+forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
+dazzling than his Turf fame.
+
+But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
+of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
+verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
+vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
+it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
+unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
+facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
+tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
+blow--it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
+one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
+although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
+doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
+perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
+it has been told.
+
+Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
+eligible _partis_ of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
+many an "affair of the heart." But not one of all the high-born ladies,
+who would have turned their backs on coronets to become "Lady George,"
+could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
+penniless girl, who could not even boast a "respectable" parentage.
+
+Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
+between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
+daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
+in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
+low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
+alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
+seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
+forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the
+Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth.
+It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley
+marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were
+illegitimate.
+
+It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is
+said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And
+little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her
+mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and
+refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.
+
+But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had
+enslaved. There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among
+them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder
+brother, and the future "eccentric Duke" of Portland, often referred to
+as "The Wizard of Welbeck." The Marquess and his younger brother had
+never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when
+they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden
+this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.
+
+It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was
+more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual
+relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the
+brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George,
+whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no
+physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant
+squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord
+George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused
+to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest,
+over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved
+fatal.
+
+This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that
+September day in 1848; of that "spasm of the heart" which, according to
+the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George
+Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long
+mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is
+explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke
+of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as
+to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother,
+however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could
+be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
+the world in sorrow and remorse?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WICKED BARON
+
+
+The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
+sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
+fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
+and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.
+
+Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
+fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
+Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
+Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
+man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
+was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
+with the stigma of eternal shame.
+
+From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
+low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
+he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
+women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
+each indulgence he was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
+murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.
+
+Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
+his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
+marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
+figures prominently--none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
+most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
+every man who came under the spell of her charms.
+
+Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
+passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
+Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
+their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
+in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
+be "as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar." Dr Doran describes her as
+"that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
+head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain"; although, with
+all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
+of being Congreve's mistress all the time.
+
+Describing her charms, another chronicler says:
+
+     "She was of a lovely height, with dark brown hair and
+     eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushing
+     complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an
+     involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face."
+
+Such, in the cold medium of print, was Mrs Bracegirdle when she became
+the central figure of a great tragedy, the horrors of which have sent a
+thrill down to our own time.
+
+Among Mrs Bracegirdle's many baffled wooers was Captain Richard Hill, a
+boon companion of Charles, Lord Mohun, and a man of unrestrained
+passion. To all the Captain's coarse advances the actress turned a
+contemptuous shoulder, until in his rage he swore that at any cost she
+should be his. There was, he was convinced, only one real obstacle to
+the success of his suit, Jack Montford, the handsomest actor of his day,
+to whom Mrs Bracegirdle was said to be very kind; and the furious
+Captain vowed: "I am resolved to have the blood of Montford, and to
+carry off his charmer by force if need be."
+
+Captain Hill made no concealment of his purpose. He mouthed his threats
+aloud at his favourite tavern in Covent Garden and elsewhere; and he
+found a willing helper in Lord Mohun, who was always ripe for any
+dastardly scheme; and, with Mohun's help, he carefully prepared his
+plans for both murder and abduction, for on both his heart was set.
+
+By lavish bribes the two conspirators engaged half a dozen soldiers to
+assist in their scheme; they arranged that a coach with two horses, and
+four others in reserve, should be in waiting at nine o'clock in Drury
+Lane, close to the theatre at which Mrs Bracegirdle made her appearance
+nightly; and, equipped with a formidable armoury of swords, daggers, and
+pistols, they repaired at the appointed time to the scene of action.
+
+For a full hour they waited, watching with lynx eyes the door from
+which the fair actress would emerge; but, as luck would have it, she was
+not playing that night. She was, in fact, at the moment supping at the
+house of a friend, Mrs Page, in Princes Street, close by; and they were
+on the point of proceeding there when the lady made her appearance, with
+her mother as companion and Mr Page and her brother for escort, on her
+way home to her lodgings in Howard Street across the Strand.
+
+At sight of their fair prey two of the soldiers rushed forward, snatched
+Mrs Bracegirdle from her mother's arm and dragged her, screaming and
+resisting, towards the coach in which Lord Mohun was sitting by his
+cases of pistols, and in which it was intended to carry her off to
+Totteridge. When her escort rushed to her rescue, Hill struck at the old
+lady with his sword; but the cries and sounds of scuffling attracted
+such a crowd that a change of plans became necessary.
+
+With consummate cleverness the adroit Captain now took each of the
+ladies by the arm and coolly conducted them himself out of the crowd to
+their lodgings, Mohun and the soldiers following ignominiously behind.
+Upon reaching Howard Street, the ladies safely indoors, the soldiers
+were dismissed, and Mohun and his ally, with drawn swords, paced up and
+down the street, vowing vengeance on the unhappy Montford, whom they
+considered the cause of all their troubles, and who, sooner or later,
+must pass through Howard Street on his way to his house in Norfolk
+Street adjoining.
+
+For two long hours they kept their bloodthirsty vigil, feeding the
+flames of hate with copious draughts of wine, which they procured from
+a neighbouring tavern. The lady had escaped them, but they would at
+least make sure of her lover, the handsome actor, who on the stroke of
+midnight turned the corner into Howard Street.
+
+Montford had, it appears, already heard of the frustrated attempt to
+carry off Mrs Bracegirdle, and that Mohun and Hill were keeping watch
+outside her lodgings; so that he was not unprepared for an unpleasant
+scene. Picture his amazement then when Lord Mohun advanced smilingly to
+meet him, and embraced him with a great show of affection. "I am not
+prepared for such cordiality," the actor said coldly, as he disengaged
+himself from the unwelcome embrace. "I should prefer to learn how you
+justify Captain Hill's abominable rudeness to a lady, or keeping company
+with such a scoundrel."
+
+At this moment the Captain, inflamed with drink, strolled insolently up
+to the pair, and, giving Montford a resounding box on the ear,
+exclaimed, "Here I am to justify myself. Draw, fellow!" But before
+Montford had time to recover from the blow and to unsheath his sword,
+Hill ran him through the body. Without a groan the wounded man sank to
+the ground. A cry of "Murder" arose; the watchmen rushed to the scene.
+But before they arrived Hill had made his escape; while Mohun, who at
+least had the courage of his race, submitted himself to arrest. His
+first question to the watchmen was, "Has Hill escaped?" And when he was
+assured that he had, he added: "I am glad of it! I should not care if I
+were hanged for him."
+
+Such was the story which sent a thrill of horror through London on the
+day following the tragedy, and which aroused a fury of anger against the
+cowardly assassins; for not only was Jack Montford a popular idol who
+had captured all hearts with his handsome face and figure, his clever
+acting and his unaffected personal charm, but his wife, who had been
+thus tragically widowed, was one of the most gifted and delightful women
+who ever adorned the stage.
+
+It was thus inevitable that Lord Mohun's trial by his Peers, which was
+opened on the 31st of January 1693, in Westminster Hall, and which was
+invested with all the pomp and ceremonial befitting such an occasion,
+should attract crowds of excited spectators, curious to see the
+principal actors in this sensational drama, and burning to see justice
+done to the noble instigator of the murder. The pent-up excitement
+culminated when Mrs Bracegirdle, looking more beautiful than ever in
+spite of her pallor and evidences of suffering, entered the witness-box;
+and every word of the story she told was listened to in a silence that
+was painful in its intensity.
+
+In answer to the Attorney-General's request that she should "give my
+lord an account of the whole of your knowledge of the attempt that was
+made upon you in Drury Lane, and what followed upon it," she said:
+
+     "'My lord, I was in Prince's Street at supper at Mr
+     Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home
+     with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach
+     by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was
+     drawn, and a great many men stood by it. Just as I came
+     to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and
+     pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to
+     them, and they knocked my mother down almost, for my
+     mother and my brother were with me.
+
+     "'My mother recovered and came and hung about my neck, so
+     that they could not get me into the coach, and Mr Page
+     went to call company to rescue me. Then Mr Hill came with
+     his drawn sword and struck at Mr Page and my mother; and
+     when they could not get me into the coach because company
+     came up, he said he would see me home, and he had me by
+     one hand and my mother by the other. And when we came
+     home he pulled Mr Page by the sleeve and said, "Sir, I
+     would speak with you."'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Pray, Mrs Bracegirdle, did you see
+     anybody in the coach when they pulled you to it?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, my Lord Mohun was in the coach;
+     and when they pulled me to the coach I saw my Lord Mohun
+     in it. As they led me along Drury Lane, my Lord Mohun
+     came out of the coach and followed us, and all the
+     soldiers followed them; but they were dismissed, and, as
+     I said, when we came to our lodgings, Mr Hill pulled Mr
+     Page by the sleeve and said he would speak with him.
+     Saith Mr Page, "Mr Hill, another time will do; to-morrow
+     will serve." With that, when I was within doors, Mr Page
+     was pulled into the house, and Mr Hill walked up and down
+     the street with his sword drawn. He had his sword drawn
+     when he came alone with me.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Did you observe him to say anything
+     whilst he was with you?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'As I was going down the hill he said,
+     as he held me, that he would be revenged, but he did not
+     say on whom. When I was in the house several persons went
+     to the door, and afterwards Mrs Browne (my landlady),
+     went to the door, and spoke to them, and asked them what
+     they stayed and waited there for. At last they said they
+     stayed to be revenged of Mr Montford; and then Mrs Browne
+     came in to me and told me of it.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Were my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill both
+     together when that was said, that they stayed to be
+     revenged of Mr Montford?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, they were. And when Mrs Browne
+     came in and told me, I sent my brother and my maid and
+     all the people we could out of the house to Mrs Montford
+     to desire her to send, if she knew where her husband was,
+     to tell him of it; and she did. And when they came
+     indoors again I went to the door, and the doors were
+     shut, and I listened to hear if they were there still;
+     and my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill were walking up and down
+     the street. By-and-bye the watch came up to them, and
+     when the watch came they said, "Gentlemen, why do you
+     walk with your swords drawn?" Says my Lord Mohun, "I am a
+     peer of England--touch me if you dare!" Then the watch
+     left them, and they went away; and a little after there
+     was a cry of "murder." And that is all I know, my lord.'
+
+When at the close of the case Lord Mohun was asked if he had anything to
+say in his defence, he answered:
+
+     "My lords, I hope it will be no disadvantage to me my not
+     summing up my evidence like a lawyer. I think I have
+     made it plainly appear that there never was any formal
+     quarrel or malice between Mr Montford and me. I have also
+     made appear the reason why we stayed so long in the
+     street, which was for Mr Hill to speak with Mrs
+     Bracegirdle and ask her pardon, and I stayed with him as
+     my friend. So plainly appeareth I had no hand in killing
+     Mr Montford, and upon the confidence of my own innocency
+     I surrendered myself to this honourable house, where I
+     know I shall have all the justice in the world."
+
+The trial, which lasted five days, resulted in a verdict of
+acquittal--sixty-nine peers voting Lord Mohun "Not Guilty," and fourteen
+finding him "Guilty."
+
+One would have thought that such a severe lesson and narrow escape would
+have given Mohun pause in his career of vice and crime. On the contrary,
+it seems merely to have whetted his appetite for similar adventures. He
+plunged into still deeper dissipation; one mad revel succeeded another;
+duel followed duel, all without provocation on any part but his own. He
+killed in cold blood two more men who had innocently provoked his
+enmity, "as if increase of appetite did grow by that it fed on," until
+he rightly became the most dreaded and hated man in all England, a man
+to whom a glance, a gesture, or a harmless word might mean death.
+
+But his evil days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died
+in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed
+Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known
+partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided
+that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there
+be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the
+fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled swordsman of his day?
+
+Mohun jumped at the vile suggestion, and lost no time in seeking the
+Duke and insulting him in public. His Grace, however, who knew the man's
+reputation only too well, treated the insult with the silence and
+contempt it deserved; whereupon Mohun, roused to fury by this studied
+slight, changed his _rôle_ to that of challenger. Thrice he sent his
+second, one Major-General Macartney, almost as big a scoundrel as
+himself, to the Duke's house in St James's Square; the fourth time a
+meeting was arranged for the following morning at the Ring, in Hyde
+Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night
+hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of
+pleasure.
+
+In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning--the morning of 15th
+November 1712--the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously
+at the Ring--in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the
+early morning hours a desolate part of the Park--and the preliminaries
+were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: "I am well
+assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you
+shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton,
+will entertain you." "I wish for no better partner," Macartney replied;
+"the Colonel may command me."
+
+A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords
+flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in
+lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on
+the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as
+grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the
+blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded
+in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the
+very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his
+opponent, but the others fought on--gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting,
+the strength ebbing with each thrust.
+
+At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword
+passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling
+forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into
+the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him
+in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it
+into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as
+fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland.
+
+Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen,
+he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed
+to his wounds--the "Dog Mohun," as Swift called him, lying in death but
+a few yards from his victim.
+
+     "I am infinitely concerned," Swift wrote the same day,
+     "for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man.
+     I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better."
+
+Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well
+earned his unenviable title, "The wicked Baron."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_
+
+
+The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a
+diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a
+half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour,
+and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her
+allurements and her shame.
+
+If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal
+in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged
+to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centuries of
+noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or
+remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that
+is known of this Queen of _intrigantes_ is that she had for father a
+worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in
+the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter
+part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and
+two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among
+his neighbours. It was at Brest that Evelyn enjoyed this hospitality
+for a brief period; and the diarist has nothing but what is good to say
+of the retired tradesman.
+
+But the worthy merchant had his hands full with one at least of his two
+daughters, who was developing dangerous fascinations, and with them a
+precocious knowledge of how to turn them to account. He was thankful to
+pack Louise off to a boarding-school, where she seems to have led her
+teachers such a dance that it became necessary to place her in stronger
+hands; and with this view the foolish father sent her to Paris, the last
+place in the world for such a charming and designing minx, and to the
+custody of a weak-willed aunt.
+
+Nothing could have suited Louise better than this change of arena for
+the exercise of her wilfulness and witchery. Before she had been many
+days in the French capital she was able to twist her aunt round her
+little finger--indeed her power of captivating was, to the end of her
+life, her chief dower--and to obtain all the freedom she wanted. And it
+was not long before her allurements won the admiration of the dissolute
+Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France, a man skilled in all the arts
+of love. The girl's bourgeois head was completely turned by the
+splendour of her first captive; and, to make him secure, she counted no
+sacrifice too great. Not, indeed, that she ever regarded her virtue as
+anything but the principal piece she intended to play on the chessboard
+of life.
+
+For a few years Louise revelled in the new life which the amorous Duc
+opened to her, and which only came to an end when the Admiral was
+despatched, in command of a fleet, against the Turks, an expedition from
+which he was fated never to return. Before he said good-bye, however,
+Louise took care to make the next step on her ladder of world-conquest
+secure. Through the Duc's influence she was appointed maid-of-honour to
+Madame, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., and sister to the second Charles of
+England, now restored to the throne of his fathers.
+
+We can well imagine that the wool merchant's daughter wasted no sighs on
+the lover she had lost. She had now a much wider and more splendid field
+at the Court of France, for the exploiting of her dangerous gifts and
+the indulgence of her ambition. That the new maid had no lack of lovers
+we may be sure; for though she was not richly dowered with beauty she
+always seems to have had a magnetic power over the hearts of men. We
+know, too, that she singled out for special favour, the Comte de Sault,
+the handsomest noble in France, a man skilled above all his fellows in
+the then moribund knightly exercises; and that her _liaison_ with the
+Comte, in a court where such intimacies were the fashion, added to,
+rather than detracted from, her social prestige.
+
+Such was the life of Louise de Querouaille up to the time when she made
+her first acquaintance with the land in which she was destined to crown
+her adventurous career, and to make herself at once the most dazzling
+and the most hated figure in England. At this time Louis' designs on
+Spain and Holland had received a rude check by the signing of an
+alliance between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces; and it
+became a matter of vital importance to detach England from a combination
+so fatal to his schemes. With this object he decided to send Henrietta,
+Duchess of Orleans, on a visit, ostensibly of affection, to her brother
+Charles II., charged with a secret mission to induce him by every
+artifice in her power to withdraw from the alliance.
+
+How Henrietta returned flushed with triumph from this iniquitous
+embassy, after ten days of high revelry at Dover, is well-known history.
+Charles, in response to his favourite sister's pleading and bribes, not
+only consented to desert his allies, but, as soon as he decently could,
+to follow in the steps of his brother, the Duke of York, to Rome; and in
+return for these evidences of friendship, Louis was gracious enough to
+promise him substantial aid and protection; and, further, to grant him a
+subsidy of £1,000,000 a year if he would take up arms with France
+against Holland.
+
+It is more to our purpose to know that among the gay galaxy of courtiers
+who accompanied Madame to England was Louise de Querouaille, who thus
+first set eyes on the King, in whose life-drama she was to play so
+brilliant and baleful a _rôle_; and that before Charles, with streaming
+eyes, said "good-bye" to his scheming sister, she had made excellent use
+of her opportunities to enslave this English "King of Hearts." So much
+at least was reported to Louis on the return of the embassy, when he
+was assured by Madame that, of all the beautiful women in her train, the
+only one to make any impression on her Royal brother was Louise de
+Querouaille.
+
+This information, no doubt, was in Louis' mind when, later, it became
+necessary to cement Charles's allegiance to his compact. Gold was always
+a potent lure to the "Merrie Monarch," whose purse was never deep enough
+for the demands made on it by his extravagance; but a still more
+seductive bait was a beautiful woman to add to his seraglio. The Duchess
+of Cleveland had now lost her youth and good looks; the incomparable
+Stuart's beauty had been fatally marred by small-pox. Of all the fair
+and frail women who had held Charles in thrall there was none left to
+dispute the palm with the French maid-of-honour except Nell Gwynn, the
+Drury Lane orange-girl, whose sauciness and vulgarity gave to the jaded
+Sybarite a piquant relish to her charms.
+
+Here was a splendid opportunity for Louis to complete the conquest of
+his vacillating cousin whose allegiance was so vital to his plans of
+aggrandisement. Louise should go to Whitehall to play the part of
+beautiful spy on Charles, and, by her favours, to make him a pliant tool
+in the hand of "le Roi Soleil."
+
+Charles, who was by no means loth to renew his Dover acquaintance with
+the bewitching maid-of-honour, sent a yacht to Dieppe to bring her to
+England, and charged no less a personage than the Duke of Buckingham to
+be her escort to Whitehall. The Duke, however, who was probably too much
+occupied with his own affairs of the heart, "totally forgot both the
+lady and his promise; and, leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe, to
+manage as best she could, passed over to England by way of Calais,"--a
+slight which the indignant Louise never forgave.
+
+Thus it was that the new favourite of the King made her journey across
+the Channel under the escort of the English Ambassador, and was given by
+him into the charge of Buckingham's political rival, Lord Arlington.
+"The Duke of Buckingham thus," to quote Bishop Burnet, "lost all merit
+he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his strange
+conduct threw into the hands of his enemies."
+
+The arrival of the "French spy," whose mission was well understood, was
+hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few
+stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent
+verses by St Evremond--efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded
+with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her
+without having even seen her was a matter of small concern--she was
+prepared for it. All she cared for was that Charles should give her a
+cordial welcome; and this he did with effusiveness and open arms. Apart
+from her character as ambassadress to his "dear brother" of France, she
+was a new and piquant stimulus to his sated appetite--a "dainty dish to
+set before a King."
+
+She was installed at Whitehall to the flourish of trumpets; was
+appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen, who frankly disliked and dreaded
+this new rival in her husband's accommodating affection; and at once
+assumed her position as chief of those women the King delighted to
+honour. And with such restraint and discretion did she conduct herself
+during these early days at Whitehall that she disarmed the jealousy of
+the Court ladies, while receiving the homage of their gallants.
+
+To Charles she was coyness itself--virtue personified. While smiling
+graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her
+attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she
+guard her favours that the French Ambassador began to show alarm.
+
+     "I believe," he wrote at this time, "that she has so got
+     round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to
+     our Sovereign lord and master, _if_ she only does her
+     duty."
+
+That Louise was fully conscious of her duty and meant to do it, was
+never really in question--but the time to unbend was not yet. It was no
+part of her clever strategy to drop like a ripe plum into Charles's
+mouth. _Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter._ She would be accounted all
+the greater prize for proving difficult to win.
+
+The psychical moment, she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited
+Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where,
+removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house
+freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the
+revels of which Euston was 183 the scene during a few intoxicating
+weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the
+merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, experts in gallantry,
+and his ladies, with most of whom an acquaintance with virtue was but a
+faded memory, it is no difficult matter to raise a corner of the curtain
+in imagination. One typical scene Forneron records thus:
+
+     "Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium
+     of October evenings in a country-house, got up a
+     burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the
+     bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest
+     ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the
+     retirement of the former into the nuptial chamber."
+
+It was precisely such a ceremony in which, a few years earlier, Charles
+had figured with _La belle Stuart_, while Lady Castlemaine looked on
+with laughter and applause.
+
+[Illustration: LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH]
+
+Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that
+Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed _maitresse en
+titre_ to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the
+confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of
+the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of
+Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool
+merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange
+for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war
+with Holland; to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother
+and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.
+
+Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the
+wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a
+double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of
+a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might
+her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London,
+throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his "petite
+Louise" had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed
+at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for
+when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was
+probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the
+throne.
+
+     "She has got the notion," wrote the French Ambassador,
+     "that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She
+     talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as
+     if they were mortal."
+
+But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to
+be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which,
+nominally £10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of
+£136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range
+of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal pardons
+and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably
+the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten
+gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with
+the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When
+Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:
+
+     "But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and
+     splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice
+     or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and
+     expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed
+     some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.
+
+     "Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for
+     design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of
+     the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some
+     pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of
+     the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes,
+     exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for
+     Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of
+     wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras,
+     etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides
+     some of his Majesty's best paintings!"
+
+Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise
+de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, "gutter-rival" of hers,
+Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's
+affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of
+French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a
+disconcerting ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful
+rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle
+in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
+Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court _salons_ and corridors, as if
+she were carrion.
+
+And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
+Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to "chuck
+Charles's royal chin," and to call him her "Charles the third," in
+unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
+favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
+all, was no better than herself.
+
+"The Duchess," she would say, "pretends to be a person of quality. She
+says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
+person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
+quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
+my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
+just as fond of me as he is of his French miss."
+
+But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
+gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
+progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
+the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
+possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
+providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise
+much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
+James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
+from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
+suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
+had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.
+
+After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
+declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
+concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
+promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
+become her crowning ambition to win the right to a _tabouret_ at the
+Court of Versailles--the highest privilege accorded to the old
+_noblesse_, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
+this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
+France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
+but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
+_tabouret_ went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
+the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
+would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
+commands he might lay upon her.
+
+His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
+by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
+Franche Comté, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
+discovered that for once his vaulting ambition had overleaped itself.
+The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
+sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
+Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
+paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
+Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
+popular rage against the "painted French spy" who was regarded, and
+perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
+enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.
+
+To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
+heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
+imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
+Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
+exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless
+beauty to complete her conquest of the amorous Sovereign--"the last
+conquest of her conquering eyes," as Waller wrote in his fulsome
+greeting of the new divinity of the Whitehall seraglio.
+
+For once Louise's indomitable courage showed signs of yielding. The
+whole armoury of fate seemed arrayed against her at this crisis in her
+life; even Louis, for whom she had striven so hard, began to distrust
+her powers and to show indifference to her. When Forneron paid her a
+visit at this time he found her in tears. "She opened her heart to him,
+in the presence of her two French maids, who stood by with downcast
+eyes. Tears rained down her cheeks; and her speech was broken with sobs
+and sighs." Never had this designing beauty been so near the verge of
+absolute ruin.
+
+It is not necessary perhaps to follow the Duchess through the period of
+her eclipse; to watch the weak-kneed Charles sink deeper and deeper into
+the morass of his disloyalty until, in return for a subsidy of
+£4,000,000, he offered to dissolve parliament and to make England the
+bond-slave of Louis's designs on Europe; or to see Louise, the chief
+instrument of all this ignominy, reach the climax of her disgrace and
+her peril when mobs besieged Whitehall, and clamoured that the "Jezebel"
+should be sent to the scaffold.
+
+It is sufficient for our purpose to know that through all this terrible
+time she steered her way with almost superhuman skill back to the
+sunshine of success and favour. Her life-long ambition was crowned when
+Louis gave her the d'Aubigny lands and, with them, the _tabouret_ which
+had so long dazzled her eyes and eluded her grasp. When the sky in
+England had at last cleared she paid a visit to her native land. For
+four ecstatic months the wool merchant's daughter made a triumphant
+progress through France, acclaimed and fêted as a Queen. At her castle
+of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
+to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
+her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
+visit to the Capucines in Paris her approach was heralded by a
+procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
+cross. "She was received," we are told, "as if she were a Queen, which
+quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour." To
+such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
+actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
+in France.
+
+On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
+reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
+favourite of the King, all his other mistresses--even the Queen herself
+being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
+did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
+himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
+England--_plus roi que le Roi_.
+
+Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
+more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
+The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
+Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
+which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
+of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
+she had was the rakish Philippe de Vendôme, grandson of Henri IV. and
+nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
+seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
+seems to have conducted an open and shameless intrigue with De
+Vendôme--a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
+for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
+despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
+her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
+withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
+written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
+by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
+was able to breathe again.
+
+Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
+the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
+courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
+light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
+was shocked at such scenes.
+
+     "I was told to-night," he writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won £15,400
+     in one night, and lost £25,000 in another night at play,
+     and has played £1000 and £1500 at a cast."
+
+The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,
+
+     "won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
+     and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above £8000, in doing
+     which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
+     satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
+     favour."
+
+But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
+them was on the night of 1st February 1685--the last Sunday Charles was
+permitted to spend on earth.
+
+     "The great courtiers," says Evelyn, "and other dissolute
+     persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
+     a bank of at least £2000 before them. The King, though
+     not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
+     occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
+     shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
+     Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
+     stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
+     glorious gallery. Six days after," he adds, "all was in
+     the dust."
+
+As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
+concern--for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
+to Louis, her paymaster--was that Charles should at least die an avowed
+Catholic.
+
+     "I found her," Barillon wrote to Louis, "overcome with
+     grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
+     changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
+     and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
+     to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
+     pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
+     there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
+     not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
+     his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
+     with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
+     conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
+     near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
+     his brother's soul.'"
+
+The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
+queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
+before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
+were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
+that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
+and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
+pension of £800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
+True, she was still able to claim her _tabouret_ at the Court of
+Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
+the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
+her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
+refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
+vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
+one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
+eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
+such havoc in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MERRY DUCHESS
+
+
+When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
+centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
+Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
+romantic and adventurous _rôle_ Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
+life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
+distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
+infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
+dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
+an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
+daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.
+
+As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
+she was long out of the nursery she vowed that "she would be a Duchess,"
+and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
+of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
+short frocks she was a finished coquette.
+
+Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
+precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
+his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
+where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
+the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
+of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
+now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
+appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.
+
+In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
+almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
+Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
+conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
+where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
+her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
+himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;
+but while, with tantalising coquetry, she kept them all dangling, one
+alone tempted her--that which was laid at her feet by the Duke of
+Hamilton, a gallant whose high rank was rivalled by his handsome face
+and figure, and his many courtly accomplishments.
+
+When the Duke asked her to be his wife she graciously consented, and her
+Duchess's coronet seemed assured thus early, with a prospect of
+happiness that does not always accompany it; for in this case she seems
+to have given her heart where she gave her hand. For a time the course
+of true love ran smoothly, and the maid-of-honour became a model of
+decorum as the affianced wife of the man she loved.
+
+But her dream of happiness was destined to be short-lived. An intriguing
+aunt, Mrs Hanmer, who had no love for the Hamiltons, set to work to dash
+the cup of happiness from her niece's lips. She intercepted the Duke's
+letters, poured into Elizabeth's ears poisonous stories of his
+infidelities and entanglements to account for his silence, and, when the
+poison began to show signs of working, whisked her niece away on a visit
+to the country-house of her cousin, Mr Merrill, at Lainston, where among
+her fellow-guests was a dashing young naval lieutenant, the Hon.
+Augustus Hervey, who was second heir to his father's Earldom of Bristol.
+
+The lieutenant, as was inevitable, perhaps, fell promptly under the
+spell of the maid-of-honour's charms, and made violent love to her,
+with, of course, Mrs Hanmer's whole-hearted connivance. The girl,
+blazing with resentment of the Duke's coldness, and his apparent
+indifference to her beauty and his vows, lent a willing ear to his
+pleadings, and within a few days had promised to be wife to a man whom,
+as she confessed later, she "almost hated."
+
+The wedding was, by mutual consent, to be secret, partly on account of
+the bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear
+of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in
+1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, and made its
+way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the
+light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and
+mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which
+was to lead to such dramatic developments.
+
+Forty-eight hours later the bridegroom had joined his ship at
+Portsmouth; and his bride's greatest joy, as she confessed, was when he
+had departed. Such a marriage, the fruit of pique and anger, boded ill
+for happiness. Frankly, the union was one long misery, broken by the
+intervals when the husband was away at sea, and accentuated during his,
+happily brief, visits to her. Two children were born to this
+ill-assorted pair, but both died young; and Elizabeth Hervey had
+abundant opportunity to follow her natural bent, by seeking
+forgetfulness in dissipation.
+
+In the full glow of her beauty, a wife who was no wife, she resumed her
+broken career of conquest. She made a tour of Europe, leaving a train of
+broken-hearted and languishing lovers behind her. At Berlin she brought
+Frederick the Great to his knees, and made an abject slave of him; she
+shocked the ladies of the Dresden Court by her laxity and the prodigal
+display of her charms, and by the same arts bewitched the men. She led,
+we are told, a life of shameless dissipation, which only her beauty and
+intellectual gifts redeemed from vulgar depravity. She had lovers in
+every capital she visited, and discarded them as lightly as so many
+playthings.
+
+On her return to England, so anxious was she to obliterate that fatal
+episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to
+Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page
+out of the marriage register.
+
+Meanwhile, the naval lieutenant had blossomed into an Earl, on his
+father's death; and when the new Earl, her husband, showed signs of
+failing health, and there was an early prospect of graduating as a
+wealthy dowager Countess, she saw the wisdom of making another journey
+to Lainston to replace the record of her marriage. Alas, for her
+scheming; the moribund Earl took a new lease of life, and the gilded
+dowagerhood became nebulous and remote again.
+
+But Elizabeth Chudleigh was not to be long baulked in her ambitious
+designs. Though her charms had grown too opulent and were faded--for she
+was now near her fiftieth birthday--she was able to count among her
+slaves the aged Duke of Kingston, an amiable and weak old gentleman of
+enormous wealth, and with one accommodating foot already "in the grave."
+
+Wife, or no wife, she now made up her mind to be a Duchess at last. She
+appealed to Lord Bristol, the husband from whom she had so long been
+estranged, to divorce her, even going so far as to offer to qualify for
+the divorce by an open and flagrant act of infidelity; but his lordship
+only shrugged a scornful shoulder. Still, not to be thwarted, she
+brought a suit of jactitation of marriage, and, by a lavish use of
+bribes and cajolery, got a sentence from the Ecclesiastical Court which
+at last set her free. Within a month she had blossomed into "the most
+high and _puissante_ Princess, the Duchess of Kingston," thus realising
+her childish ambition.
+
+For four and a half years the Duchess was a dignified pattern of all the
+virtues. The passions of youth had lost their fires; the scenes of
+revelry and coarse dissipation to which they had given birth were only a
+memory. She would yet die in the odour of sanctity, however tardy. But
+storms were brewing, and the Duke's death, in 1746, precipitated them,
+though not before she had had another fling with the riches he left to
+her.
+
+Throwing aside her widow's weeds, she flung herself again--old, obese,
+and faded as she was--into a round of dissipation which shocked and
+disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the
+"quality," until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she
+had brought on her head.
+
+She bought a magnificent yacht and sailed away to Rome, where Pope and
+Cardinal alike conspired to do her honour; and was only saved from
+eloping with a titled swindler by his arrest and later suicide in
+prison. It was while in Rome that news came to her that her late
+husband's heirs were planning a charge of bigamy against her, with a
+view to setting aside his will in her favour.
+
+Her exchequer was empty for the time; but, presenting herself before her
+banker, pistol in hand, she compelled him to provide her with funds to
+enable her to return to London--to find all arrangements already made
+for her trial in Westminster Hall on a charge of bigamy. Public opinion
+was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and
+lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy
+entitled, "A Trip to Calais." But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her
+fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of
+ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid
+equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene,
+smiling, contemptuous.
+
+It was of this period of her life that the following story is told. One
+day when driving in London her gorgeous carriage was brought to a halt
+by a coal-cart which was being unloaded in a narrow street. The Duchess
+was furious at the delay, and protruding her head and shoulders from the
+carriage and leaning her arms on the door, she cried out to the
+offending carter: "How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman of quality in
+the street?" "Woman of quality!" sneered the man. "Yes, fellow,"
+rejoined her Grace, "don't you see my arms upon my carriage?" "Indeed I
+do," he answered, "and a pair of d---- coarse arms they are, too!"
+
+Seldom has a trial excited such widespread excitement and interest.
+
+     "Everybody," Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir
+     Horace Mann, "is on the quest for tickets for her Grace
+     of Kingston's trial. I am persuaded that her impudence
+     will operate in some singular manner; probably she will
+     appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster
+     Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when
+     she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil
+     to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce,
+     novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think
+     cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of
+     Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles
+     the waters."
+
+But if Walpole resisted the temptation to witness a scene so piquant and
+remarkable, hundreds of the highest in the land, including Queen
+Charlotte herself, the Prince of Wales and many another Royal personage,
+ambassadors and statesmen, flocked to Westminster to see the notorious
+Duchess on her trial on the charge of bigamy. And the vast Hall was
+packed with a curious and expectant crowd when her Grace made her
+stately entry with a retinue of _femmes de chambre_, her doctor,
+apothecary, and secretary, and proceeded to her seat, in front of her
+six bewigged Counsel, with the dignified step and haughty mien of an
+Empress.
+
+Hannah More, who was present at the trial, says that hardly a trace of
+her once enchanting beauty was visible; and that, had it not been for
+her white face, "she might easily have been taken for a bundle of
+bombasin."
+
+The trial lasted several days, during the whole of which the Duchess
+conducted herself with remarkable dignity and composure, in face of the
+damning array of evidence that was brought against her--the evidence of
+a maid who had witnessed her midnight marriage in Lainston Church; of
+the widow of the parson who officiated at the nuptials; and of Serjeant
+Hawkins, who authenticated the birth of her first child by Augustus
+Hervey.
+
+     "The scene opened on Wednesday with all its pomp," wrote
+     Walpole, who although not present seems to have followed
+     the trial with the keenest interest, "and the
+     doubly-noble prisoner went through her part with
+     universal admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious
+     folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her conduct
+     was decent, and even seemed natural. Her dress was
+     entirely black and plain; her attendants not too
+     numerous; her dismay at first perfectly unaffected. A few
+     tears balanced cheerfulness enough, and her presence of
+     mind and attention never deserted her. This rational
+     behaviour and the pleadings of her Counsel, who contended
+     for the finality of her Ecclesiastical Court's sentence
+     against a second trial, carried her triumphantly through
+     the first day, and turned the stream much in her favour."
+
+The following day proved a much more severe test to her Grace's
+composure; and no sooner had the Court risen than "she had to be
+blooded, and fell into a great passion of tears." And each succeeding
+day added to the tension and anxieties which she struggled so bravely to
+conceal.
+
+On the third day of the trial Walpole says:
+
+     "The plot thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges
+     were called on for their opinions, and _una voce_
+     dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court. The
+     Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 'Life and
+     Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, _alias_ Hervey,
+     _alias_ the most high and _puissante_ Princess, the
+     Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a
+     front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the
+     first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present
+     at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was
+     benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her
+     dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded
+     enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two
+     babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first
+     nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist
+     and become Earl of Bristol."
+
+Three days later Horace Walpole concludes his narrative of the trial,
+which we are afraid his antipathy to the adventurous Duchess has
+coloured a little too vividly:
+
+     "The wisdom of the land," he writes, "has been exerted
+     for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and
+     yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess
+     to convert herself into a Duchess. After a pretty
+     defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she herself
+     had written and pronounced very well), the sages, in
+     spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished a hot iron)
+     dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the
+     fees, all voting her guilty; but the Duke of Newcastle,
+     her neighbour in the country, softening his vote by
+     adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.' So ends the
+     solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not
+     intend to leave her that title.... I am glad to have done
+     with her."
+
+A few days later, in spite of a writ, _ne exeat regno_, which had been
+issued against her, she was back in France, travelling in state as
+"Madame la Duchesse de Kingston." From Calais she made her magnificent
+progress to Rome, where Pope and Cardinals vied in doing honour to so
+exalted and charming a lady, and entertained her as regally as if she
+had been a Queen. Returning to Calais she installed herself in a
+palatial house where she dispensed a lavish hospitality, and flung her
+gold about with prodigal hands.
+
+But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
+cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
+Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
+balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
+continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
+Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
+entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
+torchlight.
+
+Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
+in Paris, and the château of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
+alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
+Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
+by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
+of her jewels to her "dear friend," the Russian Empress; a large diamond
+to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
+necklace and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
+that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
+bore the same title.
+
+But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
+close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
+sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
+She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
+dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. "At your peril, disobey
+me!" she said to her protesting attendants. "I _will_ get up!" She got
+up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
+drained glass after glass of Madeira. "I will lie down on the couch,"
+she then said. "I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
+again."
+
+From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
+felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
+fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
+life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
+pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
+found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
+indulgence of her appetites were "all vanity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER
+
+
+If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
+whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen
+a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from
+Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of
+heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.
+
+There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's
+blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and
+philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother,
+the lovely and frail Louise Renée de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
+the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women--the Duchesses of
+Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin--who spent their days in "open
+dalliance" with the "Merrie Monarch," and their nights at the
+basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.
+
+As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast--the
+mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our
+Peerage. One day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing
+cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his
+heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord
+Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful
+Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery;
+a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were
+immediately to be made husband and wife.
+
+At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride
+the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going
+to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of
+"honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and
+within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were
+separated--Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his
+bride to her nursery toys.
+
+Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour
+round the world--a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means
+eager to renew his acquaintance with the "ugly duckling" who was his
+wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a
+vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no
+sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never
+yet had had power to do.
+
+Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. "You must
+indeed be a stranger to London," was the answer, "if you do not know
+the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!" Lady March! Could that
+exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
+married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
+introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
+indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
+his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
+the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
+without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
+the grave.
+
+Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
+a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
+the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
+mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.
+
+One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
+nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
+George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
+pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: "How do
+you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+George was so delighted with the child's _naïveté_ that he took her up
+in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
+had promised to come and see him.
+
+And how the King and his "little sweetheart," as he called her, enjoyed
+these visits! and the merry romps they had together!
+
+     "On one occasion," says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
+     of much later days), "after a romp with my mother, the
+     King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
+     squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
+     to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
+     that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
+     begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
+     was quite delighted."
+
+But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
+her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
+to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
+years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
+sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
+little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
+years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
+embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
+disgust: "Pooh! she has grown too stupid!"
+
+But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
+and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend--none other
+than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
+little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
+the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
+conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
+her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.
+
+Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
+some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
+Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
+Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
+House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:
+
+     "Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
+     When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
+     on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
+     lovely and so expressive."
+
+And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
+her:
+
+     "Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
+     saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
+     hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
+     sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
+     fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks."
+
+Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
+seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it--an
+indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
+One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
+of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
+Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not summon up courage to declare
+his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
+Coronation, "Ah!" he exclaimed with a sigh, "there will be no Coronation
+until there is a Queen." "But why, sir?" asked Lady Susan in surprise.
+"They want me to have a foreign Queen," George answered, "but I prefer
+an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
+world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?"
+
+A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: "Has your
+friend given you my message?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you think of it?
+Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
+do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
+downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
+"nothing comes of nothing."
+
+Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
+small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
+spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
+already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
+Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
+passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
+shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
+her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That
+will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"
+
+The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the
+young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
+passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
+surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
+to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
+to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
+unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
+and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
+Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.
+
+Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
+to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
+extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
+Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted
+girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears."
+But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
+the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
+such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
+brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.
+
+If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
+George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
+attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
+rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
+rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.
+
+Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal lover for some days
+she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
+the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
+King that she "thought nothing" of his advances, had developed into the
+veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
+strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
+her own defeat.
+
+That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
+Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
+might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
+against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
+despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
+fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
+surrender of his liberty there was no escape.
+
+Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
+quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
+favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
+Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
+was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
+life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
+the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow--to her
+vanity, if not to her heart. It was a "bolt from the blue," for which
+she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.
+
+     "I shall take care," she wrote to her friend, Lady
+     Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, "I shall
+     take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
+     if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
+     cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
+     what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
+     message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
+     not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
+     with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
+     not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
+     believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
+     will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
+     thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
+     shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
+     much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
+     can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
+     his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
+     as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
+     time of it."
+
+A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
+Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
+consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
+of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
+retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
+no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
+compared with his ill-favoured bride, was "as a queenly lily to a
+dandelion."
+
+The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
+Sarah's revenge, and of which her son tells the following story. Among
+the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
+half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
+adherents.
+
+     "Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
+     he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
+     knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
+     and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
+     sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
+     and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
+     know he always loved Pretenders.'"
+
+But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
+of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
+was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
+the score; but to one and all--including, as Walpole records, Lord
+Errol--she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
+fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
+of a mere Baronet--Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
+majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
+Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
+circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.
+
+More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
+baronet-husband.
+
+     "And who the d----," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
+     Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
+     house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near
+     Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
+     £2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
+     would not be happy?"
+
+And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
+silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
+idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
+Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:
+
+     "Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
+     like my own and your description of yours, from which I
+     reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
+     me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
+     single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
+     happiest of beings."
+
+It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
+she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
+flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
+rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
+resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
+He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!
+
+And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
+not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
+handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
+baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
+with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
+into a _liaison_ with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
+termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
+nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.
+
+Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
+intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
+lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
+the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish
+paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
+After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
+to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate--he to travel
+abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
+brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
+(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
+isolation.
+
+The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
+night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
+chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
+that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
+remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
+bright days were still in store for her--a happy and honourable
+wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
+honour.
+
+It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
+brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were
+few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
+Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features."
+When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
+he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
+but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
+he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
+years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
+of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
+not fit to be his wife.
+
+     "He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I _do_ love him;
+     and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
+     that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
+     degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
+     marrying me."
+
+Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
+proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
+day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
+to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
+their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
+sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
+their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
+generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
+was the historian of the Peninsular War.
+
+When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
+Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.
+
+     "How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the
+     gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
+     solace into a woman's darkened heart."
+
+But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
+years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
+gallant boys.
+
+To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
+that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
+even look on the sons she loved.
+
+A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
+life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
+years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
+Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
+As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
+of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
+his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
+overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
+church.
+
+Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
+of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
+out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
+the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a
+dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
+gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
+lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
+eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows,
+though they carried a crown with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM
+
+
+Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
+full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
+daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
+beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
+and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
+Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
+sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
+had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.
+
+Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
+on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
+life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
+could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
+womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
+and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
+Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
+the Earl of Galloway.
+
+As for Susanna, the loveliest of the "three Graces"--"Scotland's
+fairest daughter," to quote a chronicler of the time--she counted her
+high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
+long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
+luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.
+
+It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
+stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest lass and bonniest lad" in
+all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
+wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
+chapter of romance.
+
+For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
+happy.
+
+     "I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
+     "that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
+     to crowd my happiness into."
+
+Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.
+
+One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
+the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
+his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
+Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.
+
+After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
+of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
+continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
+advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.
+
+From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
+Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
+jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
+the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
+leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
+from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
+unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.
+
+Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
+the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
+horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
+roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
+with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
+drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
+to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
+antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
+entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
+dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
+tavern, where he had drunk "not wisely, but too well."
+
+Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
+beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
+best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.
+
+As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
+of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
+That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
+received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
+entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
+Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
+the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.
+
+The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
+beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
+cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
+with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
+them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
+in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
+that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
+and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
+make more lovely still.
+
+Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
+dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
+model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
+passion were by no means dead in her; and to this "eternal feminine" we
+must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
+her story.
+
+Among the Countess's many servants was one George Forbes, a young and
+strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
+late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
+with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
+was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
+liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
+that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
+promoted him to the charge of her stables--a proof of confidence which
+no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
+him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
+his head.
+
+One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
+to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
+love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
+wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested--"But my
+lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
+ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on."
+"You must not say that," the Countess replied. "You are more to me than
+rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
+you have it in your power to bestow."
+
+In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced,
+what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the
+consequences of such an ill-assorted union? And thus strangely and
+romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of
+Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the
+altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.
+
+What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.
+The Countess was disowned by her noble relatives; her friends with one
+consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the
+constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape
+with her low-born husband to the Continent.
+
+Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred
+contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility;
+he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she
+had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for
+which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child--the
+very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could
+not bear--was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared
+for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned,
+she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after
+nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful
+friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as
+any that has fallen to the lot of woman.
+
+And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains,
+and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen
+convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she
+learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice
+to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
+memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
+father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
+from her--if, indeed, they knew themselves.
+
+One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
+sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
+letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
+was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
+convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
+the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
+(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
+long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
+father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
+of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
+where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
+some years.
+
+At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
+conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
+sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
+the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
+stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
+dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
+unwelcome.
+
+Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
+ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
+bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
+to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
+slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
+possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
+took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
+broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
+oppression she had left for ever.
+
+For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
+through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
+humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
+bread from door to door.
+
+At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
+fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
+farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but
+the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer
+Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last
+the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open
+arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially
+invited to make her home with them.
+
+The rest of Emilia's strange life-story can be told in few words. After
+a few years of peaceful and happy life in the hospitable farmhouse, she
+married the farmer's only son, an honest and worthy young fellow who
+loved her dearly. She became the mother of many children, who in their
+humble life knew nothing of their high-placed cousins, the Dukes and
+Earls of another world than theirs.
+
+When, in process of time, her husband died--many of her children had
+died young, the rest were far from prosperous--Mrs Lauder retired to
+spend her last days in a small cottage at St Ninian's, near Stirling,
+where for a time she lived in the utmost poverty. Then, when her life
+was almost flickering out in destitution, a few of her great relatives
+condescended to acknowledge her existence. The Earls of Galloway and
+Dunmore, the Duke of Hamilton, and Mrs Stewart Mackenzie combined to
+provide her with an annuity of £100; and, thus secure against want, the
+old lady contrived to spin out the thread of her days a few years
+longer. Thus died, at the advanced age of eighty-five, eating the bread
+of charity, the woman who had in her veins the blood of Scotland's
+greatest men and her fairest women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A NOBLE VAGABOND
+
+
+The circle of the British Peerage has included many "vagabonds," some of
+whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any
+one of them all has had the _wanderlust_ in his veins to the same degree
+as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously
+ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago.
+
+It would have been strange if this blue-blooded "rolling-stone" had been
+a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric
+woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who dazzled England by her beauty and
+brilliant intellect, and amused it by her oddities in the days of the
+first two Georges. This grandson of the Duke of Kingston, and
+great-grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich was "his mother's
+boy"--with much of his mother's physical and mental charms, and more
+than her eccentricities, as his story abundantly proves.
+
+As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where
+his father, the Hon. Sydney Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and
+there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English
+child to be inoculated for the small-pox. Probably, too, it was his
+boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all
+things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.
+
+His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy
+was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled
+against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he
+threw down his Euclid and Cæsar and vanished as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in
+vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for
+his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be
+found anywhere.
+
+One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the
+lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his
+father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying
+fish. "That is the voice of young Montagu," he exclaimed, and promptly
+despatched his servant to bring the boy to him. The fish-seller
+innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head,
+and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.
+
+For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing
+that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.
+It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked to his
+master's shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice
+and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents
+and to school. Thus ignominiously ended Edward's first adventure, the
+precursor of a hundred others.
+
+He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he
+vanished again--this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the
+captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and
+consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into
+the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the
+vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the
+peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to
+drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by
+the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the
+prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof.
+
+For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his
+parents; but once more "hope told a flattering tale." For the third time
+he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor
+working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This
+time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble
+any more about his prodigal son, declaring that "he had made his bed and
+must lie on it."
+
+Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another
+mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought
+him again triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite
+clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home
+and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the
+restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that
+at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we
+find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar,
+who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of
+Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually
+developed into a pillar of the State!
+
+But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was
+destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep
+in debt that he vanished again--this time to escape from his creditors.
+He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed
+into the gambler and _roué_, dividing his time between the seductive
+poles of the gaming-table and fair women.
+
+His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check
+one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed
+by the entry of a _posse_ of officials into his room, armed with a
+warrant for his imprisonment.
+
+     "On Sunday, the 31st of October 1751," Mr Montagu
+     records, "when it was near one in the morning, as I was
+     undressed and going to bed, I heard a person enter my
+     room; and upon turning round and seeing a man I did not
+     know, I asked him calmly _what he wanted_? His answer was
+     that _I must put on my clothes._ I began to expostulate
+     upon the motive of his apparition, when a commissary
+     instantly entered the room with a pretty numerous
+     attendance, and told me with great gravity that he was
+     come, by virtue of a warrant for my imprisonment, to
+     carry me to the Grand Chatelêt. I requested him again and
+     again to inform me of the crime laid to my charge; but
+     all his answer was, that _I must follow him_. I begged
+     him to give me leave to write to Lord Albemarle, the
+     English Ambassador, promising to obey the warrant if his
+     Excellency was not pleased to answer for my forthcoming.
+     But the Commissary refused me the use of pen and ink,
+     though he consented that I should send a verbal message
+     to his Excellency, telling me at the same time that he
+     would not wait the return of the messenger, because his
+     orders were to carry me instantly to prison. As
+     resistance under such circumstances must have been
+     unavailable, and might have been blameable, I obeyed the
+     warrant by following the Commissary, after ordering one
+     of my domestics to inform my Lord Albemarle of the
+     treatment I underwent.
+
+     "I was carried to the Chatelêt, where the jailors,
+     hardened by their profession, and brutal for their
+     profit, fastened upon me as upon one of those guilty
+     objects whom they lock up to be reserved for public
+     punishment; and though neither my looks nor my behaviour
+     betrayed the least symptom of guilt, yet I was treated as
+     a condemned criminal. I was thrown into prison, and
+     committed to a set of wretches who bore no character of
+     humanity but its form. My residence--to speak in the jail
+     dialect--was in the SECRET, which is no other than the
+     dungeon of the prison, where all the furniture was a
+     wretched mattress and a crazy chair. The weather was
+     cold, and I called for a fire; but I was told I could
+     have none. I was thirsty, and called for some wine and
+     water, or even a draught of water by itself, but was
+     denied it. All the favour I could obtain was a promise to
+     be waited on in the morning; and then was left by myself
+     under a hundred locks and bolts, with a bit of candle,
+     after finding that the words of my jailors were few,
+     their orders peremptory, and their favours unattainable.
+
+     "I continued in this dismal dungeon till the 2nd of
+     November, entirely ignorant of the crime I was accused
+     of; but at nine in the morning of that day, I was carried
+     before a magistrate, where I underwent an examination by
+     which I understood the heads of the charge against me,
+     and which I answered in a manner that ought to have
+     cleared my own innocence."
+
+The story of the charge and trial is a long one; but it can be briefly
+outlined as follows:--It seems that one, Abraham Paya, a Jew, who,
+disguised as "Mr Roberts," was staying with a Miss Rose who was not his
+wedded wife, accused Montagu and two of his friends, Mr Taafe and Lord
+Southwell, of making him drunk as a preliminary to inveigling him into
+play and winning 870 louis d'or from him.
+
+As the Jew, whom his losses had sobered, refused to pay, Montagu and his
+associates had compelled him by violence and threats to give them drafts
+for the sums owing to them. Then, knowing that payment would be refused,
+"Roberts" shook the dust of Paris off his feet, turned his back on lady
+and creditors alike, and ran away to Lyons. Whereupon, so said the
+complainant, Montagu and his fellow-thieves had ransacked his baggage
+(which he had foolishly left behind him), and appropriated all his money
+and jewels, to the value of many thousands of livres.
+
+To quote Mr Montagu again, the latter part of the charge was that Mr
+Taafe
+
+     "smashed all the trunks, portmanteaus and drawers
+     belonging to the complainant, from whence he took out in
+     one bag 400 louis d'or, and out of another, to the value
+     of 300 louis d'or in French and Portuguese silver; from
+     another bag, 1200 livres in crown pieces, a pair of
+     brilliant diamond buckles, for which the complainant paid
+     8020 livres to the Sieur Piérre; his own picture set
+     around with diamonds to the amount of 1200 livres ...
+     laces to the amount of 3000 livres, seven or eight
+     women's robes; two brilliant diamond rings, several gold
+     snuff-boxes, a travelling-chest containing his plate and
+     china, and divers other effects, all of which Mr Taafe
+     (one of Montagu's co-defendants) packed up in one box,
+     and, by the help of his footman, carried in a coach to
+     his own apartment. That afterwards Mr Taafe carried Miss
+     Rose and her sister in another coach to his lodgings,
+     where they remained three days, and then sent them to
+     London, under the care of one of his friends."
+
+Fortunately for Montagu, the verdict of the Court was in his favour;
+and, after such an unpleasant experience, he was glad to return to
+England, where, such an adept at quick-changing was he, that we soon
+find him a full-blown Member of Parliament for Bossinery, lightening his
+legislative labours by writing a learned treatise on the rise and fall
+of ancient Republics. Was there ever such a man? Duke's grandson,
+fish-hawker, common sailor, peasant, _roué_, gambler, Member of
+Parliament, scholar--all _rôles_ came equally easily to him; and many
+more just as varied were to follow. It was while thus wearing the halo
+of learning and high respectability that his father died, leaving him a
+substantial income, and a large estate in Yorkshire to his eldest son,
+if he should have one. And now we find him leaving his law-making and
+cultivating letters and science in Italy, further enriched by the guinea
+which was all his mother, Lady Mary, condescended to leave her vagrant
+son. The rest--an enormous property--went to his sister, the Countess of
+Bute.
+
+From Italy he went on a long tour through the East, where he seems to
+have played the _rôle_ of Lothario very effectually. At Alexandria (to
+give only one of his love adventures) he lost his fickle heart to the
+beautiful wife of the Danish Ambassador, whom, under various pretences,
+he induced to leave the coast clear by getting him to go to Holland. The
+husband thus safely out of the way, Montagu proceeded to dispose of him.
+He showed the lady a letter from Holland giving sad details of his
+sudden death, and consoled the bereaved "widow" so well that she
+consented to reward him with her hand and to accompany him to Syria.
+
+By the time the dead husband had returned to life Montagu was already
+weary of honeymooning, and was thankful to make his escape to Italy,
+free to woo, and, if necessary, to wed again.
+
+We next find this human chameleon at Venice, wearing a beard down to his
+waist, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and drinking water, and
+recounting his adventures to all who cared to hear them. He was an
+Armenian, and played the part to perfection--until he wearied of it, and
+found another to play. At this time he wrote:
+
+     "I have been a labourer in the fields of Switzerland and
+     Holland, and have not disdained the humble profession of
+     postillion and ploughman. I was a _petit maitre_ at
+     Paris, and an abbé at Rome. I put on, at Hamburg, the
+     Lutheran ruff, and with a triple chin and a formal
+     countenance I dealt about me the word of God so as to
+     excite the envy of the clergy. My fate was similar to
+     that of a guinea, which at one time is in the hands of a
+     Queen, and at another is in the fob of a greasy
+     Israelite."
+
+From land to land he wandered, assuming a fresh character in each, and
+thoroughly enjoying them all. During a two years' residence at Venice he
+was visited by the Duke of Hamilton and a Dr Moore, the latter of whom
+gives the following entertaining account of the visit.
+
+     "He met us," Dr Moore writes, "at the stairhead, and led
+     us through some apartments furnished in the Venetian
+     manner, into an inner room quite in a different style.
+     There were no chairs, but he desired us to seat
+     ourselves on a sofa, while he placed himself on a cushion
+     on the floor, with his legs crossed, in the Turkish
+     fashion. A young black slave sate by him; and a venerable
+     old man with a long beard served us with coffee. After
+     this collation, some aromatic gums were brought and burnt
+     in a little silver vessel. Mr Montagu held his nose over
+     the steam for some minutes, and snuffed up the perfume
+     with peculiar satisfaction; he afterwards endeavoured to
+     collect the smoke with his hands, spreading and rubbing
+     it carefully along his beard, which hung in hoary
+     ringlets to his girdle. This manner of perfuming the
+     beard seems more cleanly, and rather an improvement upon
+     that used by the Jews in ancient times.
+
+     "We had a great conversation with this venerable-looking
+     person, who is, to the last degree, acute, communicative,
+     and entertaining, and in whose discourse and manners are
+     blended the vivacity of a Frenchman with the gravity of a
+     Turk. We found him, however, wonderfully prejudiced in
+     favour of the Turkish characters and manners, which he
+     thinks infinitely preferable to the European, or those of
+     any other nation. He describes the Turks in general as a
+     people of great sense and integrity; the most hospitable,
+     generous, and the happiest of mankind. He talks of
+     returning as soon as possible to Egypt, which he paints
+     as a perfect paradise. Though Mr Montagu hardly ever
+     stirs abroad, he returned the Duke's visit, and as we
+     were not provided with cushions, he sate, while he
+     stayed, upon a sofa with his legs under him, as he had
+     done at his own house. This posture, by long habit, has
+     become the most agreeable to him, and he insists upon its
+     being by far the most natural and convenient; but,
+     indeed, he seems to cherish the same opinion with regard
+     to all customs which prevail among the Turks."
+
+It was during this interview that Mr Montagu declared: "I have never
+once been guilty of a small folly in the whole course of my
+life"--probably making the mental reservation that all his follies had
+been great ones. Thus this singular sprig of nobility drifted through
+his kaleidoscopic life, changing his religion as lightly as he changed
+from priest to ploughman, or from debauchee to Armenian storyteller.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever did was the publication of the
+following advertisement, the object of which was evidently to secure the
+large Yorkshire estate devised by his father to any son he might have:
+
+     "MATRIMONY.--A gentleman who hath filled two succeeding
+     seats in Parliament, is near sixty years of age, lives in
+     great splendour and hospitality, and from whom a
+     considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue,
+     hath no objection to marry any lady, provided the party
+     be of genteel birth, polished manners, and about to
+     become a mother. Letters directed to ---- Brecknock,
+     Esq., at Wills's Coffeehouse, facing the Admiralty, will
+     be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every
+     possible mark of respect."
+
+At this time Montagu was the father of three children--two sons (one a
+black boy of thirteen, who was his favourite companion) and a daughter;
+but they all lacked the sanction of the altar.
+
+A lady answering these delicate requirements was actually found, and
+Montagu would probably have graduated as a respectable husband and
+father of another man's child had not his vagabond career been cut
+tragically short. One day, when he was dining at Padua with Romney, the
+famous artist, a partridge-bone lodged in the old man's throat, and
+refused to budge. He was suffocating; his face grew purple--almost
+black. In terrified haste a priest was summoned to administer the last
+consolations of religion; but the dying man would have none of him. When
+he was asked in what faith he wished to leave the world, he gasped, "A
+good Mussulman, I hope." A few moments later Edward Wortley Montagu, who
+had played more parts on the world's stage than almost any other man who
+ever lived, was a corpse. This grandson of a Duke had begun his life of
+adventure as a fish-hawker, and ended it as "a good Mussulman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS
+
+
+Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
+third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
+Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
+coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
+allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
+the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.
+
+The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
+with one foot in the grave, when the "nightingale" of the London
+theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
+her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
+twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
+Channel.
+
+Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
+him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
+Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:
+
+     "I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
+     me an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed
+     through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
+     he had ended his domestic affairs through such
+     difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
+     of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
+     the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
+     (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
+     only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
+     since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
+     her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
+     of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
+     travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
+     has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
+     thing, persuade him to spare himself."
+
+Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
+for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
+Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
+his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
+more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
+the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.
+
+Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
+but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
+and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous _Beggar's Opera_ that pointed
+the way to three of them.
+
+Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
+Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
+might--indeed, he could not have failed to--have made the acquaintance
+of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
+destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
+dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
+Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
+favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
+coffee-house.
+
+She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
+with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
+drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
+all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
+take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
+her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
+her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in _The Orphan_. Her
+_début_ was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
+wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
+Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
+gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
+over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
+laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
+than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.
+
+Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
+_Beaux's Stratagem_ with brilliant success she was offered the part of
+Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
+the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
+doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
+intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
+filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
+painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.
+
+Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
+forth--"The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum." And the
+news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
+tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
+of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
+no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
+the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
+Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.
+
+As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
+opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
+cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
+Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.
+
+Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
+who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
+in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
+child the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her movements charmed
+all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
+and when only sixteen she made a brilliant _début_ as Polly, recalling
+all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.
+
+But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. "So
+pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
+the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
+that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage." It is little wonder
+that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
+personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
+fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
+brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
+her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.
+
+Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
+London was losing its head over still another "Polly Peachum"--Catherine
+Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
+Stephens, who like her predecessors in the _rôle_, sang divinely even as
+a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
+fame at a bound, as Mandano in _Artaxerxes_. One triumph succeeded
+another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
+_Beggar's Opera_.
+
+Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
+too much wedded to her art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
+even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
+verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
+became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
+The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
+her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
+a year of their nuptial-day.
+
+Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet--and before--many an actress
+has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
+who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
+the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
+potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
+premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
+Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
+gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
+possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
+girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
+make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
+Bickerstaff's _Love in a Village._
+
+So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
+made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in _She Stoops to
+Conquer_; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
+of theatre-going London; while her refinement, at that time by no means
+common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
+circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
+sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
+his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
+statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
+fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
+Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
+of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
+at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
+persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
+placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
+Grosvenor Square house.
+
+For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
+splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
+George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
+blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
+to-day.
+
+While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
+beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
+Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
+girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
+buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
+of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing
+with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
+Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
+won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
+a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
+London and to a wider sphere of activity.
+
+From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:
+
+     "There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
+     the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
+     genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
+     make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
+     juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
+     subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
+     very long family, to which I have given a decided
+     negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
+     seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
+     is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
+     the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
+     forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
+     companions."
+
+And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
+gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
+discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
+ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
+the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
+firmament of the drama, winning as much popularity off as on the stage,
+before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
+sought it--Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
+distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as "my Lady," and to
+see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
+the second Earl of Listowel.
+
+Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
+another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
+Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
+cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
+at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
+actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
+Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
+flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
+it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
+theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.
+
+Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
+time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
+to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in _The Provoked
+Husband_; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
+been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
+not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
+beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, "combined the stateliness
+of Juno with the gentler and beauty of a Venus," made her a Queen of
+Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
+left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
+blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
+Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
+stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
+record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
+had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
+nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
+enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS]
+
+For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
+with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
+theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
+the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in _The Rivals_, to her farewell
+appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
+career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
+chronicler,
+
+     She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
+     her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
+     fascinations.
+
+That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
+army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
+a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
+money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
+had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
+though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.
+
+Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
+have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
+used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
+into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
+generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
+was too good.
+
+One day--it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale--Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
+came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
+diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
+Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
+its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: "How happy I should be with such
+a splendid piece of jewellery!" "What is it worth?" enquired her
+husband. "I could not possibly part with it for less than £15,000," the
+jeweller replied. "Bring me a pen and ink," was the only remark of the
+doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
+delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.
+
+    Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.
+
+And this devotion--idolatry almost--lasted as long as life itself,
+reaching its climax in his will, in which he left his actress-wife
+every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to £900,000, "for her
+sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
+deduction of a single legacy to any other person."
+
+That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
+of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
+retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
+Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
+Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
+her one June day in 1827.
+
+For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
+her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
+charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
+alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
+home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
+Queens.
+
+     "The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory," Mr
+     Howitt records, "her splendid fêtes to Royalty, in some
+     of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
+     bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
+     trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
+     music."
+
+When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
+proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
+she possessed, a fortune now swollen to £1,800,000, to Miss Angela
+Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
+a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
+proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
+vast wealth.
+
+Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
+stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
+Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
+into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A PEASANT COUNTESS
+
+
+In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
+traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
+which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
+the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
+under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
+was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
+of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.
+
+He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
+thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
+twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
+village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
+pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
+storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
+handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the
+weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
+to offer him.
+
+"Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the
+best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
+out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few
+minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
+kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
+overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.
+
+Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
+of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
+travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
+proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
+the man he was thus "entertaining unawares," or all that was to come
+from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
+so entertaining.
+
+Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
+man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
+the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
+his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
+and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
+their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
+famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
+Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
+was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,
+
+     "he had four places of residence--his lodgings at Court,
+     his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
+     his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
+     to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
+     London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
+     without counting those who attended him in public.
+
+     "He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
+     tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
+     always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
+     Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
+     more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
+     royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
+     Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
+     cost between £1,000 and £2,000), the only wonder is that
+     his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
+     leave his son £25,000 in money and valuable effects,
+     besides £4,000 a year in landed estates."
+
+Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
+raised to Earldoms--of Exeter and Salisbury--on the same day.
+
+Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms--that of
+Exeter--and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
+although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
+his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
+the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
+married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon,
+who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
+far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
+liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
+months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.
+
+Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
+a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
+determined that if ever he took another wife she should be "a plain,
+homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
+her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
+Queen.'"
+
+Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
+knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
+"beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
+not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
+could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
+of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
+in vain.
+
+And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
+village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
+his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
+was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
+of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
+of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen summers,
+with a complexion of "cream and roses," with a wealth of brown hair, and
+lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
+good-looking stranger.
+
+No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
+responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
+following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
+showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
+and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
+a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
+spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
+pay well for the hospitality.
+
+The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
+pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
+they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
+were halcyon days for the world-weary man--delightful days of sketching
+in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
+spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
+the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
+Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
+butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
+outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
+heads in glory.
+
+To Sarah he was known as "Mr Jones"; and to her innocent mind it never
+occurred that he could be other than the painter he professed to be.
+The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
+pleasant man who always gave them a cheery "good-day," and gossiped with
+them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
+connected with him, all agreed. "Painter chaps" were notoriously poor,
+and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
+he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
+Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
+doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
+must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
+coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
+relieved of their valuables.
+
+Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
+village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
+house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr
+Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
+than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
+of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
+"beggar-maid," and happiness was at last within his grasp.
+
+When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
+good lady was indignant. "Marry Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What, to a fine
+gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!"
+
+But the farmer for once put his foot down. "Yes," he said, "he shall
+marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
+too, and plenty of money to keep her?" And thus it came to pass that one
+October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
+put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
+a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
+altar by her "highwayman" bridegroom.
+
+For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the
+fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh
+Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded,
+and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even
+appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while
+under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the
+village gossips, "quite the lady."
+
+One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this
+idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he
+had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the
+world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of
+peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the
+coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take
+them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the
+"baubles," and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had
+turned his back?
+
+The struggle between duty and inclination was long and bitter; but in
+the end duty carried the day. He would go to "Burghley House by Stamford
+Town," and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his
+wife he merely said: "To-morrow we must start on a journey to
+Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together," a
+proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see
+something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.
+
+At daybreak next morning "Mr Jones" said good-bye to his kind hosts and
+relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting
+his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant
+Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they
+rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to
+the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some
+modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure
+artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he
+not her hero, one of "Nature's gentlemen," and as such the equal of any
+man in the land?
+
+At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days,
+they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at
+sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, "Oh, what a
+beautiful house!" "Yes," answered her husband, reining in his horse to
+enjoy the view; "it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
+Sally, to be its mistress?" Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
+"Only fancy _me_," she said, "mistress of such a noble house! It's too
+funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
+live in it!" "I am so glad you like it, darling," answered her husband,
+as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; "for it
+is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you--well, you are my
+Countess--and my Queen."
+
+   "'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl--
+    'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'
+    She believed him wild, but his words were truth,
+    For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal."
+
+He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, "blow his horn with a
+lordly air"; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
+Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.
+
+   "Many a gallant gay domestic
+    Bow before him at the door;
+    And they speak in gentle murmur
+    When they answer to his call,
+    While he treads with footsteps firmer
+    Leading on from hall to hall.
+    And while now she wanders blindly,
+    Nor the meaning can divine,
+    Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+    'All of that is mine and thine.'"
+
+Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
+chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
+army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
+county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
+by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
+heroine.
+
+For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
+splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
+dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
+bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
+transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
+roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, "like a lily
+drooping, she bowed down her head and died," tenderly and lovingly
+nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
+with her.
+
+Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
+promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
+daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond--thus mingling the peasant blood
+of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the "Merrie Monarch,"--and survived
+until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable
+Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of
+Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic
+beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by "Mr
+Jones, the highwayman," when George the Third was King.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN
+
+
+When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was
+already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to
+kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke
+contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere
+squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than
+Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry
+VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with
+ill-gotten gold, and paid for his enterprise with his head when the
+eighth Henry set himself to the paying off of old scores. His father,
+the knight, was that John Dudley, King Henry's trusted friend and
+executor of his will, Admiral and Earl Marshal of England, whose
+splendid gifts and boundless ambition won a dukedom for him, and made
+him for a time more powerful than his King.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER]
+
+Such was the parentage of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's
+fifth son, who inherited, with his grandfather's scheming brain and
+plausible tongue, the ambition and love of splendour which made his
+father the most brilliant subject of two kings. And this great, if
+dangerous heritage was not long in manifesting itself in the young
+lordling, who was destined to add to his family's story a chapter more
+romantic and dazzling than that of which his father was the hero.
+
+As a boy in the schoolroom he was quick to show gifts of mind almost
+phenomenal in one so young. Latin and Italian, mathematics and abstruse
+sciences came as easily to this scion of the Dudleys as reading and
+arithmetic to less-dowered boys. And with this precocity of mind he
+developed physical graces and skill no less remarkable until, by the
+time he was well in his 'teens, few grown men could ride a horse, couch
+a lance, or speed an arrow with such skill as he.
+
+At the Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome
+boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
+promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
+still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
+Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
+who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
+precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
+accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
+the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
+as best man.
+
+Whether it was really a love-match or not is open to doubt, perhaps;
+for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
+bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
+exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
+XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
+knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
+was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
+to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
+wife.
+
+For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
+son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
+unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
+which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
+soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
+in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
+blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
+Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
+a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
+the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
+_entourage_.
+
+With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
+unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
+a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
+Edward, on his death-bed, to nominate as his successor; and
+Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
+insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
+scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
+his daring project failed is well-known history--how the Princess Mary
+on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
+intercept her; how she equally outwitted Northumberland and his army,
+and made her triumphant entry into London as Queen; and how her
+vengeance fell on those who had sought to snatch the crown from her.
+
+From the Duke and Lady Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had
+conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided
+ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband
+were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those
+who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious
+hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of
+their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll
+disconsolately on the Tower leads by way of melancholy exercise.
+
+Robert, it is said, found many of these hours of duress far from
+unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the
+Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the
+throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there
+were many sweet and stolen meetings between the fair young Princess and
+the captive knight, when bribed warders turned a blind eye on their
+dallying. And rumour even goes so far as to speak of secret nuptials,
+the fruits of which were, in late years, to bear such high names as my
+Lord of Essex and Francis Bacon.
+
+"Fairy tales," no doubt; but, stripped of such ornamental embellishment,
+there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that
+Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in
+whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should
+wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant to her
+hand.
+
+A year of such pleasantly-qualified captivity, and Robert Dudley was a
+free man again, sent to purge his treason, by a Queen, indulgent to his
+youth and it may be to his good looks, by wielding a sword in the war
+then raging between Spain and France; and here he acquitted himself so
+valiantly for Mary's Spanish allies that, on his return in 1558, covered
+with glory, the ban on the Dudleys was removed; and Robert and his
+brothers and sisters were restored to all the rank and rights their
+father's treason had forfeited.
+
+A few months later Queen Mary died; and when Elizabeth ascended the
+throne, Dudley's sun burst into splendour. The romance which had been
+cradled amidst the fearful joys of prison-meetings, was now to flourish
+under vastly-changed conditions. That the new Queen had lost her heart
+to the handsome and accomplished cavalier, whose prowess in war had set
+the seal on the favour won by his graces of person and mind and his
+ingratiating charm, there can be small doubt; and as little that Dudley,
+forgetful of the wife left to pine in solitude in her Norfolk home,
+returned the devotion of the lady, now his Sovereign, who had made his
+Tower prison a palace of delight.
+
+Nor did Elizabeth make any concealment of her passion. She was a Queen;
+and none should question her right to smile on any man, be he subject or
+king. Before she had been a year on the Throne, Dudley was proudly
+wearing the coveted Garter; was a Privy Councillor and Master of Her
+Majesty's horse. She gave him fat lands and monasteries to add to the
+large possessions with which her brother Edward had endowed his
+favourite; and wherever she went on her Royal progresses, Robert Dudley
+rode gallantly at her right hand, a King in all but name. And no Queen
+ever had more splendid escort.
+
+He was, indeed, a man after her own heart, the _beau ideal_ of a
+cavalier; a lover, like herself, of pomp and splendour, a past-master of
+the arts of pageantry and pleasure, and the owner of a tongue as skilled
+in the language of adroit flattery as in the use of honeyed words. Such
+was Robert Dudley who loved his Queen; and such the Queen who returned
+undisguised admiration for flattery, and love for love.
+
+That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's
+hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to
+press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her.
+Her hand was her own as much as her Crown--she would dispose of it as
+she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her
+people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as
+indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could
+afford to smile at them all--and she did.
+
+And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the
+Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in
+Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then,
+and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to
+wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it;
+and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for
+deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.
+
+One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice.
+Dudley's wife had been poisoned--by her husband, it was said with bated
+breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish
+Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that "Lord
+Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a
+staircase." And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While
+Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his
+devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a
+staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.
+
+How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the
+questions that passed fear-fully from mouth to mouth, from end to end
+of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on
+what must always remain more or less a mystery.
+
+This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart
+(for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose
+early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and
+suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was
+staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair
+at Abingdon. "As for me," she said, "I shall be quite happy alone. I
+have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are
+enjoying themselves, even if I cannot." Eagerly responsive to such a
+welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the
+hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy
+Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose
+suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing,
+and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants
+returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.
+
+Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either
+conclusion, and gave as their verdict "accidental death." That Amy
+Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret
+to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release
+death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting
+this plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley
+as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed
+one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her
+death.
+
+Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall
+succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose
+that Amy Robsart by her own act--wilful, at the dictate of a brain
+disordered by grief, or accidental--removed the barrier to her husband's
+passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not
+actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no
+pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.
+
+His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the
+unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent
+than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to
+claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in
+no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to
+distraction by her caprices. One moment she would "rap him on the
+knuckles," only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would
+flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection;
+the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing
+the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one
+Royal offer of marriage after another--now it was Philip, the Spanish
+King, now His Majesty of Sweden--canvassing their respective merits and
+charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured
+to ridicule his august rivals.
+
+She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a
+match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a
+worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long
+dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester
+was no unfit husband for her "Royal sister"; certainly a much more
+possible personage than "Sir Robert" could have been. But she never
+intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was
+relieved--though she affected to be angry--when news came that Mary had
+chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's
+gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her
+favour.
+
+If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and
+power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced
+her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a
+princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her
+deputy--to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in
+her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
+the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the "country squire."
+
+No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
+wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. "I am
+spoken of," she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, "as if I
+were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
+because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
+young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
+they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
+it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
+calumny will not fasten on me for ever."
+
+But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
+allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
+which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
+once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
+from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.
+
+To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
+indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
+gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
+to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
+cunningly-devised entertainments--from the splendid pageantry of her
+welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
+bear-baiting--all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
+most gorgeous of Queens had never known.
+
+Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
+affections of his Sovereign--a pre-eminence which was never seriously
+endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and transferred to other
+women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
+outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
+she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
+Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
+aroused. "If a man may flirt," she would mockingly say, "why not a
+woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?" And, of course, to this
+question there was no other answer for my lord than to "kiss and be
+friends," and to promise to be more discreet in the future.
+
+But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
+all his vows could not long be true even to his Queen. He lost his heart
+to the lovely wife of Lord Sheffield; and when her husband died
+conveniently and mysteriously (it was said that Leicester, with his
+doctor's help, removed him by a dose of poison) it was not long before
+he wedded her in secret, only just in time to make her child, whose
+name, "Robert Dudley," made no concealment of his parentage, legitimate.
+Before the child was many months old, however, the father was caught in
+the toils of another charmer, my Lady Essex, and after deserting his
+wife and, it is said, unsuccessfully trying to poison her, he made Lady
+Essex his Countess, in defiance of that secret wedding with Sheffield's
+widow.
+
+When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that
+attended it, reached the Queen's ears, her rage knew no bounds. She
+vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his
+head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was only when her
+anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and
+she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.
+
+It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her "sweet
+Robin" was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to
+resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies
+seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty
+and his love-making had ever done.
+
+These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed. When, in
+1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the
+struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the
+expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a
+quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and
+his fellow Princess-captive's side to give his sword its baptism of
+blood in Picardy. At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the
+great English Earl and friend of England's Queen was received with the
+rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.
+All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and
+before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at
+Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and
+insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land
+he had come to save.
+
+Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester's ambition to resist.
+Without troubling to consult his Sovereign at home he accepted the
+"throne" that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had
+elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news
+of his promotion. Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed
+by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had
+heard news of her favourite's presumption, and her Royal anger blazed
+into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without
+consulting her pleasure.
+
+She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the
+Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out
+the vials of her wrath on Leicester's head.
+
+     "How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been
+     used," she wrote, "you shall by the bearer understand. We
+     could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in
+     experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+     extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of
+     this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken
+     our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in
+     honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and
+     commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart,
+     you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey
+     and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you
+     to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will
+     answer the contrary at your uttermost peril."
+
+One can imagine Leicester's feelings on reading such words of Royal
+anger and reproach from the woman who had always shown such indulgence
+to him. His impulse was to resign his governorship forthwith, and to
+hasten back to London to beg forgiveness on his knees; but before he
+could give effect to this decision he had learned that Burghley had
+interceded for him with the Queen to such effect that, supported by a
+petition from the States-General, he was to be allowed to retain his
+office with Elizabeth's reluctant consent.
+
+A few months of rule, however, were sufficient to disillusionise the
+Dutchmen. Leicester proved as incapable to govern a country, as to lead
+an army. His arrogance, his outspoken contempt for his subjects, his
+incompetence and his capricious temper, so thoroughly disgusted the
+nation that had welcomed him with open arms, that he was asked to resign
+his office as unanimously as he had been invited to accept it; and in
+November of 1587, the Earl returned ignominiously to England, eager to
+repair his damaged credit by at least making peace with his Queen.
+
+To his delight he was received with as much cordiality as if he had done
+naught at all to earn his Lady's displeasure. Elizabeth had undoubtedly
+missed her favourite, her right-hand man. She had in fact become so
+accustomed to him that she could not be long happy unless he was at her
+side; and it was by her side that he rode and shared the acclamations
+with which her soldiers greeted her when she paid that historic visit to
+the camp at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada.
+
+But Leicester's adventurous life was now drifting to its close. His
+health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588,
+he left his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking
+healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many letters to
+the Queen.
+
+     "I most humbly beseech your Majesty," he wrote, "to
+     pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending
+     to know how my gracious Lady doth and what ease of her
+     late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this
+     world I do pray for is for her to have good health and
+     long life. For my own poor case I continue still your
+     medicine, and find it amend much better than with any
+     other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find
+     perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my
+     wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation,
+     I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycott
+     this Thursday morning ready to take on my journey. By
+     your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant,--
+     R. LEYCESTER."
+
+But the Earl was not destined to reach the baths. His course was run. He
+got as far on his journey as Coventry; and there, on the 4th of
+September, he drew his last breath. Some said that his end was hastened
+by a dose of poison administered by his Countess, eager to pursue
+unchecked her intrigue with Christopher Blount; others that she
+accidentally gave him a draught from a bottle of poison which he had
+designed for her. But neither suspicion seems to have any evidence to
+support it.
+
+Thus perished, little past the prime of life, a man who more than any
+other of his day drained the cup of pride and pleasure, to find its
+dregs exceeding bitter to the taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TWO IRISH BEAUTIES
+
+
+In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high
+excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of
+Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
+man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
+to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
+pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,
+
+     "They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
+     like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
+     other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
+     drawn over them."
+
+They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
+ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
+Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
+happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
+life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
+the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
+modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
+mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.
+
+To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
+first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
+statement of fact. The young "bloods" of the capital were their slaves
+to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
+gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
+with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
+is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
+hugged each in turn, declared that she "had never seen anything half so
+sweet"; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
+the majesty of their beauty.
+
+It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
+they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
+birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
+danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
+and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
+on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
+sight.
+
+     "With Betty as with Maria," says Mr Frankfort Moore, "the
+     art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
+     languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
+     movements of her feet and lithe body, and the curves
+     made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
+     everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the
+     coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her
+     movements--all the graces and charms inwoven that make up
+     the poem of the minuet--became visible by the art of that
+     exquisite girl, until all other dancers became
+     common-place by comparison."
+
+Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters
+were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests
+they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried
+away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot,
+appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected
+their rescue.
+
+But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs
+Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in
+their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl--certainly not an
+Irish squire or impoverished lord--was a fitting match for her
+daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with
+their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across
+the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.
+
+But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike
+in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly
+brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a
+pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes
+and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less
+radiant than her dashing sister.
+
+     "Each was," to quote another description, "divinely tall,
+     with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity
+     enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head.
+     Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with
+     their long, slender tapering fingers."
+
+All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in
+the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping
+lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory
+pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a
+gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.
+
+Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took
+London by storm, and who "made more noise than any of their predecessors
+since the days of Helen," in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was
+immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were
+the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house.
+Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision,
+and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one
+accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.
+
+Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad "they were beset by a
+curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters
+fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another
+occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from
+the mob." When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found
+themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand spectators, struggling
+to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the "hem of their
+garments."
+
+When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was
+at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at
+bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited
+Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were "lionising"
+the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the
+apartment known as the "Beauty Room," with the significant remark,
+"_These_ are the beauties, gentlemen."
+
+With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all
+the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were
+at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a
+coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted
+her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured
+wooer.
+
+Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, "a grave
+young lord" of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled
+himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria
+gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown
+into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:--
+
+     "On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to
+     Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite
+     beauty and of those accomplishments which will add Grace
+     and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the
+     ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat
+     at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials."
+
+Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was
+beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by
+the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's
+Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour
+which was readily granted to "the most beautiful woman in England,"
+Thus, on one occasion, we are told,
+
+     "from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange
+     procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone
+     to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front
+     marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped
+     the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband
+     and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke,
+     while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!"
+
+One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of
+discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age,
+was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. "Are
+you not sorry," His Majesty enquired, "that there are to be no more
+masquerades?" "Indeed, no," was the answer. "I am quite weary of them
+and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really
+anxious to see, and that is a _coronation_!" This unflattering wish she
+was not destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish
+beauty by a fortnight.
+
+Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She
+spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and
+embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in
+adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which
+the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a
+wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching fête.
+The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots
+of the size of a shilling. "And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr
+Selwyn?" she archly asked. "Why," he replied, "you will look like change
+for a guinea."
+
+[Illustration: MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY]
+
+Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating
+period of her vanity.
+
+     "Yesterday after chapel," she writes, "the Duchess
+     brought home Lady Coventry to feast me--and a feast she
+     was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome,
+     notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month;
+     she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence
+     that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made
+     for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it
+     trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced
+     handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine
+     mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that
+     just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in
+     the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended;
+     frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied
+     with pink and green ribbon--a head-dress that would have
+     charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and
+     prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at
+     the corners, but fine for all that."
+
+Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by
+Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was
+splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom
+long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride
+consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of
+pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was
+doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and,
+with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last
+dregs.
+
+She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its
+decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave
+smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable
+end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the
+murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,
+
+     "The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and
+     most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement
+     of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what
+     surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but
+     one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been
+     ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She
+     was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of
+     eyes' with her former flame, Lord Bolingbroke, an
+     unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to
+     make her the victim of his passion."
+
+Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.
+
+     "Her levities," says a chronicler of the time, "were very
+     publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to
+     her which were greatly believed. However, they were never
+     brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped
+     with only a little private scandal, which generally falls
+     to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is
+     envied by the rest of her sex."
+
+During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in
+her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.
+
+     "Until the last few days," says Mr Horace Bleackley, "the
+     pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her
+     hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of
+     her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was
+     unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had
+     vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for
+     the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn,
+     permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken
+     cheeks."
+
+Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly
+realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on
+October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last
+homage to her in Pirton churchyard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger
+sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic
+conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the
+annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man
+who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had
+heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.
+The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very
+unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had
+drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he
+should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical
+wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful
+excesses.
+
+Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable
+rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade
+that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this
+jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of
+being introduced he was, Walpole says,
+
+     "making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my
+     Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at
+     pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank
+     nor his own cards, which were of £300 each. He soon lost
+     a thousand."
+
+Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom
+she was to marry--a man who, even in the thraldom of a violent love,
+could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed
+was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our
+entertaining gossip again,
+
+     "two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while
+     her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found
+     himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The
+     doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or
+     ring--the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At
+     last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain,
+     at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
+     The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty
+     has had its effect."
+
+If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should
+have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had
+achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen
+had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter
+would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was
+"debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person," he was her very
+slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her
+happy.
+
+Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have
+borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed,
+have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated
+farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her
+new _rôle_. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her
+curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,
+
+     "the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the
+     drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at
+     her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her
+     chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre
+     when it is known that she will be there."
+
+A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride
+to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal
+bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire
+route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds
+struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story
+had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When
+they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, "seven hundred people," we
+are told, "sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the
+Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning."
+
+Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
+that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
+strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
+cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
+could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.
+
+     "The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world
+     is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
+     sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the
+     Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
+     their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
+     table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
+     the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old
+     chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody,
+     either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
+     all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
+     guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
+     to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence--the
+     insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
+     is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
+     life."
+
+Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
+with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
+"dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and
+obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
+house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
+budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
+triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely
+treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
+glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
+could win a smile from the "darlint Duchess" who had brought so much
+glory to old Ireland.
+
+Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
+foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
+but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
+life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
+three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
+Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
+fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
+he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the
+only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John
+Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of
+Argyll; and she gave her hand to "handsome Jack" within twelve months of
+weeping over the grave of her first husband.
+
+     "It was a match," Walpole says, "that would not disgrace
+     Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in
+     some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most
+     pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they
+     could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English
+     weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life,
+     when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their
+     subjects and their sheep."
+
+It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her
+second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.
+Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her
+next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel
+Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of
+stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time
+her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.
+
+     "As she is not quite so charming as she was," says
+     Walpole, "I do not know whether it is not better to
+     change her title than to retain that which puts one in
+     mind of her beauty."
+
+But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social
+prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte;
+and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess
+Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband,
+George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of
+the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs
+of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon
+which the frightened young Princess remarked, "My dear Duchess, you may
+laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me." Her
+life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of
+roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the
+beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she
+contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually
+written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of
+its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though _I_
+wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."
+
+Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
+Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
+Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
+drawing-room and announced his name,
+
+     "the Duchess," he says, "who was sitting with her
+     daughter and some other ladies, took not the least
+     notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
+     coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
+     world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
+     had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
+     Duke."
+
+During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
+she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
+deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
+to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a
+Methodist." In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
+had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
+famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
+doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
+hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
+Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know
+nothing of Mr Boswell."
+
+The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
+Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
+of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
+years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
+behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.
+
+To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
+of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
+others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
+Argyll.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS
+
+
+A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate
+from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
+and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
+families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
+generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
+the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
+into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
+Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
+ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
+he was nothing of the sort.
+
+Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"
+Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the
+gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
+was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so
+much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the
+cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years
+the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
+and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
+pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
+remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
+throne.
+
+Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
+Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
+foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
+Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who
+combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
+vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
+rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
+was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
+Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
+estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
+one day inherit.
+
+It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
+had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
+evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
+of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
+Aberdeen and Panrnure, _cum multis aliis._ However this may be, we know
+that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to
+the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit lassie." The favoured suitor
+was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
+man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean
+understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her
+ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The Duchess of Buccleuch
+was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
+Jean Douglas, "a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
+saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her"; and, no doubt, the
+fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
+the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
+was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.
+
+The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
+Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court--a letter in which the
+Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
+a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
+that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
+humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
+which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
+that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
+however tempting.
+
+During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
+appears to have lived alone at Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
+she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
+and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
+hospitality--paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
+Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
+eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
+her. That the Duke, who is described as "a person of the most wretched
+intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
+unforgiving," was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
+which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
+Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
+ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
+especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon
+
+     "the poor Duke," to quote Woodrow, "who for many years
+     had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
+     persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
+     in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
+     stabbed him as he was sleeping."
+
+It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
+was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
+although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
+delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
+warrant to "confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
+and take possession of it," he was generous enough to make her a
+liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
+"they would heir his estate."
+
+Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
+Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
+enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
+unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
+insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
+"villain of the play," makes his appearance on the stage.
+
+Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
+repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
+then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
+later, to "captivate my heart at the first sight of her." She was,
+moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
+with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
+handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
+suitors; and the "Colonel," who had never won any army rank higher than
+that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
+for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
+gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
+opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
+cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him "one of the
+worst of men--a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain"--and his
+career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
+description.
+
+Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
+test--and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,
+
+     "very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
+     telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
+     came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
+     acknowledge it publicly if I chose. _Enfin_, I was
+     allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
+     months after she honoured me with her hand."
+
+Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
+some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
+least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
+hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors--a man broken
+in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
+defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
+would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
+manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
+union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
+furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
+of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
+withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
+nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, "appearing," we are told, "at least
+fifteen years younger than she really was"; and thus might well have
+looked for a eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
+add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
+brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
+had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
+the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
+favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
+small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.
+
+Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
+August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
+lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
+retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
+female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
+belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.
+
+From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
+to her man of business, Mr Haldane:--
+
+     "It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
+     the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
+     certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
+     never should have once thought of doing it; but since
+     this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
+     it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
+     backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
+     something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
+     therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
+     which has proved more happy than I could well have
+     expected."
+
+Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
+assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish "to do something for her
+family," which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
+Douglas lands--an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
+must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.
+
+Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
+Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liège, and many another Continental town appear
+in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
+Jean's _maitre d'hotel_, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
+every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
+and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
+flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
+succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
+shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to "lend to my Lady Jean, who
+is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
+remittances." Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
+admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
+learning from her lips that he is "the man alive I would choose to be
+most obliged by." Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
+keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
+about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
+addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
+while her husband stakes his golden louis on the green cloth and
+drinks costly wines.
+
+Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
+devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
+her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
+Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
+must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.
+
+     "I can assure your Grace," his lordship writes, "she does
+     great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
+     respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
+     acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
+     marks of an only brother to an only sister."
+
+This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
+Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
+present: "Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
+virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
+going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister--I believe
+she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
+woman in the world."
+
+At the very time--so inconsistent was this singular woman--that Lord
+Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
+brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
+Lady Wigton, she declared with tears that it was an "infamous story
+raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
+against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
+pension"; and she begged Lady Wigton "when she went to England to
+contradict it."
+
+But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
+supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
+wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
+she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
+had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
+escaping--_unless_ the birth of a child might soften her brother's
+heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
+years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
+critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
+coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
+to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
+than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
+hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
+and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
+years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make
+assurance doubly sure," in Lady Jean's case--heirs.
+
+As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
+order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
+since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where she was
+then living, were "as ignorant as brutes." And so to the French capital
+she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
+public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
+been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
+the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
+the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
+written by Mrs Hewit, "produced two lovely boys," one of whom was so
+weak and puny that the doctor "begged it might be sent to the country as
+soon as possible."
+
+So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
+such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
+trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
+mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
+begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
+the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
+imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
+in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
+wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
+contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
+would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.
+
+Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
+proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
+neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
+taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
+lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
+without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
+place.
+
+On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
+declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
+Brune, a nurse--but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
+them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
+made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
+infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
+spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.
+
+At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
+that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
+them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
+Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child--a puny infant,
+but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
+The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
+the country.
+
+It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
+Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
+the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
+Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
+Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
+the Colonel at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
+proved that a "foreign gentleman," exactly answering his description,
+had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
+peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?
+
+To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
+later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
+children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
+in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
+birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
+no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
+visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.
+
+On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
+that she had been blessed with "two boys," one of which she begged his
+permission to call by his name--a letter which only had the effect of
+rousing His Grace's "high passion and displeasure," with a threat to
+stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
+was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
+trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
+journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
+the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
+time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
+purchased from its parents in Paris by a "strange monsieur" who, if not
+the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it not strange that this
+late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
+robust brother, as the purchased child was?
+
+At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
+on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
+prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
+set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
+possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
+doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
+Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
+high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
+their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
+procured from the King a pension of £300 a year, which she sorely
+needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt "within
+the Rules" of the King's Bench.
+
+Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
+the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
+against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
+loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
+and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.
+
+To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
+have nothing to do either with his sister or the two "nunnery children"
+which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
+Jean only succeeded in getting deeper and deeper involved in debt,
+until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
+her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
+pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
+children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.
+
+One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,
+
+     "she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
+     through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
+     told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
+     children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
+     Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
+     acquainted his Grace."
+
+The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
+still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
+see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
+letter in which she begged "to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
+and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
+inflict what punishment you please upon me," he returned no answer.
+
+Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
+Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
+cried out in her deep distress: "O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
+could but have died for you!" This last blow of fate seems to have
+completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
+hopeless struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
+her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: "May God bless you, my dear
+son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
+despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
+as some of your ancestors." Then, but a few moments before drawing her
+last breath, she said to those around her: "As one who is soon to appear
+in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
+the two children were born of my body." Thus passed "beyond these
+voices" a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
+sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.
+
+Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
+her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
+motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
+protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
+man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
+his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," a lady of strong character who
+had long vowed that "she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry";
+and in Duchess "Peggy" Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
+gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
+many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the "brat" to perdition
+one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
+to her side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
+that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
+Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:
+
+     "DEAR JACK,--I have not had time till now to acquaint you
+     of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
+     brother Archie his whole estate."
+
+Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
+stilled in death.
+
+The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
+history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
+justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
+rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
+the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
+Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
+Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
+latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
+set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
+twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
+on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
+Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
+detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
+Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
+judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.
+
+     "The judges," we are told, "took up no less than eight
+     days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
+     last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
+     solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs."
+
+Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
+the grave, declaring, just before his death:
+
+     "I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
+     Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
+     in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
+     Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
+     were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
+     Archibald is the only one in life now."
+
+But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
+appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
+reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.
+
+Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
+and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
+position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
+although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
+in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
+to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
+laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS
+
+
+For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of
+antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to
+lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their
+haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their
+family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and
+ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to
+be distinguished as "Black Schulenburgs" and "White Schulenburgs," as
+our own Douglases were "black" and "red."
+
+But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the
+family name to such an eminence--a bad eminence--as one of its plainest
+daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full,
+imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a Duchess of
+England, but to be "as much a Queen as ever there was in England."
+
+Fräulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der
+Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day,
+were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.
+The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by
+common consent, the "ugly duckling" of the family--abnormally tall,
+angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany
+equipped for conquest in the field of love.
+
+When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad
+to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence
+procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of
+Hanover. At any rate she was provided for--an important matter, for the
+Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud--and she was too
+unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often
+happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes
+on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in
+love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust
+of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To
+George--an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose
+morals--the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of
+beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and
+before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed
+mistress--one of many.
+
+"Just look at that mawkin," the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady
+Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, "and think of her
+being my son's mistress!" But to any other than his mother, George's
+taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross
+appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife
+possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness
+of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von
+Kielmansegg--who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way--a
+lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.
+
+She had, he recalls,
+
+     "two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two
+     lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with
+     crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not
+     distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part
+     of it restrained by stays. No wonder," he adds, "that a
+     child dreaded such an ogress!"
+
+Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
+of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
+English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these
+ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his
+time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted
+wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with Königsmarck, which
+was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment
+in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's
+Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.
+
+To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of
+her--a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the
+tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered
+enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded,
+self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She
+moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she
+was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while
+she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal
+lover--daughters who were called her "nieces," although the fiction
+deceived nobody--and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to
+her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.
+
+Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of
+Queen Anne made "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover,
+rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland." The sluggish
+sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned
+to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such
+reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks
+the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new
+and exalted _rôle_--and finally they succeeded.
+
+But even then he had not counted on the "fair" Ehrengard. She refused
+point-blank to go with him to that "odious England," where chopping off
+heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was quite happy in Hanover,
+and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace
+gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to
+the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert
+them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to
+England.
+
+Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind. If her great rival
+would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day's start, she
+raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with
+open arms. The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick "that
+Kielmansegg woman" had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and,
+taking her "nieces" with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal
+lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of
+embarking for England.
+
+George was now happy and reconciled to his fate, for his retinue was
+complete. And what a retinue! When the King landed at Greenwich with his
+grotesque assortment of Ministers, his hideous Turks, his two
+mistresses--one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat--and
+his "nieces," the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted
+the "menagerie" with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed
+Schulenburg the "Maypole," and Kielmansegg the "Elephant," and pursued
+the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults.
+
+"Goot peoples, vy you abuse us?" asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt
+head and shoulders through the carriage window. "Ve only gom for all
+your goots." "And for all our chattels, too, ---- you!" came the
+stinging retort from a wag in the crowd.
+
+But Schulenburg soon realised that she could afford to smile and shrug
+her scraggy shoulders at the insolence of those "horrid Engleesh." She
+found herself in a land of Goshen, where there were many rich plums to
+be gathered by far-reaching and unscrupulous hands such as hers. If she
+could not love the enemy, she could at least plunder them; and this she
+set to work to do with a good will, while the plastic George looked on
+and smiled encouragement. There were pensions, appointments,
+patents--boons of all kinds to be trafficked in; and who had a greater
+right to act as intermediary than herself, the King's _chère amie_ and
+right hand?
+
+She sold everything that was saleable. As Walpole says, "She would have
+sold the King's honour at a shilling advance to the best bidder." From
+Bolingbroke's family she took £20,000 in three sums--one for a Peerage,
+another for a pardon, and the third for a fat post in the Customs. Gold
+poured in a ceaseless and glittering stream into her coffers. She
+refused no bribe--if it was big enough--and was ready to sell anything,
+from a Dukedom to a Bishopric, if her price was forthcoming. She made
+George procure her a pension of £7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
+long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
+she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.
+
+Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
+coronets--and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
+Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
+not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
+George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
+Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
+induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess--of Eberstein.
+Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
+graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
+who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
+woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
+of less degree. She might be a "maypole"--hated and unattractive--but at
+least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
+beauties of her "Consort's" Court.
+
+When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
+splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
+witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
+Company, whether its object was to "carry on a thing that will turn to
+the advantage of the concerned," "the breeding and providing for natural
+children," or "for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
+silk-worms."
+
+Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
+and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
+her exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
+and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
+that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
+played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
+harm her. Only one of her many puppets--Knight, the Treasurer of the
+South Sea Company--could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
+arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
+sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
+too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
+Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
+the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.
+While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in
+solitude in distant Ahlden, the German "Maypole" was Queen in all but
+name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if
+iron hand. It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of
+George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than
+the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain
+that this "old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess" was more England's
+Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.
+
+She was present at every consultation between the King and his
+Ministers--indeed the conferences were invariably held in her own
+apartments, every day from five till eight. She understood and humoured
+every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent
+even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while
+she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an
+extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every
+Sunday. The only rival she had ever feared--and hated--Madame
+Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington
+was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling
+her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.
+
+When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia
+Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was
+the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been
+loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in
+the Palace of Osnabrück, in which he had drawn his first breath
+sixty-seven years earlier.
+
+A French fortune-teller had warned him that "he would not survive his
+wife a year"; and, as he neared Osnabrück, the home of his brother, the
+Prince Bishop, his fatal illness overtook him.
+
+     "When he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic;
+     his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung
+     out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life
+     by continually crying out, as well as he could
+     articulate, 'Osnabrück!' 'Osnabrück!'"
+
+As night fell the sweating horses galloped into Osnabrück; an hour
+later George died in his brother's arms, less than twelve months after
+his wife had drawn her last breath in her fortress-prison of Ahlden.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was disconsolate.
+
+     "She beat her breasts and tore her hair, and, separating
+     herself from the English ladies in her train, took the
+     road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion
+     about three months."
+
+Returning to England, to the only solace left to her--her
+money-bags--she spent the last seventeen years of her life alternating
+between her villas at Twickenham and Isleworth. George had promised her
+that if she survived him, and if it were possible, he would revisit her
+from the spirit world.
+
+     "When," to quote Walpole again, "one day a large raven
+     flew into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth,
+     she was persuaded that it was the soul of the departed
+     monarch, and received and treated it with all the respect
+     and tenderness of duty, till the Royal bird or she took
+     their last flight."
+
+Thus, shorn of all her powers and splendour, in obscurity, and hoarding
+her ill-gotten gold, died the most remarkable woman who has ever figured
+in the British Peerage. Her vast fortune was divided between her two
+"nieces," one of whom, created by her father, George, Countess of
+Walsingham, became the wife of that polished courtier and heartless man
+of the world, Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES
+
+
+Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of
+our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of
+volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of
+the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance
+in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often
+reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees
+flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying
+from view the humble roots from which they derive their lordly growth.
+
+Although Cobden's assertion that "the British aristocracy was cradled
+behind city counters" errs on the side of exaggeration, there is no
+doubt that in the veins of scores of the proudest English peers runs the
+blood of ancestors who served customers in City shops.
+
+When, a couple of centuries ago, John Baring, son of the Bremen Lutheran
+parson, Dr Franz Baring, opened his small cloth manufactory on the
+outskirts of Exeter, his most extravagant ambition was to build up a
+business which he could hand over to his sons, and to provide a few
+comforts for his old age; if any one had told him that he was laying the
+foundations of four families which should hold their heads proudly among
+the highest in the land he would no doubt have laughed aloud.
+
+Yet John Baring lived to see his only daughter wedded to John Dunning,
+who made a Baroness of her. Of his four sons, Francis was created a
+Baronet by William Pitt, and found a wife in the cousin and co-heir of
+his Grace of Canterbury. The second son of this union, Alexander, was
+raised to the Peerage as Baron Ashburton, won a millionaire bride in the
+daughter of Senator Bingham, of Philadelphia, and, from the immense
+scale of his financial operations, was ranked by the Duc de Richelieu as
+"one of the six great powers of Europe"--England, France, Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia being the other five. Sir Francis's eldest
+grandson, after serving in the exalted offices of Chancellor of the
+Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, was created Baron Northbrook,
+a peerage which his son raised to an earldom; a second grandson
+qualified for a coronet as Baron Revelstoke; and a third is known to-day
+as Earl Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, with half an alphabet of high
+dignities after his name.
+
+At least three dukes (Northumberland, Leeds, and Bedford) count among
+their forefathers many a humble tradesman. Glancing down the pedigree of
+his Grace of Northumberland, we find among his direct ancestors such
+names as these, William le Smythesonne, of Thornton Watlous, husbandman;
+William Smitheson, of Newsham, husbandman; Ralph Smithson, tenant
+farmer; and Anthony Smithson, yeoman. It was this Anthony whose son,
+Hugh, left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and
+William Robinson, London haberdashers, and thus to take the first step
+of that successful career which made him a Baronet and a man of wealth.
+From Hugh, the London 'prentice sprang in the fourth generation, that
+other Hugh who won the hand of Lady Elizabeth Seymour, and with it the
+vast estates and historic name of Percy.
+
+Some years before Hugh Smithson, the farmer's son, set foot in London
+streets, Edward Osborne left the modest family roof at Ashford, in Kent,
+to serve his apprenticeship to, and sit at the board of, William Hewitt,
+a merchant of Philpot Lane, who shortly after moved his belongings to a
+more fashionable home on London Bridge. One day it chanced that while
+his only daughter, the fair "Mistress Anne," was hanging her favourite
+bird outside the parlour window she lost her balance and fell into the
+river, then racing in high tide under the arches of the bridge.
+Fortunately for Mistress Anne the young apprentice saw the accident;
+quick as thought he threw off his shoes and surcoat, and, plunging into
+the swollen waters, caught the maiden by her hair as she was being swept
+away, and with difficulty dragged her to a passing barge, on which both
+found safety.
+
+There was only one proper sequence to this romantic incident; Mistress
+Anne lost her heart to her gallant rescuer, the grateful parents smiled
+on his wooing, and one fine August morning, not many months later, the
+wedding-bells of St Magnus Church were spreading far and wide the news
+that young Osborne had found a bride in one of the fairest and richest
+heiresses of London town. In due time Osborne became, as his
+father-in-law had been before him, Lord Mayor of London; the son of this
+romantic alliance was knighted for prowess in battle; Edward Osborne's
+grandson was made a Baronet; and his great-grandson, Sir Thomas, added
+to the family dignities by becoming in turn, Baron, Viscount, Earl and
+Marquis, and, finally, Duke of Leeds. Thus only two generations
+separated the 'prentice lad of Philpot Lane from his descendant of the
+strawberry-leaves, the first of a long and still unbroken line of
+English dukes, whose blood has mingled with that of many noble families.
+
+The noble house of Ripon has its origin in Yorkshire tradesmen who
+carried on business in York, some of whom were Lord Mayors of that city
+two or three centuries ago. These early Robinsons added to their fortune
+and enriched their blood by alliances with some of the oldest families
+in the north of England--such as the Metcalfes of Nappa and the
+Redmaynes of Fulford--and slowly but surely laid the foundation of one
+of the wealthiest and most distinguished of great English houses. For
+four generations the head of the family was a Cabinet Minister, while
+one of them was Prime Minister of England.
+
+The Marquises of Bath derive descent from one John o' th' Inne, who
+was, probably, a worthy publican of Church Stretton, and who was
+descended in the seventh generation from William de Bottefeld, an
+under-forester of Shropshire in the thirteenth century; while, through
+his mother, the late Marquis of Salisbury derived a strain of 'prentice
+blood from Sir Christopher Gascoigne, the first Lord Mayor of London to
+live in the Mansion House.
+
+Until a few years ago there might be seen in the main street of the
+village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
+better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
+It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
+husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
+far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
+and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
+way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as "My lord," in his
+character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
+boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
+Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
+Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
+kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
+Appletrewick.
+
+The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
+his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
+mercer, and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
+we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
+whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.
+
+The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
+names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
+a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
+was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
+centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
+ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
+Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
+daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.
+
+The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
+poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
+a fortune as a London jeweller.
+
+In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
+citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
+himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
+tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
+accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
+anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
+they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
+George III. departed for once from his rule never to raise a man of
+business to the Peerage, by converting Robert Smith into Baron
+Carrington. His successor abandoned the patronymic Smith for his
+title-name; and the present-day representative of John Smith, the
+Nottingham draper is Charles Robert Wynn Carrington, first Earl
+Carrington, P.C., G.C.M.G., and joint Hereditary Lord Chamberlain of
+England.
+
+When William Capel left the humble paternal roof at Stoke Nayland, in
+Suffolk, to see what fortune and a brave heart could do for him in
+London, it certainly never occurred to him that his name would be handed
+down through the centuries by a line of Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
+Fortune had indeed strange experiences in store for the Suffolk youth;
+for, while she made a Knight and Lord Mayor of him, she consigned him on
+a life sentence to the Tower for resisting the extortions of the
+mercenary Henry VII. Sir William's son won his knightly spurs on French
+battlefields, wedded a daughter of the ancient house of Roos of Belvoir,
+and became the ancester of the Barons Capel, Viscounts Malden, and Earls
+of Essex.
+
+The Earls of Radnor owe their rank and wealth to the enterprise which
+led young Laurence des Bouveries from his native Flanders to a
+commercial life at Canterbury in the days of Queen Bess. From this
+humble Flemish apprentice sprang a line of Turkey merchants, each of
+whom in turn added his contribution to the family dignities and riches,
+until Sir Jacob, the third Baronet, blossomed into a double-barrelled
+peer as Lord Longford and Viscount Folkestone. Not the least, by any
+means, of the descendants of Laurence des Bouveries was Canon Pusey,
+the great theologian, who was grandson of the first Lord Folkestone.
+
+Lord Harewood springs from a stock of merchants who accumulated great
+wealth in the eighteenth century; and Lord Jersey owes much of his
+riches to Francis Child, the industrious apprentice who, in Stuart days,
+married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, the goldsmith, who
+lived one door west of Temple Bar.
+
+Other peers who count London apprentices among their ancestors are Lord
+Aveland and Viscount Downe, both descendants of Gilbert Heathcote, whose
+commercial success was crowned by the Lord Mayoralty in 1711; the
+Marquis of Bath, a descendant of Lord Mayor Heyward, whose sixteen
+children are all portrayed in his monument in St Alphege Church, London
+Wall; and also of Richard Gresham, mercer, who waxed rich from the
+spoils of the monasteries, and whose son was founder of the Royal
+Exchange. The Earl of Eldon owes his existence to that runaway exploit
+which linked the lives of John Scott, the Newcastle tradesman's son, and
+Miss Surtees, the banker's daughter.
+
+If George III. during his lengthy reign only raised one business man to
+the Peerage, later years have provided a very liberal crop of coroneted
+men of commerce. To mention but a few of them, banking has been
+honoured--and the Peerage also--by the baronies granted to Lords
+Aldenham and Avebury; Lords Hindlip, Burton, Iveagh, and Ardilaun owe
+their wealth and rank to successful brewing; Baron Overtoun was
+proprietor of large chemical works; Lord Allerton's riches have been
+drawn from his tan-pits; Lord Armstrong's millions come from the
+far-famed Elswick engine-works at Newcastle; and Lord Masham's from his
+mills at Manningham. The Viscounty of Hambleden has sprung from a modest
+news-shop in the Strand; the Barony of Burnham was cradled in a
+newspaper office; and Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona were shepherd
+boys seventy years or more ago, before they found their way through
+commerce to the Roll of Peers.
+
+Although these lowly origins are as firmly established as Holy Writ, and
+are in most cases as well known to the noble families who trace rank and
+riches from them as to the expert in genealogy, they are often as
+carefully excluded from the family tree as the poor and undesirable
+relation from the doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage
+extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted
+blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families
+strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some
+obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in
+many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their own
+pedigrees.
+
+"What are pedigrees worth?" asks Professor Freeman. "I turn over a
+'Peerage' or other book of genealogy, and I find that, when a pedigree
+professes to be traced back to the times of which I know most in detail,
+it is all but invariably false. As a rule it is not only false, but
+impossible. The historical circumstances, when any are introduced, are
+for the most part not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
+which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood."
+
+This scathing criticism refers to pedigrees which profess to be based on
+existing records; what shall we say, then, of those family trees which
+have their ambitious roots in the dark centuries which no ray of
+genealogical light can possibly pierce? Take, for instance, that amazing
+pedigree of the Lyte family of Lytes Cary, at the head of which is
+"Leitus (one of the five captains of Beotia that went to Troye)," whose
+ancestors came to England first with Brute, "the most noble founder of
+the Britons." (It is only fair to say that the present representative of
+this really ancient family, Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte, an expert genealogist,
+turns his back resolutely on the Beotian captain, and even on Brute
+himself, and generally lops his family tree in a merciless but most
+salutary fashion.)
+
+The College of Arms, among many amazing pedigrees, treasures one of a
+family "whose present representative is sixty-seventh in descent in an
+unbroken male line from Belinus the Great (Beli Mawr), King of Britain,"
+which actually exhibits the arms of Beli, who, poor man, died long
+centuries before heraldry was even cradled.
+
+Of families who derive descent from Charlemagne the name is legion; but
+even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity
+compared with others which have at their head no other progenitor than
+Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum
+roll, twenty-one feet long, of pedigrees, some of which "are traced back
+to 'Adam, Son of God,' without any conscious sense of the incongruous";
+and these records, we must remember, are in the hand of "a man
+thoroughly trustworthy as to the matters of his own time." There is in
+the College of Arms a similar family tree which commences boldly with
+Adam and the Garden of Eden; and an authority on Welsh pedigrees
+declares,
+
+     "A Welshman whose family was in any position in the
+     sixteenth century can, as a rule, without much trouble
+     find a pedigree thence to Adam; an Englishman who is
+     unable to do the same has a natural tendency to regard
+     all Welsh pedigrees with distrust, not to say contempt."
+
+Mr Horace Round gives some startling examples of flagrant dishonesty,
+where forgery is only one of the implements used. Take, for example,
+that shameful story of the "Shipway frauds," which is thus referred to
+by a clergyman of the parish.
+
+     "In the fall of 1896, by an elaborate system of impudent
+     frauds, an unscrupulous attempt was made to claim these
+     monuments for one who was an entire stranger to the
+     parish. An agent from London was employed in a search for
+     a pedigree. He, by fraudulent means, concocted a very
+     plausible story. Genealogies were manufactured, tombs
+     were desecrated, registers were falsified, wills were
+     forged--in a word, various outrages were committed, with
+     many sacred things in this parish and elsewhere. These
+     two figures, as part of the pedigree, were deposited in a
+     niche in the chantry; on either side were huge brass
+     tablets on which were engraven various untruthful and
+     unfounded statements."
+
+In another case Hughenden Church was desecrated to gratify the vanity of
+a family of Wellesbourne, anxious to trace their descent from the
+Montforts.
+
+     "They caused a monumental effigy of an imaginary ancestor
+     to be carved in the style of the thirteenth century
+     ...they adapted the plate-armour effigy to their purpose
+     by cutting similar arms on the skirts, and they had three
+     rude effigies fabricated by way of filling up the gaps
+     between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries."
+
+To give but two more out of many cases of similar imposture, the
+Deardens, many years ago, actually had a family chapel constructed in
+Rochdale Church with sham effigies, slabs, and brasses to the memory of
+wholly fictitious ancestors; while in two Scottish churches altar-tombs
+were placed to the memory of successive apocryphal lairds of Coulthart.
+Such are the lengths to which a craze for ancestry has carried some
+unprincipled persons; and there is no doubt that the arts of the forger
+are still enlisted in the service of people who crave long descent and
+do not scruple as to the methods by which they attain it.
+
+Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such
+extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather
+amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and
+obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or
+at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons
+(a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the
+baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in
+Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century." The first Cooper was not,
+as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of
+that name--no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one
+of whom was "Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King"; Pindar,
+the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
+the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are "probably descended from
+William, a Norman of distinction"; while at least one family of Brownes
+springs lineally from "Turulph, a companion of Rollo," founder of the
+Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
+that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from _Smeeth_, "a level
+plain"; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
+certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.
+
+Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:
+
+     "a particle which has been all but unknown in England
+     since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
+     has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
+     character which the French nation have chosen to assign
+     to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
+     restorations in the modern Gothic manner."
+
+It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
+surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
+De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.
+
+This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
+the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
+it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
+accepted with a quite childlike credence:
+
+     "This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
+     train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
+     flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
+     from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
+     Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
+     patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
+     the famous Dane...."
+
+And again:
+
+     "The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (_sic_) of
+     Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins."
+
+This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
+attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
+actually named "Hugh Lupus" at the baptismal font, while his younger
+brother was labelled Richard "de Aquila"; and yet it is an indisputable
+fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
+Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
+who has no more traceable connection with Rollo than with the Man in
+the Moon.
+
+The Ducal House of Fife, we are told, "derives from Fyfe Macduff, a
+chief of great wealth and power, who lived about the year 834, and
+afforded to Kenneth II., King of Scotland, strong aid against his
+enemies, the Picts." The present Duke, however, has the good sense to
+disclaim any hereditary connection with the old Earls of Fife, and to
+place at the top of his family tree one Adam Duff, who laid the
+foundation of the family prosperity in the seventeenth century. The
+Spencers, it is claimed, spring lineally from the old baronial
+Despencers, "being a branche issueing from the ancient family and
+chieffe of the Spencers, of which sometymes were the Earles of
+Winchester and Glocester, and Barons of Glamorgan and Morgannocke."
+This, no doubt, is a very distinguished origin; but, alas! the earliest
+provable ancestors of this "noble" family were respectable and
+well-to-do Warwickshire graziers, and the first authentic title on the
+true pedigree is the knighthood conferred on John Spencer in 1519, less
+than four centuries ago. Similarly the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, are
+said to be derived from one Hugh de Russell, or Rossel (who took that
+name from his estate in Normandy), one of the Conqueror's attendant
+barons on his invasion of England. Here, again, facts fail lamentably to
+support the descent claimed, since the earliest known progenitor of this
+"great house" was that Henry Russell who was sent to Parliament to
+represent Weymouth in the fifteenth century, and whose great-grandson
+blossomed into the first Earl of Bedford. (It may, perhaps, be well to
+state that, although the pedigrees here criticised are those that have
+been or are widely accepted, they are not necessarily approved by the
+families whose descent they profess to give.)
+
+Another Norman ancestor who must go overboard is the alleged founder of
+the "noble" house of Bolingbroke--that "William de St John who came to
+England with the Conqueror as grand master of the artillery and
+supervisor of the wagons and carriages," since it can be positively
+shewn that the St John family first set foot in England a good many
+years after William I. was safely underground; and with this mythical
+William must also go that equally nebulous progenitor of the Fortescue
+family, "who" according to the venerable and almost uniform tradition,
+"landed in England with his master in the year 1066, and, protecting him
+with his shield from the blows of an assailant, was graciously dubbed
+'Fortescu,' the man of the stout shield." The Stourtons, so the
+"Peerages" say, were "of considerable rank before the Conquest, and
+dictated their own terms to the Conqueror"; but, as Canon Jackson, the
+learned antiquary, truly points out, "of this there is no evidence. The
+name is found, apparently for the first time, among Wiltshire
+landowners, in the reign of Edward I., when a Nicholas Stourton held one
+knight's fee under the Lovells of Castle Cary."
+
+The Duke of Norfolk has a family tree of very stately growth, and can
+well afford to repudiate a good many of the ancestors provided for him
+by "Peerage" editors. Certainly, if he ever read the following statement
+he must have smiled aloud:
+
+     "The Duke's proudest boast is that his name of Howard is
+     merely that of an ancestor, Hereward the Wake, whose
+     representative, Sir Hereward Wake, is still in
+     Northamptonshire."
+
+As a matter of fact, his Grace's earliest known ancestor was Sir William
+Howard, "who was a grown man and on the bench in 1293, whose real
+pedigree is very obscure"; and who, no doubt, would have laughed as
+heartily as his descendant of to-day at his imaginary derivation from
+the Conqueror's stubborn foe of the fens, Hereward the Wake.
+
+In the Fitzwilliam pedigree we encounter another nebulous knight of the
+Conqueror. "The Fitzwilliams," we are informed, "date so far back that
+their record is lost, but Sir William, a knight of the Conqueror's day,
+married the daughter of Sir John Elmley," and so on; and further, that
+at Milton Hall, Peterborough, one may actually look on an antique scarf
+which "was presented to a direct ancestor of the Fitzwilliams by William
+the Conqueror." The most skilled of our genealogists have sought in vain
+for an authentic trace of this gallant knight of Conquest days; and
+Professor Freeman does not hesitate to dismiss the story of his
+existence as "pure fable." But if Sir William of Normandy must fall from
+the family tree, his place is most creditably taken by Godric, a Saxon
+Thane, who, as a forefather, is at least as respectable as any Norman
+warrior in William's train.
+
+The house of Fitzgerald is credited with an ancestor, one Dominus Otho,
+"who is supposed to have been of the family of the Gherardini of
+Florence. This noble passed over into Normandy, and thence, in 1057,
+into England, where he became so great a favourite with Edward the
+Confessor that he excited the jealousy of the Saxon Thanes." Dominus
+Otho must too pass, with many another treasured ancestor, into the
+crowded genealogical land of the rejected; for the real founder of the
+Fitzgerald house was Walter, son of "Other," whose name is first met
+with in Domesday Book in 1086. The Otho story is shown to be "absolute
+fiction."
+
+In view of such examples of misplaced ingenuity exhibited by the makers
+of pedigrees for our noble families, one can almost read without a smile
+that
+
+     "there were Heneages at Hainton in the time of King Edwy;
+     they doubtless took part in the revolt which brought
+     Edgar to the throne, and it is not impossible that some
+     of them were in the train of Wulfhere, King of Mercia;"
+
+or that
+
+     "Lord Alington comes of a family of ancient lineage, one
+     of his ancestors being Sir Hildebrand de Alington, who
+     was marshal to William the Conqueror at the battle of
+     Hastings,"
+
+though we may know full well that the Sturt pedigree really begins in
+the seventeenth century, and that the earliest known Heneage lived and
+died some three centuries before.
+
+But "noble" families have no monopoly of misguided genealogy. "The
+immense majority of the pedigrees of the landed gentry," says a
+well-known officer of arms, "cannot, I fear, be characterised as
+otherwise than utterly worthless. The errors of the 'peerage' are as
+nothing to the fables which we encounter everywhere;" and the same may
+be said of many another collection of pedigrees which is a treasured
+possession in countless British homes.
+
+Some even justly famous men have not been proof against this insidious
+form of vanity and pretence. Edmund Spenser was ungenerous enough to
+"dismiss his known ancestry of small Lancashire gentry and plant himself
+modestly in the shadow of the newly discovered shield of arms of the
+noble house of Spencer, 'of which I meanest boast myself to be.'" And
+Lord Tennyson, whose ultimate ascertainable forefather was an eighteenth
+century Lincolnshire apothecary, was provided with a slightly
+differenced cadet's version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison, with whom
+he had no connection whatever.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Aberdeen, Earl of, 299
+  Affleck, Lady, 66
+  ----, Misses, 66
+  Alava, General, 44
+  Albemarle, Lord, 235
+  Aldenham, Lord, 333
+  Alexander, Emperor, 49
+  Alington, Lord, 343
+  ----, Sir Hildebrand, 343
+  Allerton, Lord, 334
+  Almack's, 45-49
+  Andrews, Mr, 71-73
+  Anglesey, Earl of, 165
+  Anne, of Austria, 2
+  ----, Princess, 113
+  ----, Queen, 331
+  Ardilaun, Lord, 333
+  Argyll, Duke of, 295
+  Arlington, Lady, 184
+  ----, Lord, 6, 182, 183
+  Armstrong, Lord, 334
+  Arran, Lord, 76
+  Ashburton, Lord, 327
+  Atholl, Duke of, 299
+  Avebury, Lord, 333
+  Aveland, Lord, 333
+  Aylesbury, Lady, 154
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 270
+  Barillon, 193
+  Baring, Alexander, 327
+  ----, Francis, Sir, 327
+  ----, Franz (Dr), 326
+  ----, John, 326-327
+  Barnard, Dr, 64
+  Bath, Marquess of, 330, 333
+  Beaconsfield, Lord, 159, 160
+  Beauchamp, Earl, 338
+  Beaufort, Duc de, 178, 179, 191
+  Becher, Sir William W., 251
+  Bedford, Duchess of, 46
+  ----, Dukes of, 340
+  Bentinck, Lord George, 156-164
+  Berkeley, Annie May, 162, 163
+  ----, Earl of, 162
+  Bilton, Miss Belle, 255
+  Bingham, Senator, 327
+  Blantyre, Lord, 1, 20, 305
+  Blessington, Countess of, 97, 100-109
+  ----, Earl of, 99-105
+  Blount, Christopher, 281
+  Boleyn, Godfrey, 330
+  Bolingbroke, Lord, 290, 321
+  Bolton, Duke of, 246
+  ----, Duchess of, 246
+  ----, Mary Catherine, 246, 247
+  Boothby, Brook, 46
+  Boswell, 296, 297, 298
+  Bottefeld, William de, 330
+  Bouveries, Laurence des, 332, 333
+  Bracegirdle, Mrs, 166-173
+  Bridges, Sir Thomas, 85
+  Bridgewater, Duke of, 295
+  Bristol, Earl of, 199, 204
+  Broke, Lord, 331
+  Brougham, Lord, 107
+  Browne, family, 338
+  Brunton, Louisa, 251, 252
+  Buccleuch, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 299
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 4-6, 36, 37, 80-85, 112, 181, 182
+  Buller, Lady Harriet, 48
+  Bunbury, Sir Thomas, 216-218
+  Burke, Sir Bernard, 62-63
+  Burleigh, Lord, 257, 258
+  Burney, Dr Charles, 22
+  Burnham, Barony, 334
+  Burrell, Mrs Drummond, 46
+  Burton, Lord, 333
+  Bute, Countess of, 238
+  Byron, Lord, 42-43, 45, 48, 102
+
+  Cadogan, Earl of, 208
+  Campbell, Colonel John, 295
+  Canning, 42
+  ----, Mrs, 35
+  Capel, William, 332
+  Cardigan, Earl of, 74
+  Carhampton, Earl of, 89
+  Carlingford, Lord, 7
+  Carnegie, James, 223-225
+  Caroline, Princess, 45
+  Carrington, Lords, 332
+  Castlemaine, Lady, 8-12, 14, 18, 115, 116, 184, 192
+  Castlereagh, Lady, 42
+  Catherine, Empress, 205
+  ----, Queen, 3, 10-12, 16
+  ----, the Great, 75
+  Cecil, Henry, (Earl of Exeter), 256-265
+  ----, Lord Thomas, 265
+  Chaffinch, Barbara (Countess of Jersey), 37
+  Charles I., 1
+  Charles II., 1-20, 75-84, 110, 112, 115, 116, 177-194, 207
+  Charlotte, Queen, 202, 214, 296
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 116, 291, 325
+  Child, Anne, 37-41
+  ----, Francis, 37
+  ----, Robert, 37-41
+  Christina, Queen of Sweden, 74
+  Chudleigh, Colonel, 195, 196
+  ----, Elizabeth, 195-206
+  Churchill, Arabella, 115
+  ----, John, 114-126
+  ----, Winston, 114, 120
+  Clarendon, Chancellor, 17
+  Cobden, 326
+  Cochrane, Lady Susanna, 222-227
+  Compton, Lady, 142-147
+  ----, Lord, 139-147
+  Congreve, 166
+  Conolly, Lady Louisa, 209
+  Coombe, William, 63
+  Cooper family, 338
+  Coutts, Thomas, 252-255
+  Coventry, Countess of, 287-290
+  ----, Earl of, 286
+  Cowper, Lady, 46
+  Cradock, Mr, 52
+  Craven, Earl of, 252, 330
+  ----, William, 330
+  Crawford, Lord, 306
+  Creevey, 43
+  Cromer, Earl, 327
+  Crosby, Sir John, 137
+  Cumberland, Duchess of, 91-95
+  ----, Duke of, 87-95, 286
+
+  Dalkeith, Earl of, 300
+  Dalrymple, Mr, 305
+  D'Arblay, Madame, 22
+  Darlington, Countess of, 324
+  Darnley, Lord, 275
+  Dashwood, Sir Samuel, 331
+  D'Aubigny, Duchesse, 184-194
+  Dearden family, 337
+  De Bathe, 338
+  De Beauchamp, 339
+  De Freville, 339
+  Delany, Mrs, 288
+  De Moleyns, 339
+  Denbigh, Earls of, 330
+  Derby, Earl of, 249
+  De Reti, Cardinal, 2
+  De Rodes, 339
+  De Trafford, 338
+  De Vere, 339
+  Devonshire, Duke of, 166
+  De Winton, 339
+  Dibdin, Charles, 22
+  Digby, Francis, 9
+  Dillon, Colonel, 77
+  Disraeli, 106, 159, 160
+  Doran, Dr, 166
+  D'Orsay, Count, 101-109
+  Dorset, Duke of, 166
+  Douglas, Archibald, 298-315
+  ----, Duke of, 299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312
+  ----, James, Marquess of, 299
+  ----, Jean (Lady), 298-315
+  ----, Sholto, 312
+  Downe, Viscount, 333
+  Dryden, 182
+  Dudley, Earls of, 331
+  ----, Edmond, 266
+  ----, Guildford, 268, 269
+  ----, Robert (Earl of Leicester), 266-281
+  Duff, Adam, 340
+  Dundalk, Baroness of, 322
+  Dundonald, Earl of, 222
+
+  Eberstein, Princess von, 322
+  Edward VI., 268
+  Eglinton, Lady, 311
+  Eldon, Earl of, 333
+  Elizabeth, Queen, 137, 139, 142-144, 258, 269-281, 331
+  Errington, Mr Sheriff, 59
+  Errol, Lord, 216
+  Essex, Countess of, 277
+  ----, Earl of, 60, 248, 270, 332
+  Esterhazy, Princess, 46
+  ----, Prince Paul, 49
+  Evelyn, 84, 177, 193
+  Exeter, Earl of, 264
+
+  Fane, Lady Sarah Sophia, 37, 41
+  Farmer, Captain, 97-100
+  Farren, Elizabeth, 248, 249
+  Fenton, Lavinia, 245-246
+  Ferrers, Earl of, 51-61, 289
+  Feversham, Countess of, 322
+  Fielding, Sir Godfrey, 330
+  Fife, Dukes of, 340
+  Fitzgerald, Henry Gerald, 128-133
+  ---- family, 343
+  Fitzwilliam family, 342-343
+  Folkestone, Viscount, 332-333
+  Foote, 201
+  Forbes, George, 220-228
+  ----, Susan Janet, 227-230
+  Forneron, 189
+  Fortescue, Mr, 64-65, 68-69
+  ---- family, 341
+  Fox, Charles James, 62, 249
+  Frederick, The Great, 198
+  Freeman, Professor, 334, 342
+
+  Gainsborough, 3
+  Galloway, Earl of, 222
+  Gardiner, Lady Harriet, 104
+  Gascoigne, Sir Christopher, 330
+  George I., 317-325
+  ---- II., 209, 210, 287, 293
+  ---- III., 22, 87, 91-93, 210-221, 296
+  ---- IV., 45, 94
+  Gilchrist, Miss Constance, 255
+  Glastonbury, Baroness of, 322
+  Gloucester, Duchess of, 93
+  ----, Duke of (Richard), 137
+  Godefroi, M., 308-310
+  Godric, 343
+  Gordon, Lord William, 217-218
+  Graeme, Colonel, 214
+  Gramont, 10, 75
+  Granville, Lady, 43, 49
+  Gresham, Sir Richard, 333
+  Greville, William, 331
+  Grey, Lady Jane, 268, 269
+  Gronow, Captain, 46, 47, 48, 253
+  Grosvenor, Countess, 87-89
+  ---- family, 339, 340
+  Guise, Comte de, 2
+  ----, Duchesse de, 188
+  Gunning, Elizabeth, 282-297
+  ----, John, 282
+  ----, Maria, 282-297
+  ----, Mrs, 284
+  Gwynn, Nell, 186, 187, 192
+
+  Haldane, Mr, 304
+  Halhed, 26
+  Hambleden, Viscounty of, 334
+  Hamilton, Betty (Lady), 297
+  ----, Colonel, 174, 175
+  ----, Count, 4, 6, 10, 14
+  ----, Duke of, 173-176, 196, 197, 239, 249, 291-294, 299, 314
+  ----, George, 7, 8
+  ----, Susanna (Lady), 222
+  Hanmer, Mrs, 197
+  Harewood, Lord, 333
+  Harrington, Earl of, 282
+  ----, Lady, 46
+  Hastings, Marquess of, 148-156
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 277
+  Hay, Mr, 305
+  Heathcote, Gilbert, 333
+  Heneage family, 343
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 277-279
+  Henri IV., 191
+  Henrietta Maria, Queen, 2
+  Hereford, Lady, 277
+  Hereward, the Wake, 342
+  Hervey, Hon. Augustus, 197-199
+  ----, Lord, 93
+  Hewit, Mrs, 304, 308-310
+  Hewitt, Anne, 328, 329
+  ----, William, 328, 329
+  Heyward, Lord Mayor, 333
+  Hill, Captain Richard, 167-173
+  Hillsborough, Lord, 68
+  Hindlip, Lord, 333
+  Hoggins, Sarah (Countess of Exeter), 259-265
+  Holland, Lady, 210
+  ----, Lord, 211
+  Home, Earl of, 315
+  Hopetoun, Earl of, 299
+  Horton, Christopher, 89
+  ----, Mrs, 89-91
+  Howard, Bernard, 81
+  ----, Captain Thomas, 76-78
+  ----, Sir William, 342
+
+  Ibbetson, Captain, 37
+  Irnham, Lord, 81
+  Iveagh, Lord, 333
+
+  Jackson, Canon, 341
+  Jennings, Frances, 111, 112
+  ----, John (Sir), 111, 112
+  ----, Sarah, 110-126
+  ----, Squire, 110, 111
+  Jermyn, Henry, 9, 76-78, 112
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 107
+  Jersey, Earl of, 37, 41, 50, 333
+  ----, Countess of (Sarah), 41-50
+  Johnson, Dr, 25, 62, 296-298
+  ----, Mr John, 54-57
+
+  Kemble, John, 250
+  Kendal, Duchess of, 322-325
+  Kent, John, 157
+  Ker, Captain, 301
+  Kerr, Captain, 158
+  Kielmansegg, Baroness von, 318-320, 324
+  Kildare, Lady, 210
+  Killigrew, Harry, 78-81, 83
+  ----, Tom, 79
+  King, Colonel, 130-133
+  ----, Sir John, 127
+  ----, Mary (Hon.), 127-135
+  Kingsborough, Lady, 128, 130
+  ----, Viscount, 127, 129, 132, 133
+  Kingston, Earl of, 134
+  ----, Duchess of, 200-206
+  ----, Duke of, 199, 231
+  Königsmarck, 318
+
+  La Brune, Madame, 309, 310
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 104
+  Lauder, Farmer, 229
+  ----, Mrs, 230
+  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 99, 106
+  Leeds, Duke of, 329
+  Leicester, Earl of, 275-281
+  ----, Countess of, 281
+  Lennox, Lady Sarah, 207-230
+  Lieven, Princess of, 46
+  Lindores, Lord, 311
+  Linley, Elizabeth Ann, 21-35
+  ----, Mary, 28, 35
+  ----, Thomas, 21, 22, 24, 28
+  Long, Mr, 24, 31
+  Louis XIV., 2, 19, 79, 179-194
+  ----, Napoleon (Prince), 107
+  Lovelace, Lord, 166
+  Luttrell, Anne, 89-95
+  ----, Colonel, 89
+  ----, Elizabeth, 95
+  Lyndhurst, Lord, 106
+  Lyon of Brigton, 223, 224
+  Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, 335
+  ---- family, 335
+  Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, 62-73
+
+  Macartney, Major-General, 174-175
+  Madden, Dr, 109
+  Mancini, Hortense de, 189
+  Mann, Sir Horace, 201
+  Mansfield, Lord, 311
+  Manvers, Lord, 160
+  March, Lord, 46, 208, 209
+  Marsante, Comte de, 96
+  Mary, Queen, 269, 270
+  ----, ---- of Scots, 275
+  Masham, Lord, 334
+  Matthews, Major, 26-30
+  Mazarin, Duchesse de, 192, 193
+  Meath, Bishop of, 22
+  Mellon, Harriet, 252-254
+  Meredith, Sir William, 52
+  Merrill, Mr, 197
+  Messalina, 74
+  Metcalfes, of Nappa, 329
+  Michele, 309, 310
+  Mohun, Charles Lord, 165-176
+  ----, Sir William de, 165
+  Monaldeschi, Count, 74
+  Monmouth, Duke of, 116, 191
+  ----, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Montagu, Edward Wortley, 231-242
+  ----, Lady Mary Wortley, 231, 238
+  Montford, Jack, 167-173
+  Montgomery, Mr, 48
+  ----, Miss, 48
+  Moore, Dr, 239
+  ----, Thomas, 101
+  More, Hannah, 202
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 137
+  Morland, Duchess of, 193
+  Mornington, Lady, 47
+  Mount Stephen, Lord, 334
+  Munster, Duchess of, 322
+  Murray, Captain, 97, 98
+
+  Napier, Hon. George, 218-220
+  Napier, Lord, 219
+  Neave, Sir Digby, 66
+  Newbattle, Lord, 212
+  Newcastle, Duke of, 204
+  Ney, Marshal, 104
+  Norfolk, Duke of, 342
+  Northbrook, Lord, 327
+  Northumberland, Duke of, 266, 268, 269, 327
+
+  O'Neill, Eliza, 249-251
+  Orleans, Duchess of, 179-181
+  Ormond, Duke of, 76
+  Ormonde, Lord, 277
+  Osborne, Edward, 328, 329
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 329
+  Osnabrück, Bishop of, 324
+  "Other," 343
+  Otho, Dominus, 343
+  Overtoun, Lord, 334
+
+  Page, Mr, 170, 171
+  ----, Mrs, 168
+  Paget, Lady Florence, 151
+  Panmure, Earl of, 299
+  Parker family, 338
+  Payne, George, 159
+  Peach, Joseph, 64
+  Pelham, Mr, 311
+  Pepys, 5, 8, 12, 17, 18, 78, 80, 192
+  Peterborough, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Pierce, Mr, 12, 18
+  Pierrepoint, Hon. H.M., 265
+  Pindar, 338
+  Pope, 243
+  Portland, Duke of, 157, 163, 164
+  Portsmouth, Duchess of, 184-194, 207
+  Power, Edmund, 96-99
+  ----, Marguerite, 96-109
+  Pulteney, Mr, 196
+  Pusey, Canon, 333
+
+  Queensbury, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 311,
+  Querouaille, Louise de, 19, 177-194
+
+  Radnor, Earls of, 332-333
+  Radzivill, Prince, 205
+  Raikes, Mr T., 49
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 137
+  Rawlins, Colonel Giles, 77
+  Redmaynes (of Fulford), 329
+  Revelstoke, Baron, 327
+  Reynolds, 23
+  Richelieu, Duc de, 327
+  Richmond, Duchess of, 17-20
+  ----, Duke of, 13-18, 208, 218, 265
+  Ripon, Marquesses of, 329
+  Robinson, Anastasia, 243, 244
+  Robinsons, 328, 329
+  Robsart, Amy, 268-274
+  Rogers, Samuel, 45
+  Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 339
+  Rotier, Phillipe, 12
+  Round, Mr Horace, 336
+  Rowe, 166
+  Russell, Lord John, 44
+  ---- family, 340, 341
+  Ruvigny, 19
+  Ryder, Lady Susanna, 48
+
+  St Albans, Duke of, 254
+  St Aldegonde, Count, 48, 49
+  St Evremond, 182
+  St John family, 341
+  St Simon, 190
+  Salisbury, Marquess of, 330
+  Sandwich, Earl of, 231
+  Sault, Comte de, 179
+  Schulenburg, Ehrengard von der, 316-325
+  ----, Mathias (Count), 316
+  Scott, John, 333
+  Sedley, Catherine, 120-121
+  ----, Sir Charles, 120
+  Sefton, Lady, 46
+  Selkirk, Earl of, 314
+  Selwyn, George, 216, 288
+  Sentinelli, Count, 74
+  Seymour, Lady Elizabeth, 328
+  Shaw, Lady, 311
+  Sheffield, Lord, 277
+  Sheridan, Charles, 25
+  ----, Mrs (E. Linley), 31-35
+  ----, Richard Brinsley, 25-35
+  ----, Thomas (Dr), 25
+  ----, Thomas, 25, 283, 284
+  Shipway frauds, 336
+  Shirley, Lady Barbara, 51
+  ---- Laurence, (Earl of Ferrers), 51-61
+  Shrewsbury, Anna Maria, Countess of, 74-86
+  ----, Earl of, 75, 81, 82, 84, 86
+  Smith, Albert, 107
+  ----, General, 90
+  ----, John, 331
+  ----, Robert, 333
+  ---- family, 338
+  Smithson, Hugh, 328
+  Smythesonne, Smitheson, etc., 327, 328, 338
+  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 317
+  ---- Dorothea of Zell, 317, 323, 324
+  Southwell, Lord, 236
+  Spencer, Elizabeth, 139-147
+  ----, Sir John, 136-144, 340
+  ---- family, 340
+  Spenser, Edmund, 344
+  Standish, Charles, 48
+  Stanley, Lord, 297
+  Stephens, Catherine, 247-248
+  Stewart, Andrew, 314
+  ---- Colonel John, 302-315
+  Stourton, family, 341
+  Stow, 136
+  Strangways, Lady Susan, 211, 212, 215, 216
+  Strathcona, Lord, 334
+  Strathmore, Earl of, 223-224
+  Stuart, La belle, 1-20
+  ----, Lady Louisa, 300
+  ----, Madame, 2
+  ----, Walter, 2, 3
+  Sturt pedigree, 343, 344
+  Suffolk, Lady, 317
+  Surtees, Miss, 333
+
+  Taafe, Mr, 236, 237
+  Talbot, Sir John, 81
+  ----, Richard, 112
+  Tenison, Archbishop, 344
+  Tennyson, Lord, 344
+  Thackeray, 108
+  Thormanby, 157
+  Thurlow, 204
+  ----, Edward, Lord, 247
+  Tripp, Baron, 49
+  Turenne, Marshal, 116
+  Tyrconnel, Duchess of, 112
+
+  Vaillant, Sheriff, 59
+  Vendôme, Philippe de, 191, 192
+  Vernon, Miss, 259
+  Villiers, Adela, Lady, 37
+  ----, Barbara, 1, 115
+  ----, Clementina, 50
+  ----, Sir George, 36
+  ----, George, Earl of, 37, 41
+
+  Wake, Sir Hereward, 342
+  Wales, Prince of (Henry Frederick), 95
+  Walpole, Horace, 23, 51, 89, 190, 201-204, 211, 289, 291, 295, 318, 321, 325
+  Walsingham, Countess of, 325
+  Warburton, General, 63
+  Ward, Mr Plumer, 72
+  ----, William, 331
+  Warwick, Earl of, 331
+  Wellesbourne family, 337
+  Wellington, Duke of, 42, 47, 48, 49, 107, 265
+  Wentworth, Lord, 138
+  Westmorland, Earl of, 38-40, 216
+  Wigton, Lady, 306, 307
+  Wilberforce, William, 106
+  Wilkes, John, 23
+  William III., 86
+  Willis, Mr, 47
+  Wilton, Earl of, 249
+  Wood, Major, 130, 131
+  Woodrow, 301
+
+  York, Duke of (James), 112, 115, 185, 193
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Love Romances of the Aristocracy
+
+Author: Thornton Hall
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14193]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Morgan and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h1>LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+
+<h2>THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">BARRISTER-AT-LAW</p>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF &quot;LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS,&quot; ETC. ETC.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">ILLUSTRATED</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LONDON</p>
+
+<p class="center">T. WERNER LAURIE</p>
+
+<p class="center">CLIFFORD'S INN</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="Page_front" id="Page_front"><img src="images/front-t.jpg" alt="ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON" title="ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON" /></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>TO</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">MRS TOM HESKETH</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>L'amiti&eacute; est l'amour sans ailes</i>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as
+possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that
+those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of
+books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the
+compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy,
+with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its
+follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable
+reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I
+have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a
+labour which has been to me a delight.</p>
+
+<p>THORNTON HALL.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>As love plays a prominent part in at least twenty of these stones, and
+is only really absent from one or two of them, I venture to hope that my
+good friends, the reviewers, who have been so kind to my previous books,
+will not find fault with my title, which, more accurately than any other
+I can think of, describes the nature and scope of my book</i>.</p>
+
+<p>T.H.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>CHAP.<span class="tocright">PAGE</span>
+<ol class="TOC">
+<li>A PRINCESS OF PRUDES                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>
+<li>THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH                <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></span></li>
+<li>THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></span></li>
+<li>A GHOSTLY VISITANT                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></span></li>
+<li>A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></span></li>
+<li>A PROFLIGATE PRINCE                    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></span></li>
+<li>THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS                  <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></span></li>
+<li>A QUEEN OF COQUETTES                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></span></li>
+<li>A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELOPEMENT          <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></span></li>
+<li>TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF                  <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></span></li>
+<li>THE WICKED BARON                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li>
+<li>A FAIR <i>INTRIGANTE</i>               <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MERRY DUCHESS                      <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></span></li>
+<li>THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></span></li>
+<li>THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li>
+<li>A NOBLE VAGABOND                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></span></li>
+<li>FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS                <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></span></li>
+<li>A PEASANT COUNTESS                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></span></li>
+<li>THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN               <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span></li>
+<li>TWO IRISH BEAUTIES                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></span></li>
+<li>THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS                    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></span></li>
+<li>THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></span></li>
+</ol>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="LOI">
+<li>ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON     <span class="tocright"><i><a href="#Page_front">Frontispiece</a></i></span></li>
+<li>FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND     <span class="tocright"><i>to face page </i><a href="#Page_18">18</a></span></li>
+<li>MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON            <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></span></li>
+<li>SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></span></li>
+<li>HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS                 <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></span></li>
+<li>ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER              <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span></li>
+<li>MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY                   <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I" />CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h4>A PRINCESS OF PRUDES</h4>
+
+
+<p>Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the &quot;Merrie
+Monarch's&quot; passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
+day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him &quot;sitting
+and toying with his concubines,&quot; there was, it is said, only one of them
+all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
+simplest, and most designing of prudes, <i>La belle Stuart</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
+queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
+girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
+future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
+carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
+Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
+blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>France, where
+he had found a fresh field for his valour.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
+Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
+frequently &quot;lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre,&quot; and even a
+crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
+brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
+mother's pride.</p>
+
+<p>Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
+established herself as the pet <i>par excellence</i> of the Court of France.
+With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
+every gallant, from &quot;Monsieur&quot; to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
+romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
+King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
+her &quot;big sweetheart.&quot; So devoted was His Majesty to <i>La belle Ecossaise</i>
+that, when her mother talked of taking her away to England, he begged
+that she would not remove so fair an ornament from his Court, and vowed
+that he would provide the child with a splendid dower and a noble
+husband if she would but allow her to remain.</p>
+
+<p>But Madame Stuart had other designs for her pretty daughter; and when
+Henrietta Maria took boat to England to shine again at the Court of
+Whitehall, under her son's reign, Frances Stuart joined her retinue, and
+found herself transported <a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>from the schoolroom to the most brilliant and
+dangerous court in Europe. When this transformation came in her life
+Walter Stuart's daughter was just blossoming into as sweet and fragrant
+a flower as ever bloomed in woman's guise. Fair and graceful as a lily,
+with luxuriant brown hair, eyes of violet, and a proud, dainty little
+head, she had a figure which, although yet not fully formed, was
+faultless in its modelling and its exquisite grace. And these physical
+charms were allied to an unspoiled freshness, which combined the artless
+fascinations of the child with the allurements of the woman.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of
+Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can
+scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England,
+the French &quot;Mademoiselle,&quot; as she was called, was hailed as a new
+revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the
+bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.</p>
+
+<p>To the &quot;Merrie Monarch's&quot; senses, sated with riper beauties and more
+stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose
+compared with exotic hot-house flowers. She was, he vowed, so &quot;dainty,
+so fresh, so fragrant,&quot; that none but the sourest of anchorites could
+resist her&mdash;and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well. Almost at
+sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her
+the battery of all his fascinations. Was ever maid placed, on the
+threshold of <a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>life, in so dangerous a predicament? For the King, who was
+her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a
+past-master in the conquest of woman. But, in response to all his
+advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a
+merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the
+gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another &quot;big
+playfellow&quot; to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did
+not wish to know more. He might kiss her&mdash;<i>vraiment</i>&mdash;why not? and that
+Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told
+that &quot;he would kiss her for half an hour at a time,&quot; caring little who
+looked on.</p>
+
+<p>And all her other Whitehall lovers&mdash;a legion of them, from the Duke of
+Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the
+same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish
+prudery? &quot;She was a child,&quot; says Count Hamilton, &quot;in all respects save
+playing with dolls&quot;&mdash;a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet,
+one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper
+than is usually associated with so much simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.
+Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new
+era of nursery games which she inaugurated. Jaded gallants and sedate
+Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in
+blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>with the Stuart maid as Lady of
+Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked&mdash;or affected to
+be&mdash;one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting
+on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at &quot;I love my love with an
+A because he is Amorous&quot;; &quot;I hate him with a B because he is Boring,&quot;
+and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for,
+Pepys says, &quot;some of them were very witty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The little madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred
+environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
+exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
+big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
+castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
+toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
+and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
+no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
+Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
+hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
+with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
+unseemly goings-on.</p>
+
+<p>And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
+of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
+had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
+Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
+all <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
+for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
+by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
+summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp&mdash;until what was
+&quot;play to the child&quot; began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
+world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
+elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
+ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
+away and not be so naughty again.</p>
+
+<p>Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
+treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
+playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
+Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
+stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
+himself more to win the favour of a maid.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Having provided himself,&quot; says Hamilton, &quot;with a great
+     number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
+     obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
+     them; at the same time offering her his most humble
+     services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
+     her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
+     of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
+     Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of
+     laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the
+     room. Thus ignominiously was sounded the death-knell of
+     Arlington's hopes!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in
+England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and
+tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of
+them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic;
+and for a time she revelled in his comradeship. He first won her heart
+in the following fashion. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting
+and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and
+hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. &quot;I can do better than that,&quot;
+exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. &quot;Give me two candles.&quot; The candles
+were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious
+mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were
+extinguished, while <i>La belle Stuart</i> paraded after him, clapping her
+hands and laughing in her glee.</p>
+
+<p>Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour. Rollicking George
+was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was
+privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had
+ever enjoyed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Since the Court has been in the country,&quot; he confessed,
+     &quot;I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You
+     know that the <i>d&eacute;shabille</i> of the bath is a great
+     convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to
+     their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all
+     their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully
+     acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all
+     other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any
+     lady at Court for a well-turned <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>arm and a fine leg, but
+     she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
+     After all, a man must be very insensible to remain
+     unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless
+encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest
+where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont,
+taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of
+flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and
+persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her
+riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I followed them,&quot; he says, &quot;up into Whitehall, and into
+     the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked,
+     talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and
+     changing and trying one another's by one another's heads
+     and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse,
+     with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes,
+     little Roman nose, and excellent <i>taille</i>, is now the
+     greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if
+     ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least
+     in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which
+     I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady
+     Castlemaine.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her
+girlish beauty and irre<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>sponsibility will never be known; but we know
+that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis
+Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry,
+in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.</p>
+
+<p>And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her
+witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other
+than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her
+Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that
+she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged
+Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a
+rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an
+artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was
+carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the
+cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of
+throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked
+on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments,
+between the pair&mdash;&quot;with ring and all other ceremonies of church service
+and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking,
+evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion
+with great spirit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely
+saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The King,&quot; to quote Hamilton again, &quot;who seldom<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>
+     neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom
+     failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most
+     indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment;
+     however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's
+     appearing with her in such a situation, being confident
+     that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all
+     the advantages which these opportunities could afford
+     Miss Stuart.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact Charles's <i>maitresse en titre</i> regarded the
+&quot;Mademoiselle&quot; as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
+&quot;She is a lovely little thing,&quot; she once said patronisingly, &quot;but she is
+only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest
+lover in the world.&quot; But she was not long left in this unsuspicious
+Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the &quot;child&quot; had made a conquest
+of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held
+the throne of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by
+Gramont with &quot;the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a
+'calash') that had ever been seen.&quot; The Queen herself and Lady
+Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to
+take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to
+create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and
+eloquence to secure this concession from the King.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>
+     to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen
+     retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King
+     was driven to distraction between the cajoling and
+     threats of the two rival beauties.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's
+unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in
+the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.</p>
+
+<p>According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the
+&quot;prude&quot; her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she
+was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a
+King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a
+dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a
+bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever
+found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of
+Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as <i>La belle Stuart;</i>
+though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition &quot;to be a
+Duchess&quot; that she declared she was &quot;ready to marry any gentleman of
+fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so
+cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his
+passion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she
+treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Pierce tells me,&quot; Pepys writes, &quot;that my Lady<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>
+     Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he
+     do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of
+     all business in the world, and to the open slighting of
+     the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by
+     while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in
+     her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him
+     going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or
+     any of the Nobles, when they would ask where the King is,
+     they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
+     meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly
+     disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were
+her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which
+she moved a splendid, but unassailable Queen, for every man who came
+within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
+One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the
+youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to
+England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration
+of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was
+asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe
+Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace
+of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in
+love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of
+<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on
+millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the
+faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the
+verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.</p>
+
+<p>It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the
+handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most
+insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good
+looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such
+a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
+who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
+maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.</p>
+
+<p>Small in stature, deformed in figure&mdash;a caricature of a man, His Grace
+of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
+Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
+butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
+should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
+England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
+The Court was struck with consternation&mdash;and convulsed with laughter.
+Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
+experience. But there could be no doubt about it. <i>La belle Stuart</i>, who
+had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
+gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>Arlington, was not only
+smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
+assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
+reputation a King had been powerless to sully.</p>
+
+<p>Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
+vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
+old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
+had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
+night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
+Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
+pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
+triumph, told him that at the moment <i>La belle Stuart</i> turned him away
+from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
+rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. &quot;Come with me,&quot; Lady
+Castlemaine answered, &quot;and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
+truth;&quot; and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
+his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
+sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
+open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
+     Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
+     probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
+     King, who of all men was usually <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>one of the most mild
+     and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of
+     Richmond in such terms as he had never used before. The
+     Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his
+     master and King justly irritated. The first transports
+     which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous. Miss
+     Stuart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge,
+     the Thames flowing close beneath it. He cast his eyes
+     upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and
+     fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable
+     of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying
+     a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces
+     that were poured on him.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart showed a very
+different metal. She was furious at the indignity of the King's
+intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as
+his Royal ears had never listened to. She was no slave, she said, with
+flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to
+receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with
+honourable intentions. She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as
+she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no
+power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and
+throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was
+denied her in his Court! And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by
+pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, &quot;to leave
+her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his
+heart. He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he
+would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be
+revenged. On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled,
+and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an
+audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging
+her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a
+convent. So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen
+and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine
+promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.</p>
+
+<p>One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost
+to him for ever. He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the
+Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large
+revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his
+<i>maitresse en titre</i>; but to all his seductions and bribes the
+inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye. No future, however
+dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.
+&quot;I hope,&quot; said the King at last, &quot;I may live to see you old and
+willing,&quot; as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with
+the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his
+sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the
+offence.</p>
+
+<p>But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind. It had long been her
+ambition&mdash;from child<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>hood, it is said&mdash;to be a Duchess, and she was not
+going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world. What
+might come after was another matter. A Duchess's coronet and a
+wedding-ring were her immediate goal. Thus it came to pass that one dark
+night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to
+London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach. Through the
+night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long
+before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.
+Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles's long intrigue had
+ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing the news the King was beside himself with anger. He forbade
+the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court&mdash;he even dismissed
+his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a hand in the
+plot.</p>
+
+<p>But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
+presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
+honeymoon. Within a year&mdash;so powerless is anger against love&mdash;Charles
+summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
+Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
+splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
+a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
+says Pepys,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>
+     Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
+     to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
+     out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's &quot;nose
+out of joint&quot; must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
+doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
+maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
+coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
+prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
+maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
+Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
+Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
+shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
+tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once &quot;did take a
+pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
+Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
+himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
+horrid shame.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-018-t.jpg" alt="FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND" title="FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND" />
+</div>
+
+<p>But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To the
+consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with small-pox,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by which,&quot; to quote Pepys again, &quot;all do conclude she
+     will be wholly spoiled, which is the greatest instance of
+     the uncertainty of beauty that could <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>be in this age; but
+     then she hath had the benefit of it to be first married,
+     and to have kept it so long, under the greatest
+     temptations in the world from a King, and yet without the
+     least imputation.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to Louis
+XIV., in which he says that &quot;her matchless beauty was impaired beyond
+recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever.&quot;
+During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with anxiety,
+visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
+sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of
+her was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
+to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
+the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the &quot;Sun-King&quot; had
+sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
+Louis's favour; and <i>La belle Stuart</i> was not slow to realise that at
+last her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least
+until the Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of
+Lady of the Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the
+scene of so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books
+and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of
+years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>ducal
+robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her
+nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with
+part of it an estate, to be known as &quot;Lennox's Love to Blantyre&quot;; and to
+this day &quot;Lennox-Love&quot; perpetuates, like the Britannia of our coins, the
+memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women who have ever
+driven men to distraction by their beauty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II" /><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h4>THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH</h4>
+
+
+<p>A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
+allurement, not only as &quot;Queen of the West,&quot; but as Empress of all the
+haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
+rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms,
+statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell
+mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure
+or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares
+and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the
+moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish
+found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.</p>
+
+<p>But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common
+consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth
+Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at
+the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. She was,
+as all the world knew, only the daughter of Thomas Linley,
+singing-master <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>and organiser of the concerts, a man who had plied
+chisel and saw at the carpenter's bench before he found the music that
+was in him; but, obscure as was her birth, she reigned supreme by virtue
+of a loveliness and a gift of song which none of her sex could rival.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus little wonder that Elizabeth Linley's fame had travelled far
+beyond the West Country town in which she was cradled. George III. had
+summoned her to sing to him in his London palace, and had been so
+overcome by her gifts of beauty and melody that, with tears streaming
+down his cheeks, he had stroked her hair and caressed her hands, and
+declared to the blushing girl that he had never seen any one so
+beautiful or heard a voice so divinely sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Dibdin tried to enshrine her in fitting verse, but abandoned the
+effort in despair, vowing that she was indeed of that company described
+by Milton:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Who, as they sang, would take the prisoned soul<br /></span>
+<span>And lap it in Elysium.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Meath, in his unepiscopal enthusiasm, declared that she
+was &quot;the link between an angel and a woman&quot;; while Dr Charles Burney,
+supreme musician and father of the more famous Madame d'Arblay, wrote
+more soberly of her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting
+     as her countenance and conversation. With a
+     mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation,
+     she was possessed of the double power of <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>delighting an
+     audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of
+     brilliant execution, which is allowed to very few
+     singers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>To her Horace Walpole also paid this curious tribute:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Miss Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The
+     king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in
+     so holy a place as oratorio.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such are a few of the tributes, of which contemporary records are full,
+paid to the fair &quot;Nightingale of Bath,&quot; whom Gainsborough and Reynolds
+immortalised in two of their inspired canvases&mdash;the latter as
+Cecilia&mdash;her face almost superhuman in its beauty and the divine rapture
+of its expression&mdash;seated at a harpsichord and pouring out her soul in
+song.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that a girl of such charms and gifts&mdash;&quot;superior to all
+the handsome things I have heard of her,&quot; John Wilkes wrote, &quot;and withal
+the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen&quot;&mdash;should have
+lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if
+not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a
+foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty
+compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and
+rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean
+her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of
+pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold
+shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>promised her hand to an
+elderly, unattractive wooer called Long, a man almost old enough to be
+her grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>That her heart had not gone with her hand we may be sure. We know that
+it was only under the strong compulsion of her father that she had given
+her consent; for Mr Long had a purse as elongated as his name, and to
+the eyes of the poor singing-master his gold-bags were irresistible. Her
+elderly wooer loaded his bride-to-be with costly presents; he showered
+jewels on her, bought her a trousseau fit for a Queen; and was on the
+eve of marrying her, when&mdash;without a word of warning, it was announced
+that the wedding, to which all Bath had been excitedly looking forward,
+would not take place!</p>
+
+<p>Mr Linley was furious, and threatened the terrors of the law; but the
+bridegroom that failed was adamant. It was said that, in cancelling the
+engagement, Mr Long was acting a chivalrous part, in response to Miss
+Linley's pleading that he would withdraw his suit, since her heart could
+never be his, and by withdrawing shield her from her father's anger.
+However this may have been, Mr Long steadily declined to go to the
+altar, and ultimately appeased the singing-master by settling &pound;3,000 on
+his daughter, and allowing her to keep the valuable jewels and other
+presents he had given her.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was
+ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome
+by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his
+<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>appearance at Bath&mdash;a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined
+to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of
+love was none other than Richard Brinsley Sheridan, grandson of Dean
+Swift's bosom friend, Dr Thomas Sheridan, one of the two sons of another
+Thomas, who, after a roaming and profitless life, had come to Bath to
+earn a livelihood by teaching elocution.</p>
+
+<p>This younger Thomas Sheridan seems to have inherited none of the wit and
+cleverness of his father, Swift's boon companion. Dr Johnson considered
+him &quot;dull, naturally dull. Such an excess of stupidity,&quot; he added, &quot;is
+not in nature.&quot; But, in spite of his dulness, &quot;Sherry&quot;&mdash;as he was
+commonly called&mdash;had been clever enough to coax a pension of &pound;200 a year
+out of the Government, and was able to send his two boys to Harrow and
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>The Sheridan boys had been but a few days in Bath when they both fell
+head over heels in love with Elizabeth Linley, with whom their sister
+had been equally quick to strike up a friendship. But from the first,
+Charles, the elder son, was hopelessly outmatched.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On our first acquaintance,&quot; Miss Linley wrote in later
+     years, &quot;both professed to love me&mdash;but yet I preferred
+     the youngest, as by far the most agreeable in person,
+     beloved by every one.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Indeed, from a boy, Richard Sheridan seemed born to win hearts. His
+sister has confessed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I admired&mdash;I almost adored him. He was handsome. His<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>
+     cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes&mdash;the finest in
+     the world&mdash;the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a
+     tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same
+     playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that
+     was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
+     delighted the family circle.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when, in the year 1769, he first set
+eyes on the girl, who, after many dramatic vicissitudes, was to bear his
+name and share his glories. From the first sight of her he was
+hopelessly in love, although none but his sister knew it. He was little
+more than a school-boy, and was content to &quot;bide his time,&quot; worshipping
+mutely at the shrine of the girl whom some day he meant to make his own.</p>
+
+<p>He gave no sign of jealousy when his elder brother made love to her
+before his eyes&mdash;only to retire quickly, chilled by a coldness which he
+realised he could never thaw; or even when his Oxford chum, Halhed, his
+dearest friend and the colleague of his youthful pen, fell a victim to
+Elizabeth's charms, and, in his innocence, begged Sheridan to plead his
+suit with her. Halhed, too, had to retire from the hopeless suit; and
+Richard Sheridan, still silent, save, perhaps, for the eloquence of
+tell-tale eyes, held the field alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this stage of our story that a grave element of danger entered
+Elizabeth Linley's life, with the arrival at Bath of a Major Matthews, a
+handsome <i>rou&eacute;</i>, with a large rent-roll from Welsh <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>acres, and a
+dangerous reputation won in the lists of love. At sight of the fair
+Nightingale in the Assembly Rooms this hero of many conquests was
+himself laid low. He was frantically in love, and before many days had
+passed vowed that he would shoot himself if his charmer refused to smile
+on him. Her coldness only fanned his ardour; and his persecution reached
+such a pitch that in her alarm she appealed to young Sheridan for help.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young lover than such an
+appeal and the necessity for it. It was a tribute to her esteem, and to
+his budding manliness, which delighted him. Moreover, it gave him many
+opportunities of meeting her, and talking over the situation with her.
+At any cost this persecution must end; and the result of the conferences
+was that an excellent plan was evolved. Richard was to worm himself into
+the confidence of the Major, and, in the character of friend and
+well-wisher, was to advise him, as a matter of diplomacy, to cease his
+attentions to Miss Linley for a time. Meanwhile arrangements were to be
+made for the Nightingale's escape to France, where she proposed to enter
+a convent until she was of age&mdash;thus finding a refuge from the
+persecution to which her beauty constantly subjected her, and also from
+the scandal which the Long fiasco had given rise to, and which was still
+a great source of unhappiness to her.</p>
+
+<p>The plot was cunningly planned and worked smoothly. The Major was
+induced by subtle plead<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>ing to leave Miss Linley in peace for a time;
+and, to quote Miss Sheridan:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;At length they fixed on an evening when Mr Linley, his
+     eldest son and Miss Mary Linley were engaged at the
+     concert (Miss Linley being excused on the plea of
+     illness) to set out on their journey. Sheridan brought a
+     sedan-chair to Mr Linley's house in the Crescent, in
+     which he had Miss Linley conveyed to a post-chaise that
+     was waiting for them on the London road. A woman was in
+     the chaise who had been hired to accompany them on this
+     extraordinary elopement.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>For elopement it really was, although ostensibly Sheridan was merely
+playing the part of a friendly escort to a distressed lady, whatever
+deeper scheme, unknown to her, may have been in his mind. After a brief
+stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
+towards Lille.</p>
+
+<p>It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
+hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
+could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
+had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
+and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
+the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.</p>
+
+<p>To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
+her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
+Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>travelled
+many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
+make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
+the convent at the altar.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It was not,&quot; she wrote to him later, &quot;your person that
+     gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
+     tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
+     that were the motives which induced me to love you.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
+duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
+anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
+left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
+to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
+discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
+<i>Chronicle</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for
+     that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away
+     from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and
+     that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my
+     knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters,
+     nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid
+     himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a
+     gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a
+     treacherous Scoundrel.&mdash;THOMAS MATTHEWS.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue. Sheridan
+promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the
+Major was <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult. But,
+so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a
+second meeting&mdash;and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.</p>
+
+<p>The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few
+furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were
+struggling together on the ground. Matthews, however, being much the
+stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken
+sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face. &quot;Beg your life, and I will
+spare it,&quot; he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man. &quot;I will
+neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain,&quot; was the unflinching
+answer.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Matthews then renewed the attack, and, having picked up
+     the point of one of the swords, ran it through the side
+     of the throat and pinned him to the ground with it,
+     exclaiming, 'I have done for him.' He then left the
+     field, accompanied by his second, and, getting into a
+     carriage with four horses which had been waiting for him,
+     drove off.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Sheridan, unconscious and apparently dying, was driven from the Downs to
+a neighbouring inn, &quot;The White Hart,&quot; where for a time he hung betwixt
+life and death. On hearing of his condition Miss Linley (who at the time
+was singing at Cambridge) travelled post-haste to his bedside; and,
+tenderly nursed by his wife and his sister, the wounded man slowly
+fought his way back to strength.</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that, after such a tragic experience and
+observing the mutual devotion of the <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>young couple, their parents would
+have relented and given their approval of the union, however improvident
+and inexcusable it might appear to them. But, on both sides, they were
+obdurate; and Mr Sheridan carried his opposition to the extent of
+extracting from his son a promise that he would not even see his wife.</p>
+
+<p>But love laughs at parents' frowns and usually triumphs in the end. When
+Elizabeth Linley went away to London to sing in oratorio, her husband
+followed her; and, in the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of hackney coachman, had the pleasure
+of driving not only his wife but her father, home nightly from the
+concert-room, without either of them suspecting his identity. When at
+last he revealed himself to his wife, her delight was so great as to
+leave no doubt of the sincere love she bore him. Many a secret meeting
+followed; a final joint appeal ultimately broke down the obduracy of the
+parents; and once again Sheridan led his bride to the altar, to make her
+finally and securely his own.</p>
+
+<p>For a time Richard Sheridan and his Nightingale found a haven in a
+remote, rose-covered cottage at East Burnham. These were days of
+unclouded happiness, when, the &quot;world forgetting and by the world
+forgot,&quot; they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
+were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
+of Mr Long's &pound;3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
+now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
+voice&mdash;she actually refused offers of nearly &pound;4000 for one short
+season&mdash;but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>for his
+own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
+back on fame and fortune.</p>
+
+<p>But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
+such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
+began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
+destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
+which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
+Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
+country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
+Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
+extravagances more suited to an income of &pound;5000 a year than the paltry
+&pound;150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
+and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
+song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
+dinners and to attend his wife's <i>soir&eacute;es</i>. Sheridan was in his element
+in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
+would gladly have changed it all for &quot;a little quiet home that I can
+enjoy in comfort,&quot; as she told her husband&mdash;above all, for the Burnham
+cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps if Sheridan had never left the cottage and the roses, his name
+would never have been known to fame. His ambition needed some such
+stimulus as this spasm of extravagance to wake it to activity. He must
+now make money or be submerged by debts; <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>and under this impulse of
+necessity it was that he wooed fortune with <i>The Rivals</i>, and awoke to
+find himself famous and potentially rich. Other comedies followed
+swiftly from his eager and inspired pen&mdash;<i>The School for Scandal</i>, <i>The
+Duenna</i>, and <i>The Critic</i>&mdash;each greeted with enthusiasm by a world to
+which such dramatic triumphs were a revelation and a delight. Sheridan
+was not only the &quot;talk of the town&quot;; he was hailed universally as the
+brightest dramatic star of the age.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to say that Sheridan's fame was a delight to his wife.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Not long ago,&quot; she wrote to a friend, &quot;he was known as
+     'Mrs Sheridan's husband.' Now the tables are turned, and,
+     henceforth, I expect I shall be just Mr Sheridan's wife.
+     Nor could I wish any more exalted title. I am proud and
+     thankful to be the wife of the cleverest man in England,
+     and the best husband in the world!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Mrs Sheridan adored her husband is evident from every letter she
+wrote to him. She addresses him as &quot;my dearest Love&quot; and &quot;my darling
+Dick,&quot; and vows that she cannot be happy apart from him. &quot;I cannot love
+you,&quot; she declares, &quot;and be perfectly satisfied at such a distance from
+you. I depended upon your coming to-night, and shall not recover my
+spirits till we meet.&quot; But through her letters runs the same hankering
+after the old simple, peaceful days&mdash;the days of love in a cottage. &quot;I
+could draw,&quot; she writes, &quot;such a picture of happiness that it would
+<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>almost make me wish the overthrow of all our present schemes of future
+affluence and grandeur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But greatly as he loved his wife, Sheridan was now too much wedded to
+his ambition to listen to such tempting. He had conquered fame with his
+pen; now he aspired to subdue it with his tongue. In 1780, while he was
+still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages;
+and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow
+law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the
+oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries.
+Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he
+had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever
+been heard in our tongue&mdash;notably by his historic speech in the trial of
+Warren Hastings, to the preparation of which his wife had devoted
+herself body and soul.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband
+in Westminster Hall, she wrote:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the
+     astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the
+     breasts of every class of people. Every party prejudice
+     has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence
+     and goodness.... What my feelings must be, you can only
+     imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some
+     difficulty that I can 'let down my mind,' as Mr Burke
+     said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.
+     But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this
+     moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last
+     week.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>But Mrs Sheridan's day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near
+to its close. She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of
+fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his
+marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal
+seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved
+sister, began to show themselves in her. Her illness was as swift as it
+was, happily, painless. She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly
+watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was
+pitiful to see.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;During her last days,&quot; says Mrs Canning, her devoted
+     friend, &quot;she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
+     sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
+     niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
+     out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
+     a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
+     an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
+     and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
+     poor heart would have burst in the conflict.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
+a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
+&quot;choir invisible.&quot; Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
+Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
+the world has ever known &quot;between an angel and a woman.&quot; As for Sheridan
+he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
+to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III" /><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
+far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
+George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
+&quot;threadbare hanger-on&quot; at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
+the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
+Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
+was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
+of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
+in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
+wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
+career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
+assassin's knife.</p>
+
+<p>His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
+second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
+playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>in
+its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
+not, as Pope says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
+Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
+Arran, said: &quot;There is not so much as one farthing towards defraying the
+expense of his funeral.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nor have the men of Villiers' blood had any monopoly of adventure. Their
+wives and daughters have seldom been content to lead the unromantic life
+which happily contents so many of their sex. From Barbara Chaffinch,
+whose intrigues secured the Earldom of Jersey for her husband in William
+III.'s reign, to the Lady Adela Villiers who ran away with Captain
+Ibbetson, a handsome young officer of Hussars, to Gretna Green and the
+altar, they have played many diverse and sensational <i>r&ocirc;les</i> on the
+stage of their time.</p>
+
+<p>It was but fitting that George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey, should
+make a Countess of the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, in whose veins was an
+adventurous strain as marked as in his own; for she was the fruit of one
+of the most dramatic unions recorded in the annals of our Peerage. A
+year before she was cradled her mother was Anne Child, the richest
+heiress in England&mdash;the only daughter of Robert Child, head of the great
+banking firm at Temple Bar, and a descendant of Francis Child, the
+industrious London apprentice who married the daughter of his <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>master,
+William Wheeler, goldsmith, whose riches and business he inherited.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Old Child,&quot; as Anne's father was familiarly known, had many
+aristocratic clients who used his cheques and overdrew their accounts;
+but the most prodigal, as also the most ingratiating, of them all was
+the young Earl of Westmorland, who, not content with making large
+demands on the banker's exchequer and patience, had the audacity to
+aspire to all his wealth through his daughter's hand.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was perhaps as naturally flattered by the attentions of a lord as
+she was fascinated by his handsome face and figure and his courtly
+manners; but the father had other designs for his heiress than marrying
+her to a prodigal young nobleman. &quot;Your blood, my lord, is good,&quot; he
+once told him; &quot;but money is better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lord Westmorland was not, however, the man to be turned aside from the
+gilded goal on which he had set his heart. If he could not wed the
+heiress with her father's blessing, he would dispense with the
+benediction. That he <i>would</i> marry her he was determined; and Anne was
+just the girl to assist a bold lover in such an ambition.</p>
+
+<p>One day, so the story is told, Lord Westmorland decided to bring the
+matter to a crisis. He had been dining with Mr Child, and, after the
+wine had circulated freely, he said, &quot;Now, sir, that we have discussed
+business thoroughly, there is another matter on which I should be
+grateful for your opinion.&quot; &quot;What's that?&quot; enquired the banker, <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>beaming
+benevolently on his guest, as a man who has dined well and is at peace
+with the world. &quot;Well, sir, suppose you were deeply in love with a girl
+who returned your love, and that her father refused his consent. What
+would you do?&quot; &quot;What should I do?&quot; laughed the banker, &quot;why, run away
+with her, of course, like many a better man has done!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What more direct encouragement could an ardent lover want? It is
+possible that the next morning the banker had completely forgotten the
+conversation, and his vinous approval of runaway matches; but, two days
+later, he was destined to have a rude awaking. In the middle of the
+night he was aroused by the watchman to learn that his front door had
+been found open; and a little later the alarming discovery was made that
+his daughter had flown. His suspicions fell at once on that &quot;rascally
+young lord&quot;; and they were confirmed when he found that the Earl, too,
+had disappeared, and that a chaise, with four galloping horses, had been
+seen dashing northwards as fast as whip and spur could drive them.</p>
+
+<p>The banker was furious. He raged and stormed as he ordered his servants
+to procure the fastest horses money could command; and with lavish
+promises of reward to the postboys he set out in hot pursuit of the
+fugitives. Luckily they had no long start; and, with better horses, more
+frequent changes, and a heavier purse, he had little doubt that he would
+soon overtake them. But the chase was sterner and longer <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>than he had
+imagined. Cupid lends wings to runaway lovers. Fast as Mr Child's
+sweating horses raced, they gained but little on the pursued. Through
+the long night, the next day, and the following night the desperate race
+continued&mdash;through sleeping villages and startled towns, over hill and
+moor, until the borderland grew near. Then, between Penrith and
+Carlisle, the quarry was at last sighted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Child's horses, urged to a final effort by the postboys, slowly but
+surely reduced the interval; and now inch by inch they draw abreast of
+the runaway chaise. The moment of triumph has come. Mr Child, with body
+half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt,
+shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand
+waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's
+near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes
+later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
+which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.</p>
+
+<p>Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
+runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
+pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
+street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.</p>
+
+<p>For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
+and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
+his daughter won her way back into his heart, and <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>to her he left the
+whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
+than &pound;100,000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
+who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
+the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
+dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
+she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
+noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
+tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
+luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
+lily.</p>
+
+<p>It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
+looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
+prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
+to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
+aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
+rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
+the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
+to, resist. And one May day in 1804&mdash;almost twenty-two years to the day
+after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green&mdash;the Lady Sarah
+became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.</p>
+
+<p>From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
+more than a child) took the position <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>of a Queen, to which her rank,
+wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
+unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her <i>salon</i> was a second Royal
+Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
+to the &quot;Empress of Fashion.&quot; She entertained kings with a regal
+splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
+and the Tsar Nicholas I. were all delighted to do honour to a hostess so
+captivating and so queenly.</p>
+
+<p>At Middleton Park, her lord's Oxfordshire seat, she dispensed a
+hospitality which was the despair of her rivals. Her retinue of servants
+seldom numbered less than a hundred, and many a week her guests, with
+their attendants, far exceeded a thousand. Money was squandered with a
+prodigal hand. The very servants, it is said, drank champagne and hock
+like water; her housemaids had their riding horses, and dressed in silks
+and satins. Among her thousands of guests were such men as Wellington
+and Peel, Castlereagh and Canning, all humble worshippers at her shrine;
+and Lord Byron who, in his gloomy moods, would shut himself in his
+bedroom for days, living on biscuits and water, and stealing out at dead
+of night to wander ghost-like through the neighbouring woods. These
+moods of black despondency he varied by turbulent spirits, when he would
+be the gayest of the gay, and would challenge his fellow-guests to
+drinking bouts, in which he always came off the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Jersey had no more ardent admirer than <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>Byron, whose muse was
+inspired to many a flight in honour of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">&quot;The grace of mien,<br /></span>
+<span>The eye that gladdens and the brow serene;<br /></span>
+<span>The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,<br /></span>
+<span>Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And among her army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could
+stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was
+such superabundant energy enshrined in a form so beautiful and stately.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Shall I tell you what Lady Jersey is like?&quot; wrote
+     Creevey. &quot;She is like one of her numerous gold and silver
+     dicky-birds that are in all the showrooms of this house.
+     She begins to sing at eleven o'clock, and, with the
+     interval of the hour when she retires to her cage to
+     rest, she sings till twelve at night without a moment's
+     interruption. She changes her feathers for dinner, and
+     her plumage both morning and evening is the most
+     beautiful I ever saw.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>She seemed indeed incapable of fatigue. Tongue and body alike never
+seemed to rest, from rising to going to bed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She is really wonderful,&quot; says Lady Granville; &quot;and how
+     she can stand the life she leads is still more wonderful.
+     She sees everybody in her own house, and calls on
+     everybody in theirs. She is all over Paris, and at all
+     the <i>campagnes</i> within ten miles, and in all <i>petites
+     soir&eacute;es</i>. She begins the day with a dancing-master at
+     nine o'clock, and never <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> rests till midnight.... At ten
+     o'clock yesterday morning she called for me, and we never
+     stopped to take breath till eleven o'clock at night, when
+     she set me down here more dead than alive, she going to
+     end the day with the Hollands!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A life that would have killed nine women out of ten seemed powerless to
+touch her. When far advanced in the sixties she was acknowledged to be
+still one of the most beautiful women in England, retaining to an
+amazing degree the bloom and freshness of youth. And when she appeared
+at a fancy-dress ball arrayed as a Sultana, in a robe of sky-blue with
+coral embroideries and a turban of gold and white, she was by universal
+consent acclaimed as the most beautiful woman there. It may interest my
+lady readers to learn that she attributed her perpetual youth to the use
+of gruel as a substitute for soap and water.</p>
+
+<p>Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most
+fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair
+fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and
+repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity.
+So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage
+alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of
+men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. &quot;Diable!&quot; laughed the
+General, &quot;you must be very little sure of yourself if you are afraid to
+be alone with little Lord John!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was merciless to any of her lady friends <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>who lapsed from virtue, or
+in any way, however slight, offended the proprieties. But the vials of
+her fiercest anger were reserved for her mother-in-law, the
+Dowager-Countess, whose shameless intrigue with the Prince Regent
+scandalised the world in an age of lax morals; and the outraged Princess
+Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have
+anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to
+the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was
+the Regent at this slight that &quot;the dotard with corrupted eye and
+withered heart,&quot; as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the
+Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned to its owner.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, however, the Countess had her revenge. At a party in
+Cavendish Square she was walking along a corridor with Samuel Rogers
+when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
+himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
+stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
+contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
+and laughingly said, &quot;I did that well, didn't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of &quot;Almack's&quot; that Lady Jersey
+won her chief fame&mdash;Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
+in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
+hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
+however great, <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
+which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.</p>
+
+<p>Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
+and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
+to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
+at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
+Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
+doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
+face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
+of fashion and conquest&mdash;for, by the rules of the club, male members
+were selected by the ladies, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>. But beyond all doubt the
+destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
+Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club&mdash;Princess Esterhazy,
+Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
+Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
+counted.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Three-fourths even of the nobility,&quot; says a writer in
+     the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, &quot;knock in vain for admission.
+     Into this <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>, of course, the sons of
+     commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
+     'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
+     have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
+     themselves.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Many diplomatic arts,&quot; writes Captain Gronow, &quot;much
+     <i>finesse</i>, and a host of intrigues were set in <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>motion to
+     get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
+     rank and fortunes entitled them to the <i>entr&eacute;e</i> anywhere,
+     were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
+     for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
+     and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is
+     needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was
+     not innocent of abuses.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The fair ladies who ruled supreme over this little dancing and gossiping
+world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at
+the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+<i>chapeau bras.</i> On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to
+ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when
+the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped
+forward and said, &quot;Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers,&quot; whereupon
+the Duke, who had a great respect for orders and regulations, quietly
+walked away.</p>
+
+<p>Another inflexible rule of the club was that no one should be admitted
+after eleven o'clock; and it was a breach of this regulation that once
+overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington with humiliation. One evening, the
+Duke, who had promised to meet Lady Mornington at Almack's, presented
+himself for admission. &quot;Lady Jersey,&quot; announced an attendant, &quot;the Duke
+of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted.&quot; &quot;What o'clock
+is it?&quot; she asked. &quot;Seven minutes after eleven, your Ladyship.&quot; She
+paused for a moment, and then said with emphasis and distinctness, &quot;Give
+my compliments&mdash;Lady <a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>Jersey's compliments&mdash;to the Duke of Wellington,
+and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of
+exclusion is such that, hereafter, no one can complain of its
+application. He cannot be admitted.&quot; And the Duke, whom even Napoleon
+with all his legions had been powerless to turn back, was compelled to
+retreat before the capricious will of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>Such an autocrat was this &quot;Queen of Almack's.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;While her colleagues were debating,&quot; says the author of
+     the &quot;Key to Almack's,&quot; &quot;she decided. Hers was the
+     master-spirit that ruled the whole machine; hers the
+     eloquent tongue that could both persuade and command. And
+     she was never idle. Her restless eye pried into
+     everything; she set the world to rights; her influence
+     was resistless, her determination uncontrollable.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Treat people like fools, and they will worship you,&quot; was her favourite
+maxim. And as Bryon, her intimate friend, once said, &quot;She was the
+veriest tyrant that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to
+shake their cap and bells as she willed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was at Almack's, it is interesting to recall, that Lady Jersey first
+introduced the quadrille from Paris.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I recollect,&quot; says Captain Gronow, &quot;the persons who
+     formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
+     They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
+     Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
+     Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
+shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;What scenes,&quot; writes Mr T. Raikes, &quot;have we witnessed in
+     these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
+     <i>d&eacute;butantes</i> at the commencement of a waltz, what
+     giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
+     owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
+     opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
+     of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
+     cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
+     became a scene of feud and contention.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
+divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
+many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
+victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
+Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
+twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
+waltz.</p>
+
+<p>For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
+world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
+inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
+her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her &quot;a
+tiresome, quarrelsome woman&quot;; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
+abject slaves, once exclaimed, &quot;What &mdash;&mdash; nonsense Lady Jersey talks!&quot;
+and Granville declared that she <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>had &quot;neither wit, nor imagination, nor
+humour.&quot; But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
+and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
+and personal charm.</p>
+
+<p>The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
+sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
+her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
+her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
+bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
+unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the
+darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the
+slayer of her hopes was not stayed. Her husband, whose devotion had so
+long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest
+son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the
+crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken
+from her.</p>
+
+<p>For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one
+January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the
+world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have
+ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV" /><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the
+far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly
+seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud
+'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain,
+and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley &quot;a low wretch, a mad
+assassin, and a wild beast.&quot; He was, as my story will show, all this. He
+was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by
+devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in
+his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle,
+whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the
+Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And
+this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy,
+and ended it in tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>As a boy, he was subject to violent attacks of rage, when it was not
+safe to approach him; and his madness grew with his years. Strange tales
+are told <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>of him as a young man. We are told that he would spend hours
+pacing like a wild animal up and down his room, gnashing his teeth,
+clenching his fists, grinning diabolically, and uttering strange
+incoherent cries. He would stand before a mirror, making horrible
+grimaces at his reflection, and spitting upon it; he walked about armed
+with pistols and dagger, ready at a moment to use both on any one who
+annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
+and hatred of all around him.</p>
+
+<p>When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
+into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
+Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
+with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
+petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
+obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
+appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
+calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
+became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
+and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I still retain,&quot; writes a Mr Cradock in his &quot;Memoirs,&quot;
+     &quot;a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
+     who, with the Ladies Shirley, his <a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>sisters, frequented
+     Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
+     the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
+     character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
+     but in the evening he became the terror of the
+     inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
+     to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
+     was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
+     behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
+     afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
+     My father's house was situated midway between Lord
+     Ferrers's lodgings and the Town Hall, where the race
+     assemblies were then held. He had, as was supposed,
+     obtained liquor privately, and then became outrageous;
+     for, from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to
+     the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a
+     silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies. He was
+     then secured for that evening. This was the last time of
+     his appearing at Leicester, till brought from
+     Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady
+     Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him,
+     no greater precaution had been used with respect to his
+     own safety as well as that of all around him. Whilst
+     sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always
+     urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters
+     ventured to come with him to the races, they had an
+     absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
+lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
+surrounded him<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>self with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
+both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
+eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
+tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
+from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
+figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.</p>
+
+<p>But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
+became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
+wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
+such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
+or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
+the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
+And this is how it came.</p>
+
+<p>The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
+received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
+his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
+lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
+this delicate post&mdash;for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
+such a &quot;tool&quot; he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
+who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
+his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
+Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
+was possessed of a <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
+could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.</p>
+
+<p>In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
+adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
+it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
+unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
+hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
+his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
+the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
+to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
+steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
+was on a Friday; and punctually at two o'clock, the hour appointed, Mr
+Johnson made his appearance, and was ushered into his Lordship's study.
+Unknown to him, Lord Ferrers had sent away his housekeeper and his
+menservants on various pretexts; and, apart from the Earl and the
+steward (the spider and the fly), there was no one in all the great
+house but three maidservants, whose chief anxiety was to keep as far
+away as possible from their mad master.</p>
+
+<p>With a courteous greeting Lord Ferrers invited Mr Johnson to take a
+seat; and then, placing before him a document, which proved to be a
+confession of fraud and dishonesty in his office of receiver, he
+commanded his steward to sign his name to it.</p>
+
+<p>On reading the confession which he was ordered <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>to sign, Mr Johnson
+indignantly refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. &quot;You
+refuse to sign?&quot; asked the Earl with ominous calmness. &quot;I do,&quot; was the
+emphatic reply. &quot;Then,&quot; continued his lordship, producing a pistol, &quot;I
+command you to kneel.&quot; Mr Johnson, now alarmed and awake to his danger,
+looked first at the stern, cold eyes bent on him, and then at the pistol
+pointed at his heart, and sank on one knee. &quot;Both knees!&quot; insisted the
+Earl. Mr Johnson subsided on the other knee, looking calmly at his
+would-be murderer, though beads of perspiration were standing on his
+forehead. A moment later a shot rang out in the silent room, and the
+steward fell to the floor mortally wounded. Laying down the smoking
+weapon, Lord Ferrers opened the door and called loudly for assistance.
+The horrified servants, who had heard the report, came, huddled and
+fearful, at his bidding. One he despatched for a doctor, and, with the
+assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom.
+When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside,
+trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's
+chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours
+at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on
+the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in
+agony at his house, a mile away.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As soon as it became known,&quot; to quote the account given
+     by an eye-witness in the <i>Gentleman's <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>Magazine</i>, &quot;that
+     Mr Johnson was really dead, the neighbours set about
+     seizing the murderer. A few persons, armed, set out for
+     Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard they saw the
+     Earl going towards the stable, as they imagined, to take
+     horse. He appeared to be just out of bed, his stockings
+     being down and his garters in his hand, having probably
+     taken the alarm immediately on coming out of his room,
+     and finding that Johnson had been removed. One
+     Springthorpe, advancing towards his lordship, presented a
+     pistol, and required him to surrender; but his lordship
+     putting his hand to his pocket, Springthrope imagined he
+     was feeling for a pistol, and stopped short, being
+     probably intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to escape
+     back into the house, where he fastened the doors and
+     stood on his defence.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The crowd of people who had come to apprehend him beset
+     the house, and their number increased very fast. In about
+     two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the garret window, and
+     called out: 'How is Johnson?' Springthorpe answered: 'He
+     is dead,' upon which his lordship insulted him, and
+     called him a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody
+     but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again assured that
+     he was dead, he desired that the people might be
+     dispersed, saying that he would surrender; yet, almost in
+     the same breath, he desired that the people might be let
+     in, and have some victuals and drink; but the issue was
+     that he went away again from the window, swearing that he
+     would not be taken.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The people, however, still continued near the house, and
+     two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one,
+     Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a
+     blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but
+     Curtis, so far from <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>being intimidated, marched boldly up
+     to him, and his lordship was so struck with the
+     determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that
+     he suffered him to seize him without making any
+     resistance. Yet the moment that he was in custody he
+     declared that he had killed a villain, and that he
+     gloried in the deed.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The tragedy is now hastening to its close. The assassin was kept in
+custody at Ashby until a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of &quot;Wilful
+Murder&quot; against him, when he was transferred to Leicester, and a
+fortnight later to London, making the journey in his own splendid
+equipage with six horses, and &quot;dressed like a jockey, in a close
+riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt.&quot; He was lodged in
+the Round Tower of the Tower of London, where, with a couple of warders
+at his elbow night and day, with sentries posted outside his door, and
+another on the drawbridge, he passed the last weeks of his doomed life.</p>
+
+<p>In mid-April he was duly tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of
+Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to
+prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
+dissentient voice, pronounced &quot;Guilty,&quot; and sentenced to be &quot;hanged by
+the neck until he was dead,&quot; when his body should be handed over to the
+surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed&mdash;pitiful salve to his
+pride&mdash;that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
+his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
+course.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
+other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
+o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey&mdash;the
+most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
+a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
+as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
+horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.</p>
+
+<p>Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
+of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
+procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
+spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
+journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
+of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
+<i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
+     silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
+     after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
+     perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
+     but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
+     then began in the following order: A very large body of
+     constables of the county of Middlesex, preceded by one of
+     the high constables; a party of horse grenadiers, and a
+     party of foot; Mr Sheriff Errington, in his chariot,
+     accompanied by his under-Sheriff, Mr Jackson; the landau
+     escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers and
+     foot; Mr Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which was
+     Under-Sheriff Mr <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>Nichols; a mourning-coach and six, with
+     some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
+     six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
+     from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
+     hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
+     whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
+     though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
+     saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
+     through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
+     death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
+     the King, begging that he might suffer where his
+     ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered&mdash;namely, on
+     Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
+     obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
+     part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
+     and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
+     the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
+     As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
+     particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
+     and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
+handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
+muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
+amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
+exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
+coin in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, not even a struggle <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>marking the moment when life left him.
+After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
+Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
+exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
+resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
+the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
+mad beyond all doubt, and &quot;knew not what he did&quot;; and in the eyes of all
+charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
+remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
+two centuries ago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V" /><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h4>A GHOSTLY VISITANT</h4>
+
+
+<p>There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more
+tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting
+climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly
+visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this
+singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear
+and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson
+declared, &quot;I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I
+am willing to believe it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished
+poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of
+Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the
+county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his
+clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute
+age.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Of his morals,&quot; Sir Bernard Burke says, &quot;we may judge by
+     the fact of his having died the victim <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>of the coarsest
+     debauchery, and leaving behind him a diary more
+     disgustingly licentious than the pages of Aratine
+     himself.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had
+his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his <i>Diaboliad</i> &quot;to the
+worst man in His Majesty's Dominions,&quot; and when he penned those terrible
+lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Have I not tasted every villain's part?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Have I not broke a noble parent's heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Do I not daily boast how I betrayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The tender widow and the virtuous maid?&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse
+lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until
+that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, &quot;I
+awoke, and behold I was a lord!&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;From the time when,&quot; Mr Stanley Makower writes,
+     &quot;although no more than a youth of nineteen, his
+     engagement to General Warburton's daughter had been
+     broken off on the discovery of the vicious life he had
+     led in his travels in France and Italy, he had been a
+     source of shame and trouble to his family.... To measure
+     the depths of Lyttelton's vices, it is necessary to read
+     his own letters, in which the literary style is as
+     perfect as the fearless admission of fault is
+     bewildering.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the
+brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>and graces of
+person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
+Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
+was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
+boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
+literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
+have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
+statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
+and high position in the arena of politics.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
+Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
+to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
+itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
+plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
+the pleasure he loved.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
+still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
+nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
+of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
+his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
+London home.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He found,&quot; to quote the words of his lordship's
+     <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>stepmother, &quot;Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
+     on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
+     cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
+     I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
+     two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
+     of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
+     Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
+     said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
+     their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
+     gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
+would be lying among the &quot;vulgar fellows&quot; who die in their youth at
+five-and-thirty!</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
+for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
+of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp&mdash;the speech of a man in
+the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the
+spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were
+followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely
+killing him.</p>
+
+<p>It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord
+Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful
+life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a
+fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party,
+including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host
+could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his
+depraved tastes, Lord <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination&mdash;a
+wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.</p>
+
+<p>During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following
+incident&mdash;which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events
+that followed&mdash;took place.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord Lyttelton,&quot; to quote Sir Digby Neave, &quot;had come to
+     Pit Place in very precarious health, and was ordered not
+     to take any but the gentlest exercise. As he was walking
+     in the conservatory with Lady Affleck and the Misses
+     Affleck, a robin perched on an orange-tree close to them.
+     Lord Lyttelton attempted to catch it, but failing, and
+     being laughed at by the ladies, he said he would catch it
+     even if it was the death of him. He succeeded, but he put
+     himself in a great heat by the exertion. He gave the bird
+     to Lady Affleck, who walked about with it in her hand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so
+pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what
+was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the
+following startling statement:&mdash;&quot;Last night,&quot; he said, &quot;after I had been
+lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping
+of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about
+my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these
+strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in
+white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking
+towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>death, for I
+had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I
+enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three
+days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his
+guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer
+him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the
+despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction
+that he was a doomed man. &quot;You will see,&quot; was all the answer he would
+vouchsafe, &quot;I shall die at midnight on Saturday.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to
+which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton
+did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the
+preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he
+was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day&mdash;a speech which
+should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He
+spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences,
+and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as
+full of confidence as of his subject.</p>
+
+<p>Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
+eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
+his hearers.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Cast your eyes for a moment,&quot; he declared, amid
+     impressive silence, &quot;on the state of the Empire.
+     <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
+     us as a commercial and maritime people&mdash;lost&mdash;for ever
+     lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
+     part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
+     her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
+     Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
+     hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
+     world for the preservation of freedom.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
+the &quot;voice of one crying in the wilderness,&quot; Lord Lyttelton felt that he
+had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
+laurels of the patriot and the orator.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
+James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, &quot;with the idleness of one who has
+never known what occupation means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
+you such fine compliments on your speech?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lyttelton smiled faintly. &quot;No, it was not of that I was thinking,&quot; he
+answered. &quot;Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
+majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
+minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
+lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
+of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
+thinking&mdash;of death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>story of Lyttelton's
+dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
+of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have,&quot; continued
+Lyttelton. &quot;But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
+nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
+thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
+true that I have not more than three days to live&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You take the thing too seriously,&quot; interposed his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Join me at Pit Place to-morrow,&quot; said Lyttelton. &quot;Then you shall see if
+I take it too seriously.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
+boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
+the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
+and exclaiming, &quot;I shall cheat the lady yet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
+at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
+high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
+&quot;Ah, Richard is himself again!&quot; But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
+hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
+silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.</p>
+
+<p>As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
+but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
+to himself, <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
+passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
+retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
+knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
+house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, &quot;to
+deceive him into comfort.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
+curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
+mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
+fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
+to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
+that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
+straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
+to go&mdash;half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve&mdash;and nothing
+happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
+watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
+laughter&mdash;discordant, jubilant, defiant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find,&quot; he said to his
+valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. &quot;And
+now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer.&quot; The valet proceeded to
+mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
+at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. &quot;You dirty fellow!&quot; his
+lordship exclaimed. &quot;Go down and fetch a spoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When the servant returned a few minutes later <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>he found, to his horror,
+his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
+He ran downstairs again, shouting, &quot;Help! Help! My lord is dying!&quot; The
+alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
+host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
+watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
+died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
+of three nights previously.</p>
+
+<p>Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
+statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
+would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
+to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
+say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
+former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
+question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
+remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
+exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
+three days before the event.</p>
+
+<p>Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
+was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
+Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
+often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
+his lordship had said: &quot;Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
+come and inform you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
+Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
+the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
+lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
+his house at Dartford, in Kent.</p>
+
+<p>When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's &quot;Illustrations of Human
+Life,&quot; he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
+twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
+in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
+to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
+Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
+the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
+chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
+occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
+Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find&mdash;his slippers.
+The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
+egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
+out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
+there, however.</p>
+
+<p>Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
+strictly searched. <i>The door was locked on the inside</i>, yet no Lord
+Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
+servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>arrived. The man answered:
+&quot;No, sir.&quot; &quot;You may depend upon it,&quot; said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
+mystified and out of humour, &quot;that he is somewhere in the house. He was
+here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
+tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
+the inn if he likes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
+Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
+too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
+following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
+night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
+midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
+ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
+swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
+&quot;he was not himself or a man again for three years.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI" /><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h4>A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</h4>
+
+
+<p>There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
+recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
+Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
+while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
+bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
+this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
+dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
+or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
+least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.</p>
+
+<p>No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
+virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
+Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
+honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
+nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
+blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>conquest
+easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
+eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
+or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
+until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
+any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
+herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
+which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
+indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
+succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
+favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
+contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.</p>
+
+<p>Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
+he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
+Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
+were veritable prudes. &quot;I would lay a wager,&quot; he says, &quot;that if she had
+a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
+I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct.&quot; The only
+indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
+elastic conscience.</p>
+
+<p>As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
+honourable names, and also some of <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>the most despicable characters in
+the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
+capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
+the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
+seek a fresh conquest.</p>
+
+<p>To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
+Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
+for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
+for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
+her charms, ensnared him with her <i>beaut&eacute; de diable</i>, and then,
+satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
+watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
+quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment&mdash;the shedding
+of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
+join her at a <i>petit souper</i> at Spring Gardens, a favourite
+pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
+commenced when the <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> was interrupted by the appearance of
+none other than the &quot;invincible Jermyn,&quot; one of the handsomest and most
+notorious <i>rou&eacute;s</i> of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
+most ardent lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
+Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
+<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
+what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
+dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
+brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
+flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
+his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
+Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
+of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
+his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
+climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
+marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
+in its sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
+before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
+friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
+satisfaction&mdash;a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
+who vowed he would &quot;wipe the young puppy out.&quot; The duel took place in
+the &quot;Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall,&quot; and proved to be of
+as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
+desired.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
+     nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
+     Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>and the first
+     mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
+     Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
+     another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
+     could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
+     the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
+     But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
+     before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
+     Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
+     tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
+and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
+Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
+of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
+described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
+appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
+years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.</p>
+
+<p>The Court, as Pepys records, was &quot;much concerned in this fray&quot;; but it
+was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
+the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
+fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
+Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
+varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
+the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>and lower
+tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
+roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
+lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
+brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
+day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
+practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
+heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
+himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
+well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
+merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
+painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
+the &quot;Roi Soleil&quot; himself. &quot;Ah, Sire,&quot; said the Jester, as he struck an
+attitude before the trio of canvases, &quot;I knew that our Lord was
+crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
+jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
+enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
+have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
+a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
+as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
+the most foul-mouthed, <a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>evil-living man in London, whose very contact
+was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
+inveigled into his company and that of the &quot;jolly blades,&quot; who were his
+boon companions; &quot;but Lord!&quot; the diarist says ingenuously, &quot;their talk
+did make my heart ache!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a <i>liaison</i> astonished even
+those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
+passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
+his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
+in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over &quot;his lady's
+most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
+as much as he knew himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
+of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
+he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
+from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
+most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
+was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
+man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
+libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
+any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
+with the bitterest invectives; &quot;painted a frightful picture of her
+conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
+into defects.&quot; The <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
+vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
+begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
+him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
+brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.</p>
+
+<p>But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
+and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
+furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
+with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
+in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
+limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
+Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
+screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
+duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
+tells the following story:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
+Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
+Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
+Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
+mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
+and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
+and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
+through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>all along up one of his
+armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
+measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
+Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
+about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
+mistress.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
+lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
+sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
+the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
+transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
+Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
+betrayal.</p>
+
+<p>From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
+his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
+of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
+his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
+and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
+crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
+execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
+the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
+storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
+flaunted their amour in the face of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the Countess's husband had been <a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>removed from their path the
+shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
+must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
+and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
+opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
+to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
+enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
+Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
+distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
+witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
+who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
+     out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
+     from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
+     Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
+     from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
+     murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
+     he was thought dead.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
+Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
+himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
+his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
+of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
+retired into the obscurity in which alone <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>he could feel safe from such
+a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
+unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
+favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
+of their lust and their triumphs.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
+standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
+almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
+duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
+course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
+effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
+revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot;
+himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
+     revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
+     than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
+     mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
+     Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
+alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
+he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
+the partner of his guilt were ordered <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>to separate; and for this purpose
+to enter into security to the King in the sum of &pound;10,000 apiece. Thus
+ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
+Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
+his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
+friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">There reft of health, of fortune, friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
+marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
+England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
+hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
+haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
+penitence.</p>
+
+<p>But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
+of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
+across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
+shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
+Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
+proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
+of wedding bells &quot;Messalina's&quot; history practically ended as far as the
+world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
+life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>her passion had now
+died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
+political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
+as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
+years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
+herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
+young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
+of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
+if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
+man, whom William III. had called &quot;the soul of honour,&quot; stood branded to
+the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
+to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
+of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
+will, in the service of the devil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII" /><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h4>A PROFLIGATE PRINCE</h4>
+
+
+<p>Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
+Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
+abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of &quot;revered memory,&quot; in
+spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
+Each brother had his amours&mdash;many of them highly discreditable; but for
+unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
+unenviable palm.</p>
+
+<p>Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
+solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
+placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
+soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
+left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
+was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
+whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
+aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no <a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>woman was ever wooed
+with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My dear Angel,&quot; he once wrote to her, &quot;I got to bed
+     about ten. I then prayed for you, my dearest love, kissed
+     your dearest little hair, and lay down and dreamt of you,
+     had you ten thousand times in my arms, kissing you and
+     telling you how much I loved and adored you, and you
+     seemed pleased.... I have your heart, and it is warm at
+     my breast. I hope mine feels as easy to you. Thou joy of
+     my life, adieu!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another letter he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Oh, my dearest soul ... your dear heart is so safe with
+     me and feels every motion mine does. How happy will that
+     day be to me that brings you back! I shall be unable to
+     speak for joy. My dearest soul, I send you ten thousand
+     kisses.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>So irrepressible was his passion that it burst the bounds of prose, and
+gushed forth in verses such as this:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Hear, solemn Jove, and, conscious Venus, hear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And thou, bright maid, believe me while I swear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">No time, no change, no future flame shall move<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">The well-placed basis of my lasting love.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When the fair and frail Countess, in a fit of alarm, took refuge at
+Eaton Hall, her Royal lover followed her in disguise, installed himself
+at a neighbouring inn, and continued his intrigue under the very nose of
+her jealous husband, who at last was driven to sue for divorce. He won
+an easy verdict, and with it <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>&pound;10,000 damages&mdash;a bill which George III.
+himself had ultimately to pay. Within a few months the incorrigible Duke
+had another &quot;dearest little angel&quot; in his toils, and pursued his
+gallantries without a thought of the Countess he had left to her shame.</p>
+
+<p>Such was this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of
+his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771,
+at Brighton&mdash;a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded
+her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for fresh conquests.</p>
+
+<p>Anne Luttrell, as the widow had been known in her maiden days, was one
+of the three lovely daughters of Lord Irnham, in later years Earl of
+Carhampton, and a member of a family noted for the beauty of its women,
+and the wild, lawless living of its men. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell,
+was the most reckless swashbuckler and the deadliest duellist of his
+time&mdash;a man whose morals were as low as his temper and courage were
+high.</p>
+
+<p>At seventeen Anne had become the wife of Christopher Horton, a
+hard-drinking, fast-living Derbyshire squire, who left her a widow at
+twenty-two, in the prime of her beauty, and eager, as soon as decency
+permitted, to enter the matrimonial lists again.</p>
+
+<p>About this time Horace Walpole, who had a keen eye for female charms,
+describes her as</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;extremely pretty, very well-made, with the most amorous
+     eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette
+     beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, <a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>and completely
+     mistress of all her passions and projects. Indeed,
+     eyelashes three-quarters of a yard shorter would have
+     served to conquer such a head as she has turned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another portrait Walpole says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;There was something so bewitching in her languishing
+     eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she
+     pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and
+     yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through
+     it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced
+     divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric
+     kind.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious
+young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at
+Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit
+of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General
+Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his
+attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at
+the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to
+her grave plain &quot;Mrs Smith&quot; when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to
+boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the
+Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside
+when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this
+she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>favours&mdash;after a
+period of coquetry and coy reluctance&mdash;were at his disposal; but the
+price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring&mdash;nothing less. And such was
+the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke&mdash;flinging scruples and
+fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, and
+were there made man and wife. The widow had caught her Prince and meant
+the world to know she was a Princess.</p>
+
+<p>For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing
+his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager
+Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more. But his Duchess
+was inexorable. She declined to play any longer the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of &quot;virtuous
+mistress&quot; in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of
+the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the
+throne.</p>
+
+<p>Between his wife's tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the
+Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his
+exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to
+make the plunge&mdash;to break the news to the King. Had he but known how
+inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back
+to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by
+trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic
+the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged
+with danger and unrest. And when the quaking Duke presented himself
+before his brother <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>as he was moodily walking in his palace garden,
+George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of
+worries.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the King read the ill-spelled, clumsily-worded note which
+the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
+flame. &quot;You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!&quot; he shouted, purple in
+face and hoarse with passion. &quot;I tell you that woman shall never be a
+Royal Duchess&mdash;she shall never be anything.&quot; &quot;What must I do, then?&quot;
+gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. &quot;Go abroad until I
+can decide what to do,&quot; thundered the King, waving his brother
+imperiously away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
+upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
+this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
+would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her&mdash;before
+her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
+Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
+Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
+world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
+smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
+through his Chamberlain that &quot;there was no road between Cumberland House
+and Windsor Castle&mdash;that the Castle doors would be closed against any
+who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
+paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
+a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
+perfection her new and exalted <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of Princess. &quot;No woman of her
+time,&quot; says Lord Hervey, &quot;performed the honours of her drawing-room with
+such grace, affability, and dignity.&quot; And, in spite of George's frowns,
+the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
+Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
+was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in
+beauty, was received with open arms at the Castle, and drew to her court
+all the greatest in the land.</p>
+
+<p>She even made overtures to her rival and enemy, and proposed that they
+should appear together in the same box at the opera&mdash;an overture to
+which the Duchess of Gloucester retorted contemptuously: &quot;Never! I would
+not smell at the same nosegay with her in public!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By sheer effrontery Duchess Anne at last forced her way into the Royal
+Court and public recognition as a member of George's family; and the
+fact that both the King and the Queen snubbed her mercilessly for her
+pains, detracted little from her triumph and gratification. What her
+Grace of Gloucester had won by submission and ingratiating arts, she had
+won by brazen defiance and importunity. But the goal, though so
+differently reached, was the same. Her triumph was complete.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>To her last day, however, she never forgave the King and Queen. While
+they had smiled on the sempstress's daughter, who had been guilty of
+precisely the same offence as herself&mdash;that of wedding a Royal Prince
+without the King's sanction&mdash;they had scorned her, a Luttrell, the
+daughter of a noble house; and terrible was the revenge she took. She
+deliberately set herself to debase the Prince of Wales&mdash;a youth whose
+natural tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him
+in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his
+passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he
+himself was a past-master&mdash;drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious
+profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would
+have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the
+hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the
+Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his Consort for their slights;
+and her shameless reward was when she witnessed their grief at the moral
+degradation of their eldest son.</p>
+
+<p>But even in the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell
+was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the
+social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was
+empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and
+flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family
+circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome
+stranger; and such homage as <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>she received was conceded to her rank and
+not to herself. &quot;Of all princesses,&quot; she once wrote to a friend, &quot;I
+really think I am the most miserable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her husband died at the age of forty-five, worn out with excesses,
+regretted by none, execrated by many. Of his father it had been written
+by way of epitaph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;He was alive and is dead,<br /></span>
+<span>And, as it is only Fred,<br /></span>
+<span>Why, there's no more to be said.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand,
+would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of
+years&mdash;unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in
+name&mdash;harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of
+coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose
+failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the
+Duchess.</p>
+
+<p>The fate of Elizabeth&mdash;one of the &quot;three beautiful Luttrells&quot;&mdash;is among
+the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister
+died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and
+actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her
+liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower
+depths&mdash;was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the
+streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set
+her free from her fetters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII" /><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
+been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
+into a Countess, and live in history as one of the &quot;most gorgeous&quot;
+figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
+certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
+and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
+one of his most amiable characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish squire was a proud man&mdash;proud of his pretty and shiftless
+wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
+his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
+husbands&mdash;one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
+proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
+he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
+Marguerite, the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; of a good-looking family, and with no
+gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
+waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
+though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
+neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
+and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
+Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as &quot;Buck Power&quot; and
+&quot;Shiver-the-Frills&quot;; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
+Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
+a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
+wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
+his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
+life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
+of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
+day to dazzle the world as the &quot;most gorgeous Lady Blessington.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As with many another &quot;ugly ducking&quot; Marguerite Power's beauty was only
+dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
+long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
+flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
+other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
+had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
+charm&mdash;Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
+stationed at Clonmel. <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
+and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
+encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
+offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
+wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
+moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
+showed the utmost aversion. &quot;I hate him,&quot; she protested in tears to her
+father, who supported his suit; &quot;and I would rather die a hundred times
+than marry him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But &quot;Beau Power&quot; was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
+child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
+family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
+indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
+biggest scoundrel in Tipperary&mdash;a &quot;maiden tribute&quot; to a lover's lust and
+a father's ambition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-098-t.jpg" alt="MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON" title="MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
+followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
+young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
+Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
+from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
+days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
+station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
+no means <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>reluctant to &quot;be rid of the brat&quot; by sending her back to her
+home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
+almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
+left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
+the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
+to shield and care for her.</p>
+
+<p>How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
+must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
+at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
+England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
+though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
+scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
+We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
+struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
+in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
+her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she received at her house only those whose age and
+     character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
+     others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
+     could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
+     Blessington, then a widower.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
+charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
+at its <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
+as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
+during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
+this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
+ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
+and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy&mdash;or, as
+some say, in a drunken quarrel&mdash;had flung himself to his death through a
+window of his gaol.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
+squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
+would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
+widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
+of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
+prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The &quot;ugly
+duckling&quot; had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
+happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
+radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
+alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
+landlords, with a rent-roll of &pound;30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
+extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
+for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>gorgeous
+furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
+wife seems to have shared.</p>
+
+<p>When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
+revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of &quot;crimson Genoa
+silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
+equal richness.&quot; But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
+childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
+her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
+months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
+<i>salon</i> all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
+her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
+his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
+worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
+of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
+yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
+and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
+retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
+have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
+d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
+Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
+charming a cavalier as this &quot;Admirable Crichton&quot; of Georgian days.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Count d'Orsay,&quot; says Charles James Mathews, the famous<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>
+     comedian, who knew him well, &quot;was the beau-ideal of manly
+     dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
+     conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
+     handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
+     degree; highly educated, and of great literary
+     acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
+     mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
+     conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
+     instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
+     swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
+     horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
+Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
+its tragic close.</p>
+
+<p>From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
+with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
+spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
+sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
+From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
+ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
+received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
+lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, &quot;fit for any
+queen.&quot; And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
+pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
+<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>and its colonnade, &quot;supporting a terrace covered with flowers&quot;; its
+marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
+long gallery, &quot;filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On the top of the gallery,&quot; she says, &quot;is a terrace, at
+     the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
+     and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
+     charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
+     gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
+     grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
+     tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
+     delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
+     rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
+     architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
+     oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
+     consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
+     the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
+     splendour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
+ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
+indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
+splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
+years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
+d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
+galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
+Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
+nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
+her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
+her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
+daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
+few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
+protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
+London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
+for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
+Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
+even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
+thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.</p>
+
+<p>The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
+indeed, like a passage from the &quot;Arabian Nights.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The bed,&quot; she says, &quot;which is silvered instead of gilt,
+     rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
+     exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
+     alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
+     living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
+     with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
+     and from the columns that support the frieze of the
+     recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
+     hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
+     the room opposite the fireplace&mdash;pale blue carpets,
+     silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Her bath was of white marble; her <i>salle de bain</i> was draped with white
+muslin trimmed with lace, and <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
+Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
+lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
+keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
+to the gilt consoles, marble-topped <i>chiffoni&egrave;res</i>, and <i>fauteuils</i>
+&quot;richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
+curtains.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
+lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
+before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
+in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
+years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
+of his &pound;30,000 a year was an annual income of &pound;600, which went to his
+illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of &pound;2,000 a year
+was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
+future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
+for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
+contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
+with which he had always surrounded her.</p>
+
+<p>It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
+solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
+which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
+found a small mine of welcome gold. Her &quot;Books of Beauty&quot; and &quot;Gems of
+Beauty&quot; were an instantaneous success&mdash;they made a strong appeal to <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>the
+flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
+Her &quot;Conversations with Byron,&quot; a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
+fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
+glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
+travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.</p>
+
+<p>In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
+jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
+so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
+<i>fauteuil</i> of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
+and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
+her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
+and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
+gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
+tassel, and his shower of ringlets.</p>
+
+<p>But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
+lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
+magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
+she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
+well advanced in the forties&mdash;and this she found at Gore House, in
+Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
+and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
+spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
+within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
+who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
+hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
+finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
+commands to a Court-ball.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Gore House,&quot; said Brougham, &quot;one is sure to meet some of the most
+interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
+moment.&quot; Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
+men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
+without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
+Smith and Douglas Jerrold&mdash;so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
+hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
+hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
+greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
+or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
+than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
+never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
+dearly-loved and devoted son.</p>
+
+<p>Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below &pound;4,000 a year, it
+was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
+this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
+reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
+D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
+<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt&mdash;some of it, at least,
+incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House <i>m&eacute;nage</i>&mdash;until he found
+himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding &pound;100,000,
+and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
+a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
+rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
+smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
+avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his &quot;pound of
+flesh.&quot; The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
+resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
+safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
+had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
+magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks later, all &quot;the costly and elegant effects of the Right
+Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent&quot; were
+put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
+through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous&mdash;among
+them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
+goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
+effects brought absurdly low prices, realised &pound;12,000&mdash;a smaller sum
+probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>no doubt broke Lady
+Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
+auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
+grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, &quot;She
+was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother&mdash;a true, loving mother to me.&quot;
+Three years later this &quot;paragon of all the perfections&quot; followed the
+Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
+designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
+graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX" /><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h4>A QUEEN OF COQUETTES</h4>
+
+
+<p>The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
+calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
+Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
+Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
+crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
+of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
+lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
+sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
+boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-110-t.jpg" alt="SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH" title="SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH" />
+</div>
+
+<p>And it was on this very day, as the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot; was riding under
+the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
+clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
+twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
+opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
+little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
+birthday could have been more auspicious <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>than this which saw the
+restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
+splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
+of the Sandridge baby.</p>
+
+<p>If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
+live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
+counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
+Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
+come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
+country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
+management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
+man in the moon.</p>
+
+<p>His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
+Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
+when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
+accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
+a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
+John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
+and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
+Pole.</p>
+
+<p>Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
+little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
+loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
+as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
+when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
+<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
+splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
+her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
+speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
+notes &quot;containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
+promises,&quot; slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
+but the disdainful beauty dropped the <i>billets-doux</i> on the floor for
+any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
+was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.</p>
+
+<p>James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
+gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
+in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
+after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
+hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
+raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
+Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
+pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
+sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
+of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.</p>
+
+<p>While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
+madcap at the Court of <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
+rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
+toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
+lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
+was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
+innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
+sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
+where a very different life awaited her.</p>
+
+<p>She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
+the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
+glimpse of it. Her more modest <i>r&ocirc;le</i> was to be playfellow and companion
+of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne&mdash;a shy, backward child, a
+few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
+eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
+education to her.</p>
+
+<p>To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
+Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
+country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
+passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
+romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
+between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
+playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.</p>
+
+<p>It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>blossomed rapidly into
+young womanhood&mdash;little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
+infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character&mdash;an
+imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
+inflexible will within the circle of the Court.</p>
+
+<p>While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
+John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
+closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
+ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
+made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
+Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
+handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
+in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
+ten years' superiority in age.</p>
+
+<p>John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
+one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
+aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
+who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
+hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
+of his lands and a fine of &pound;4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
+own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
+a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
+Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
+John; and <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
+daughter Arabella.</p>
+
+<p>From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
+Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
+handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
+once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
+of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
+person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
+many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
+might not have been his without the asking.</p>
+
+<p>Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
+the King's &quot;light o' love,&quot; and had borne him three sons, all
+Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
+what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
+net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
+love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
+conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
+trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
+singular spectacle&mdash;that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
+and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
+an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
+lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
+inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>One cannot blame the &quot;Merrie Monarch&quot; for deciding that such activities
+were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
+packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
+before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of &pound;5,000
+with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, &quot;he immediately bought an
+annuity of &pound;500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
+foundation of his subsequent fortune.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
+to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
+proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
+under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
+under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
+of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
+who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
+outpost, exclaimed, &quot;I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
+handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
+that the officer commanded who has lost it.&quot; And the &quot;handsome
+Englishman&quot; promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
+of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
+Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
+thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
+had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>at least saved
+the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
+Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
+as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
+queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
+at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
+towers over meaner flowers. And&mdash;such are the strange ways of love&mdash;from
+that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
+power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
+bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
+graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
+life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic&mdash;never
+has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.</p>
+
+<p>But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man&mdash;even by a
+lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
+romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
+battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
+and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
+She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
+Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
+man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
+amorous advances she presented a <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>smiling and inscrutable front; his
+ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.</p>
+
+<p>Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
+have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
+years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
+indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
+soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
+handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
+recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
+and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
+for at least a smile or a look of kindness.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Show me,&quot; he writes, &quot;that, at least, you are not quite
+     indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
+     anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
+     conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
+     ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
+     know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
+is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
+him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is &quot;extreme ill with the
+headache,&quot; and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
+vows, in his pain,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
+     my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
+     could be to me one perpetual torment. If the <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>Duchess,&quot;
+     he adds, &quot;sees company I hope you will be there; but if
+     she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
+     chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
+     drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
+     shall come.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At last the iceberg thaws a little&mdash;though it is only to charge him with
+unkindness! She assumes the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of virtue; and, with a woman's
+capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
+she herself has visited on him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Your not writing to me,&quot; she says, &quot;made me very uneasy,
+     for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
+     am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
+her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
+word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses <i>him</i> of
+unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
+temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;That would hinder you,&quot; she says, with delicious, if
+     cruel satire, &quot;from seeing the play, which I fear would
+     be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
+     your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
+     until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
+     without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
+     come to me without any prejudice to your health.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
+if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
+take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
+of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.</p>
+
+<p>But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
+was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
+on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
+for his ambitious purpose&mdash;one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
+friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
+unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
+no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
+alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
+love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
+penniless beauty.</p>
+
+<p>For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
+though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
+temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
+it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
+marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
+greatness!</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
+flew into a towering rage. &quot;Marry a shocking creature for money!&quot; she
+raved; &quot;and this was what all his passionate protestations of <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>love
+amounted to!&quot; Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
+wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As for seeing you,&quot; she wrote, &quot;I am resolved I never
+     will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
+     for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
+     order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
+     surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
+     creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
+     shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
+     and give God thanks, though too late I see my error.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
+for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
+shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
+divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
+man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
+Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
+done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
+battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
+negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
+solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
+came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.</p>
+
+<p>But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
+did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life&mdash;that he
+<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I vow to God,&quot; he wrote, &quot;you do so entirely possess my
+     thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
+     your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
+     that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
+     despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
+     you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
+     breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
+     you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
+     will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
+     adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
+     how I may deserve, though not have, your love.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
+seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
+of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
+had merely written it to amuse himself, and to &quot;make her think that he
+had an affection for her when she was assured he had none.&quot; At last,
+however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
+him that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
+     so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
+     ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
+     be made ridiculous to the world.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
+wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>
+     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
+     better pleased with your happiness than my own,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>she answered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
+     you say you have, you would find out some way to make
+     yourself happy&mdash;it is in your power. Therefore press me
+     no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
+     approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
+     consider who was the cause of it.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
+veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these&mdash;&quot;you
+would find out some way to make yourself happy&mdash;<i>it is in your power</i>.&quot;
+And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
+following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
+advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
+by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
+his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
+and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
+answering that she did it &quot;that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
+hearing from you more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
+to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
+in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>Court, and brought
+her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
+actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
+     she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
+     would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
+     which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
+     my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
+     her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
+     she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
+     it, and not use me thus like a footman.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
+innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
+deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
+poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
+     enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
+     should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
+     However,&quot; she continued, &quot;if you can be so well contented
+     never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
+     will believe you, though I have not other people.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
+contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
+merciless manner she charges him with &quot;being content never to see her.&quot;
+Although she had never <a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
+for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
+less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
+or lover so patient under so much provocation?</p>
+
+<p>She further accused him of laughing at her when he was &quot;at the Duke's
+side,&quot; to which he retorted &quot;I was so far from that, that had it not
+been for shame I could have cried.&quot; She even swore that it was he who
+avoided <i>her</i>; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
+shadow everywhere, and had even &quot;made his chair follow him, because I
+would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
+forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
+strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
+her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
+when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
+shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
+first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
+Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
+portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
+lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
+could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
+to <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
+re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
+wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X" /><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER</h4>
+
+
+<p>When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
+eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a &quot;quiverful&quot; of
+offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
+annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
+so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
+in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
+could sully her.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
+Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
+preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
+won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
+rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
+was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
+in danger.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
+daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
+unscrupulous <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
+Mitchelstown nursery&mdash;one of a dozen brothers and sisters&mdash;a wholesome,
+merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
+the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
+luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
+Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
+thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
+Mary's senior&mdash;indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
+married man&mdash;had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
+children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
+&quot;big playfellow&quot; when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
+a young man of remarkable physical gifts&mdash;tall, of splendid figure, and
+strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
+of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
+young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
+He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
+dances&mdash;in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
+parents began to grow alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
+weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
+blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>note to the
+effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
+friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
+missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
+bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
+overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
+ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
+soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
+on her fate.</p>
+
+<p>From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
+description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
+handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
+In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
+large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
+Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
+no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
+deed&mdash;a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
+family of the girl he had abducted.</p>
+
+<p>When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
+infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
+from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
+deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
+restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
+this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
+runaway than her abductor.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
+until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
+to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
+at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
+fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
+young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
+girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
+the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be my daughter!&quot; exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. &quot;But who is the
+gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can.&quot; &quot;He is tall and
+handsome&mdash;&mdash;&quot; began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
+walked Fitzgerald himself. &quot;Why,&quot; exclaimed the servant, as with
+startled eyes she looked at the intruder, &quot;that's the very gentleman who
+visits the lady!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
+turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
+against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
+boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
+within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
+on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
+demanded a meeting on the following morning.</p>
+
+<p>The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
+Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
+<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
+surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
+dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
+placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
+man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
+remained uninjured.</p>
+
+<p>After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
+between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
+second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: &quot;You are a &mdash;&mdash; villain, and
+I will not hear a word you have to offer!&quot; Once more the duellists took
+up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
+effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
+combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
+next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
+and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
+lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
+at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
+Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
+vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
+Mary into his power.</p>
+
+<p>Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
+enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
+his <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
+literally &quot;bargained without his host,&quot; who chanced to be an old trusted
+retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
+suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
+day and walked abroad at night.</p>
+
+<p>No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
+been strange &quot;goings-on&quot; lately; and the least he could do was to
+communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
+&quot;up to some mischief.&quot; His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
+back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
+suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
+inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
+of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
+from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
+Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
+Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
+spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
+newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
+room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
+he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
+voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
+and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
+oaths, they broke in the door&mdash;and found themselves face to face with a
+brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
+stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
+at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
+combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
+play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
+last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
+head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
+fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
+daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.</p>
+
+<p>The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
+distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
+But wherever it travelled&mdash;from the shebeens of Connemara to the
+coffee-houses of Cheapside&mdash;it carried with it a wave of compassion for
+the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
+confessed to a friend: &quot;God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
+it had been done by some other hand than mine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
+murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
+salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
+Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>Before he could be
+brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
+the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
+rank&mdash;including that of trial by his Peers.</p>
+
+<p>In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
+took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
+appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
+Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
+small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
+procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
+of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
+Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded &quot;Not Guilty,&quot; and claimed to be tried
+&quot;by God and my Peers.&quot; But the trial, which drew thousands to
+Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that &quot;all manner of
+persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,&quot;
+no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
+One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, &quot;Not Guilty, upon my
+honour&quot;; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
+congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.</p>
+
+<p>And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
+this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
+important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
+subsided; and with this object she was sent, under <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>an assumed name, to
+join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
+her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
+she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
+is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
+made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
+many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
+her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
+names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
+pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
+the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.</p>
+
+<p>Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
+produced, she exclaimed: &quot;I, myself, am the person for whom you express
+such sorrow.&quot; Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: &quot;And now,
+I suppose, you will drive me from your home.&quot; But such was not to be
+Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
+lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
+complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
+became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
+no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
+had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI" /><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h4>A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
+better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
+Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
+raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.</p>
+
+<p>From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
+in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
+on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
+succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
+years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
+business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
+Everything he touched seemed to &quot;turn to gold&quot;; before he had reached
+middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as &quot;Rich Spencer&quot;; and
+by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
+in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
+which a century earlier Stow had described as &quot;very <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>large and
+beautiful, and the highest at that time in London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
+had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
+stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
+When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
+Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
+which, to quote Sir Thomas More, &quot;he lodged himself, and little by
+little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
+crowded and King Henry's left desolate&quot;; and it was in one of its
+magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
+the Crown of England.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
+has immortalised it in &quot;Richard III.&quot;; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
+than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
+there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
+when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
+as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
+Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
+the historic and splendid home in which &quot;Rich Spencer&quot; dispensed
+hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
+his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
+leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>Canonbury
+Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
+It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
+event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
+the news of &quot;Rich Spencer's&quot; wealth had travelled as far as the
+Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
+who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
+to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
+failed is told by Papillon.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Rich men,&quot; says this chronicler, &quot;are commonly the prey
+     of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
+     spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
+     is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
+     Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
+     twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
+     which, if he had done, &pound;50,000 ransom had not redeemed
+     him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
+     musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
+     left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
+     with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
+     hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
+     came always to his house. But by the providence of God&mdash;I
+     have this from a private record&mdash;Sir John, upon some
+     extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
+     night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
+     fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
+     to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
+     This,&quot; adds Papillon, &quot;was a desperate attempt.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
+still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
+she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
+of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
+she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
+city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
+window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
+her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had &quot;the sweetest face I have seen
+in my City of London.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
+suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
+inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
+England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
+coronet laid at her feet before she had well left her school-books. But
+to all these offers, dazzling enough to a merchant's daughter, Elizabeth
+turned a deaf, if dainty ear. &quot;It is not me they want,&quot; she would
+laughingly say, &quot;but my father's money. I shall live and die, like the
+good Queen, my namesake, a maid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so has many another much-sought maiden said in the pride of an
+untouched heart; but to them as to her the &quot;Prince Charming,&quot; before
+whom all her defences crumble, comes at last. In Elizabeth Spencer's
+case, the conquering prince was William, second Lord Compton, one of the
+handsomest, most <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>accomplished and fascinating young men in London. In
+person, as in position, he was alike unimpeachable&mdash;an ideal suitor to
+win even the richest heiress in England; and it is little wonder that
+the heart of the tradesman's daughter began to flutter, and her pretty
+cheeks to flame when this gallant, whose conquests at the Royal Court
+itself were notorious, began to pay marked homage to her charms.</p>
+
+<p>That his reputation in the field of love was none of the best, that he
+was as prodigal as he was poor, mattered little to her&mdash;probably such
+defects made him all the more romantic in her eyes, and his attentions
+all the more welcome. To Sir John, however, who was even more jealous of
+his treasure than of all his gold, the young lord's reputation and,
+above all, his poverty were fatal flaws in any would-be son-in-law of
+his. As soon as he realised the danger he put every obstacle in the way
+of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of
+locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover.
+&quot;If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank,&quot; he told him in
+no ambiguous terms; &quot;and if your fortune matched your family, I should
+have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly,
+I would rather see my girl dead than wedded to such as you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To his daughter's tears and pleading he was equally obdurate. She might
+ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were
+half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he
+encouraged such folly as this. But <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>Spencer's daughter, when she found
+conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong
+as her father's; she told him to his face that with or without his
+sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton. &quot;I will marry him,&quot; she
+declared with flushed face and panting breast, &quot;even if you make me a
+beggar.&quot; &quot;And that, madam,&quot; the defied and furious father retorted, &quot;I
+can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord
+Compton's wife ever have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John's anger;
+and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least,
+whatever others might follow, was at an end. But how little he knew his
+daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.</p>
+
+<p>One day, a few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker,
+carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he
+soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the
+garden, and giving him a respectful &quot;good day.&quot; &quot;A civil young man,&quot; Sir
+John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; &quot;his face seems
+somehow familiar to me.&quot; And well might it be familiar; for the baker
+who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace,
+Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the
+merchant's only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this
+daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her
+parent.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before Sir John's disillusionment <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>came. His daughter
+was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her
+whereabouts. Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury
+against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had
+outwitted him. Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of
+the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to
+fail in execution. Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again&mdash;now
+becomingly penitent&mdash;she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife
+of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>To &quot;Rich Spencer&quot; the blow was crushing, humiliating. It was bad enough
+to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter;
+but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such
+undesirable hands was bitter beyond words. His home and his heart were
+alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would
+never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his
+should ever go into the Compton coffers.</p>
+
+<p>In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full
+year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend,
+at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he
+remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was
+prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his
+bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have summoned you, Sir John,&quot; Her Majesty said, &quot;to ask a great
+favour of you. I do not often <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>stoop, as you know, to beg a favour of
+any man; nor should I now, did I not know that I have no more dutiful
+subject than yourself, and that to ask of you is to receive. I am
+interested in two young people who have had the misfortune to marry
+against the wishes of the lady's father, and who have thus forfeited his
+favour. And I wish you to give me and the youthful couple pleasure by
+taking his place and standing sponsor to their first child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To such a request made by his Sovereign Sir John could but give a
+delighted consent. He would do much more than this, he vowed, to give
+her a moment's gratification; and he not only attended the baptismal
+ceremony, but on the suggestion of the Queen, who was also present,
+allowed the child to bear his own Christian name. &quot;More than this, your
+Majesty,&quot; he declared, &quot;as I have now no child of my own, I will gladly
+adopt this infant as my heir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your goodness of heart, Sir John,&quot; Her Majesty answered, beaming with
+pleasure, &quot;shall not go unrewarded; for the child you have now taken to
+your heart and made inheritor of your wealth is indeed of your own flesh
+and blood&mdash;the first-born son of your daughter, and my friend, Elizabeth
+Compton.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the dramatic plight into which &quot;Rich Spencer's&quot; loyalty and
+generosity had led him. He had innocently pledged himself to adopt as
+his heir, the son of the daughter he had disowned for ever. &quot;And now,
+Sir John,&quot; continued the Queen, &quot;that you have conceded so much to make
+me happy, will you not go one step farther and take your wilful and
+<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>penitent daughter to your heart again?&quot; What could the poor merchant do
+in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour
+what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older
+he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with
+her graceless husband.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When, full of years, Sir John died in 1609, his obsequies were worthy of
+his wealth and fame. He was followed to his grave in St Helen's Church
+by a thousand mourners, clad in black gowns; and three hundred and
+twenty poor men, we are told, &quot;had each a basket given them, containing
+a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle
+of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a
+black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen points, two red herrings, four
+white herrings, six sprats and two eggs&quot;&mdash;a quaint and lavish symbol of
+his charity when alive.</p>
+
+<p>So enormous was the fortune he left, that it is said Lord Compton, on
+hearing its amount (&pound;800,000) &quot;became distracted, and so continued for a
+considerable length of time, either through the vehement apprehension of
+joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take up
+and dispense of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That my Lady Compton, who a few years after her father's death blossomed
+into a Countess, proved a devoted and dutiful wife to her lord there is
+no reason to doubt; but that she had an adequate idea of her own
+importance and a determination to have her share of her father's
+money-bags is shown by the <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>following letter, which is sufficiently
+remarkable to bear quotation in full.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My sweet life,&mdash;Now that I have declared to you my mind
+     for the settling of your estate, I suppose that it were
+     best for me to bethink what allowance were best for me;
+     for, considering what care I have ever had of your
+     estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those which
+     both by the laws of God, nature, and civil policy, wit,
+     religion, government, and honesty, you, my dear, are
+     bound to, I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your
+     most kind and loving wife, the sum of one thousand pounds
+     per an., quarterly to be paid.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, I would, besides that allowance for my apparel,
+     have six hundred pounds added yearly for the performance
+     of charitable works; these I would not neither be
+     accountable for. Also, I will have three horses for my
+     own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow; none
+     lend but I, none borrow but you. Also, I would have two
+     gentlewomen, lest one should be sick; also, believe that
+     it would be an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand
+     mumping alone, when God has blest their Lord and Lady
+     with a great estate. Also, when I ride hunting or
+     hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have
+     them attending, so for each of those said women I must
+     have a horse. Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen,
+     and will have two coaches; one lined with velvet to
+     myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my
+     women lined with sweet cloth, orelaid with gold; the
+     other with scarlet, and laced with watchet lace and
+     silver, with four good horses. Also, I will have two
+     coachmen, one for myself, the other for my women. Also,
+     whenever I travel, I will be allowed not only <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>carroches
+     and spare horses for me and my women, but such carriages
+     as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my
+     things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor
+     theirs with washmaids.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, laundresses, when I travel; I will have them sent
+     away with the carriages to see all safe, and the
+     chambermaids shall go before with the grooms, that the
+     chambers may be ready, sweet, and clean.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, for that it is indecent for me to croud myself
+     with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him have
+     a convenient horse to attend me either in city or
+     country; and I must have four footmen; and my desire is
+     that you will defray the charges for me.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;And for myself, besides my yerely allowance, I would
+     have twenty gowns apparel, six of them excellent good
+     ones, eight of them for the country, and six others of
+     them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my
+     purse two thousand and two hundred pounds, and so you to
+     pay my debts. Also, I would have eight thousand pounds to
+     buy me jewels, and six thousand pounds for a pearl chain.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Now seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you,
+     I pray you to find my children apparel, and their
+     schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their
+     wages.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Also, I will have all my houses furnished, and all my
+     lodging-chambers to be suited with all such furniture as
+     is fit, as beds, stools, chairs, cushions, carpets,
+     silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings,
+     etc.; and so for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I
+     will have them delicately furnished with hangings, couch,
+     canopy, cushions, carpets, etc.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>Also, my desire is that you would pay your debts, build
+     up Ashby House and purchase lands and lend no money (as
+     you love God) to the Lord Chamberlain, which would have
+     all, perhaps your life from you; remember his son, my
+     Lord Wildan, what entertainments he gave me when you were
+     at the Tilt-yard. If you were dead, he said, he would be
+     a husband, a father, a brother, and said he would marry
+     me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little
+     wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely; also, he fed
+     me with untruths concerning the Charter-House; but that
+     is the least; he wished me much harm; you know how. God
+     keep you and me from him, and such as he is.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;So now I have declared to you my mind, what I would
+     have, and what I would not have; I pray you, when you be
+     Earl, to allow a thousand pounds more than now I desire
+     and double allowance.&mdash;Your loving wife, ELIZABETH COMPTON.&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII" /><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h4>TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once
+so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so
+tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of
+Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever
+has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it
+was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
+and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
+leading <i>r&ocirc;le</i>. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
+lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
+brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
+estates and a princely rent-roll.</p>
+
+<p>But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
+often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
+gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenvi<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>able
+reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
+were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the &quot;jolly fast Marchioness&quot;
+was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
+was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
+roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
+tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
+manifested themselves in a dangerous form.</p>
+
+<p>While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
+from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
+or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
+was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
+bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for &pound;13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
+which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
+was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
+and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
+of a hansom.</p>
+
+<p>But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
+Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of
+half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully
+embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged
+venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him,
+in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the
+Earl carried off the Grand <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to
+1867 the Marquess won over &pound;60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings
+in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that
+he only spoke the truth when he boasted, &quot;I could easily make &pound;30,000 a
+year by backing other men's horses.&quot; Indeed on one race, Lecturer's
+Cesarewitch, he cleared &pound;75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a
+racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new
+deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his
+appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales
+himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed
+hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was
+regal in its prodigality.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As he canters on to the course,&quot; we are told, &quot;he
+     slackens speed as he passes through the line of
+     carriages, from which come shrill, plaintive cries, 'Dear
+     Lord Hastings, do come here for one second,' and others
+     to like purpose. Conveniently deaf to the voice of the
+     charmers, he rides straight into the horseman's circle,
+     and takes up his position on the heavy-betting side.
+     'They're laying odds on yours, my lord,' exclaims a
+     bookmaker. 'What odds?' blandly asks the owner. 'Well, my
+     lord, I'll take you six monkeys to four!' 'Put it down,'
+     is the brief response. 'And me, three hundred to two&mdash;and
+     me&mdash;and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
+     clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'&mdash;the
+     bets are booked as freely as offered. <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>'And now, my lord,
+     if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
+     thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
+     is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
+     genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
+     with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
+     four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
+     Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
+     and away they dash.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
+fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose &pound;50,000
+on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
+of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
+to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
+and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
+inroads on even his enormous resources.</p>
+
+<p>The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
+through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
+to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
+had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
+laid against him.</p>
+
+<p>Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
+story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
+Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
+who was passionately devoted to her, little <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>dreaming that another had
+stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for
+escort, drove to Messrs Swan &amp; Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but
+the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She
+entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord
+Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away
+while her <i>fianc&eacute;</i> patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at
+the opposite side of the building.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on
+him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace
+of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less
+than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His
+opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord
+Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and
+Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for
+once&mdash;and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950
+guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.</p>
+
+<p>At the time he little realised&mdash;nor did he much care&mdash;what a bargain he
+had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St
+Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them
+&pound;300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred
+Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at
+having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>against Hermit
+so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and
+Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over &pound;100,000.</p>
+
+<p>It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the
+longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a
+smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the
+course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he
+seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling
+this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, &quot;Hermit fairly broke my
+heart. But I didn't show it, did I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely
+needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of
+more than &pound;100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was
+only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate
+of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised &pound;300,000. When the doors of
+Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present
+themselves were his agents, who handed over &pound;103,000 in settlement of
+all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored
+heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival
+had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was
+due.</p>
+
+<p>When next his lordship appeared on a race-course&mdash;it was at Ascot, a few
+months later&mdash;he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the
+bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>which must have
+taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this
+merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further
+disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first&mdash;at the
+Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park
+Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so
+much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great
+part of his Derby losses.</p>
+
+<p>When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the
+winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He
+uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to
+fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was
+helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. &quot;Tell me how I stand,&quot;
+asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The
+Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy,
+answered: &quot;You have lost &pound;23.&quot; And he, who could thus calmly calculate
+so trifling a loss, was &pound;50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the
+Plate!</p>
+
+<p>He knew well that he was a ruined man&mdash;worse than this, unutterably
+galling to his proud spirit&mdash;he knew that he was a disgraced man. His
+vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not &pound;50,000 in the world to
+pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face
+of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an
+English gentleman and a sportsman.</p>
+
+<p>He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>and hounds, and
+all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the
+wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful &pound;10,000. His last sovereign was
+gone, and he was &pound;40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he
+next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the
+echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero
+of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a
+defaulter!</p>
+
+<p>And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were
+being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of
+Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to
+suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was
+unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the
+Marquess stood to win &pound;35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.</p>
+
+<p>The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in
+the columns of the <i>Times</i>; and although Lord Hastings denied that there
+was &quot;one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses,
+correctly stated,&quot; and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the
+public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.</p>
+
+<p>So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and
+his good name that his health&mdash;undermined no doubt by excesses&mdash;broke
+down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among
+the northern seas in search of <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>health; but no sea-breezes could bring
+back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man
+before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near
+its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt
+that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the
+last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster
+races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on
+crutches.</p>
+
+<p>The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the
+Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and
+straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been
+his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled
+from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal,
+and lovingly patted her glossy neck.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his
+former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for
+life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but,
+almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up
+the struggle and drew his last breath&mdash;&quot;leaving neither heir to his
+honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in
+spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a
+perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>his first pony another
+meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and
+been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.</p>
+
+
+<p>Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and
+loved as &quot;Lord George,&quot; who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was
+the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won
+the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in
+his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too
+brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his
+own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win
+the coveted &quot;blue riband,&quot; he sold every horse in his stables at a word,
+and abandoned the Turf in despair.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord George Bentinck,&quot; wrote Thormanby, a few years ago,
+     &quot;was the idol of the sportsmen of his own day. The
+     commanding personality of the man threw a spell over all
+     with whom he was brought into contact; they were
+     half-fascinated, half-awed&mdash;judgment and criticism
+     surrendered to admiration. There are still veterans left,
+     like old John Kent, who talk with bated breath of Lord
+     George as a superior being, a god-like man, a king of
+     men.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the
+tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and
+brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and,
+like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>into hot
+water&mdash;and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such
+little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr
+exclaimed aloud: &quot;If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself,
+Colonel, I will.&quot; Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: &quot;Captain
+Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the youth and such the man&mdash;gay, debonair, and popular to the
+highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman
+he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course
+being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have
+envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale
+of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he
+often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud
+numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his
+out-of-pocket expenses ran to &pound;50,000 and more a year. To provide the
+money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of
+1843, for instance, he stood to win &pound;150,000 on his horse Gaper, and
+actually pocketed &pound;30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his
+net winnings on bets reached &pound;100,000; and he thought nothing of staking
+his entire year's private income on a single race.</p>
+
+<p>One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him&mdash;some many
+times&mdash;but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby,
+always eluded <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty.
+So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness
+of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of
+pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll sell you the lot,&quot; he impulsively said to George Payne at
+Goodwood, &quot;from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey),
+for &pound;100,000. Yes or no?&quot; Payne offered him &pound;300 to have a few hours to
+think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next
+morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was
+sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: &quot;I'll take the
+lot, Bentinck, at &pound;10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on
+the course.&quot; &quot;If you please,&quot; was Lord George's placid answer; and thus
+ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.</p>
+
+<p>And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of
+pique, for &quot;an old song&quot; was Surplice, the winner of the next year's
+Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his
+hand and had let it go!</p>
+
+<p>How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage
+in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;A few days before&mdash;it was the day after the Derby, May
+     25, 1848&mdash;the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the
+     library of the House of Commons. He was standing before
+     the bookshelves with a volume in his hand, and his
+     countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolution in
+     favour of the Colonial <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>interest, after all his labours,
+     had been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd; and on
+     the 24th, his horse, Surplice, whom he had parted with
+     among the rest of the stud, had won that paramount and
+     Olympic stake, to gain which had been the object of his
+     life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
+     sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him
+     before a heart, which he knew at least could yield him
+     sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what
+     have I sacrificed it?' he murmured. It was in vain to
+     offer solace.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the Turf.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'It is the Blue Riband of the Turf,' he slowly repeated
+     to himself; and, sitting down at a table, buried himself
+     in a folio of statistics.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found
+lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very
+morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in
+the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord
+Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on
+his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never
+made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about
+midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
+the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
+to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
+&quot;Died by the visitation of God&mdash;to wit, a spasm of the heart.&quot; Thus
+vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
+ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
+forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
+dazzling than his Turf fame.</p>
+
+<p>But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
+of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
+verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
+vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
+it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
+unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
+facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
+tragedy. &quot;The hand of God&quot; it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
+blow&mdash;it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
+one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
+although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
+doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
+perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
+it has been told.</p>
+
+<p>Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
+eligible <i>partis</i> of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
+<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>many an &quot;affair of the heart.&quot; But not one of all the high-born ladies,
+who would have turned their backs on coronets to become &quot;Lady George,&quot;
+could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
+penniless girl, who could not even boast a &quot;respectable&quot; parentage.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
+between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
+daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
+in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
+low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
+alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
+seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
+forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the
+Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth.
+It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley
+marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were
+illegitimate.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is
+said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And
+little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her
+mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and
+refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had
+enslaved. <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among
+them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder
+brother, and the future &quot;eccentric Duke&quot; of Portland, often referred to
+as &quot;The Wizard of Welbeck.&quot; The Marquess and his younger brother had
+never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when
+they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden
+this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was
+more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual
+relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the
+brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George,
+whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no
+physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant
+squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord
+George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused
+to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest,
+over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved
+fatal.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that
+September day in 1848; of that &quot;spasm of the heart&quot; which, according to
+the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George
+Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long
+mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is
+explained; <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke
+of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as
+to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother,
+however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could
+be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
+the world in sorrow and remorse?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII" /><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE WICKED BARON</h4>
+
+
+<p>The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
+sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
+fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
+and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
+fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
+Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
+Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
+man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
+was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
+with the stigma of eternal shame.</p>
+
+<p>From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
+low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
+he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
+women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
+each indulgence he <a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
+murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
+his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
+marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
+figures prominently&mdash;none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
+most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
+every man who came under the spell of her charms.</p>
+
+<p>Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
+passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
+Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
+their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
+in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
+be &quot;as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar.&quot; Dr Doran describes her as
+&quot;that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
+head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain&quot;; although, with
+all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
+of being Congreve's mistress all the time.</p>
+
+<p>Describing her charms, another chronicler says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She was of a lovely height, with dark brown hair and
+     eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushing
+     complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an
+     involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such, in the cold medium of print, was Mrs <a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>Bracegirdle when she became
+the central figure of a great tragedy, the horrors of which have sent a
+thrill down to our own time.</p>
+
+<p>Among Mrs Bracegirdle's many baffled wooers was Captain Richard Hill, a
+boon companion of Charles, Lord Mohun, and a man of unrestrained
+passion. To all the Captain's coarse advances the actress turned a
+contemptuous shoulder, until in his rage he swore that at any cost she
+should be his. There was, he was convinced, only one real obstacle to
+the success of his suit, Jack Montford, the handsomest actor of his day,
+to whom Mrs Bracegirdle was said to be very kind; and the furious
+Captain vowed: &quot;I am resolved to have the blood of Montford, and to
+carry off his charmer by force if need be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Hill made no concealment of his purpose. He mouthed his threats
+aloud at his favourite tavern in Covent Garden and elsewhere; and he
+found a willing helper in Lord Mohun, who was always ripe for any
+dastardly scheme; and, with Mohun's help, he carefully prepared his
+plans for both murder and abduction, for on both his heart was set.</p>
+
+<p>By lavish bribes the two conspirators engaged half a dozen soldiers to
+assist in their scheme; they arranged that a coach with two horses, and
+four others in reserve, should be in waiting at nine o'clock in Drury
+Lane, close to the theatre at which Mrs Bracegirdle made her appearance
+nightly; and, equipped with a formidable armoury of swords, daggers, and
+pistols, they repaired at the appointed time to the scene of action.</p>
+
+<p>For a full hour they waited, watching with lynx <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>eyes the door from
+which the fair actress would emerge; but, as luck would have it, she was
+not playing that night. She was, in fact, at the moment supping at the
+house of a friend, Mrs Page, in Princes Street, close by; and they were
+on the point of proceeding there when the lady made her appearance, with
+her mother as companion and Mr Page and her brother for escort, on her
+way home to her lodgings in Howard Street across the Strand.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of their fair prey two of the soldiers rushed forward, snatched
+Mrs Bracegirdle from her mother's arm and dragged her, screaming and
+resisting, towards the coach in which Lord Mohun was sitting by his
+cases of pistols, and in which it was intended to carry her off to
+Totteridge. When her escort rushed to her rescue, Hill struck at the old
+lady with his sword; but the cries and sounds of scuffling attracted
+such a crowd that a change of plans became necessary.</p>
+
+<p>With consummate cleverness the adroit Captain now took each of the
+ladies by the arm and coolly conducted them himself out of the crowd to
+their lodgings, Mohun and the soldiers following ignominiously behind.
+Upon reaching Howard Street, the ladies safely indoors, the soldiers
+were dismissed, and Mohun and his ally, with drawn swords, paced up and
+down the street, vowing vengeance on the unhappy Montford, whom they
+considered the cause of all their troubles, and who, sooner or later,
+must pass through Howard Street on his way to his house in Norfolk
+Street adjoining.</p>
+
+<p>For two long hours they kept their bloodthirsty vigil, feeding the
+flames of hate with copious draughts <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>of wine, which they procured from
+a neighbouring tavern. The lady had escaped them, but they would at
+least make sure of her lover, the handsome actor, who on the stroke of
+midnight turned the corner into Howard Street.</p>
+
+<p>Montford had, it appears, already heard of the frustrated attempt to
+carry off Mrs Bracegirdle, and that Mohun and Hill were keeping watch
+outside her lodgings; so that he was not unprepared for an unpleasant
+scene. Picture his amazement then when Lord Mohun advanced smilingly to
+meet him, and embraced him with a great show of affection. &quot;I am not
+prepared for such cordiality,&quot; the actor said coldly, as he disengaged
+himself from the unwelcome embrace. &quot;I should prefer to learn how you
+justify Captain Hill's abominable rudeness to a lady, or keeping company
+with such a scoundrel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the Captain, inflamed with drink, strolled insolently up
+to the pair, and, giving Montford a resounding box on the ear,
+exclaimed, &quot;Here I am to justify myself. Draw, fellow!&quot; But before
+Montford had time to recover from the blow and to unsheath his sword,
+Hill ran him through the body. Without a groan the wounded man sank to
+the ground. A cry of &quot;Murder&quot; arose; the watchmen rushed to the scene.
+But before they arrived Hill had made his escape; while Mohun, who at
+least had the courage of his race, submitted himself to arrest. His
+first question to the watchmen was, &quot;Has Hill escaped?&quot; And when he was
+assured that he had, he added: &quot;I am glad of it! I should not care if I
+were hanged for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>Such was the story which sent a thrill of horror through London on the
+day following the tragedy, and which aroused a fury of anger against the
+cowardly assassins; for not only was Jack Montford a popular idol who
+had captured all hearts with his handsome face and figure, his clever
+acting and his unaffected personal charm, but his wife, who had been
+thus tragically widowed, was one of the most gifted and delightful women
+who ever adorned the stage.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus inevitable that Lord Mohun's trial by his Peers, which was
+opened on the 31st of January 1693, in Westminster Hall, and which was
+invested with all the pomp and ceremonial befitting such an occasion,
+should attract crowds of excited spectators, curious to see the
+principal actors in this sensational drama, and burning to see justice
+done to the noble instigator of the murder. The pent-up excitement
+culminated when Mrs Bracegirdle, looking more beautiful than ever in
+spite of her pallor and evidences of suffering, entered the witness-box;
+and every word of the story she told was listened to in a silence that
+was painful in its intensity.</p>
+
+<p>In answer to the Attorney-General's request that she should &quot;give my
+lord an account of the whole of your knowledge of the attempt that was
+made upon you in Drury Lane, and what followed upon it,&quot; she said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;'My lord, I was in Prince's Street at supper at Mr
+     Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home
+     with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach
+     by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was
+     drawn, and a great many men <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>stood by it. Just as I came
+     to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and
+     pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to
+     them, and they knocked my mother down almost, for my
+     mother and my brother were with me.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;'My mother recovered and came and hung about my neck, so
+     that they could not get me into the coach, and Mr Page
+     went to call company to rescue me. Then Mr Hill came with
+     his drawn sword and struck at Mr Page and my mother; and
+     when they could not get me into the coach because company
+     came up, he said he would see me home, and he had me by
+     one hand and my mother by the other. And when we came
+     home he pulled Mr Page by the sleeve and said, &quot;Sir, I
+     would speak with you.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Pray, Mrs Bracegirdle, did you see
+     anybody in the coach when they pulled you to it?'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'Yes, my Lord Mohun was in the coach;
+     and when they pulled me to the coach I saw my Lord Mohun
+     in it. As they led me along Drury Lane, my Lord Mohun
+     came out of the coach and followed us, and all the
+     soldiers followed them; but they were dismissed, and, as
+     I said, when we came to our lodgings, Mr Hill pulled Mr
+     Page by the sleeve and said he would speak with him.
+     Saith Mr Page, &quot;Mr Hill, another time will do; to-morrow
+     will serve.&quot; With that, when I was within doors, Mr Page
+     was pulled into the house, and Mr Hill walked up and down
+     the street with his sword drawn. He had his sword drawn
+     when he came alone with me.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Did you observe him to say anything
+     whilst he was with you?'<a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a></p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'As I was going down the hill he said,
+     as he held me, that he would be revenged, but he did not
+     say on whom. When I was in the house several persons went
+     to the door, and afterwards Mrs Browne (my landlady),
+     went to the door, and spoke to them, and asked them what
+     they stayed and waited there for. At last they said they
+     stayed to be revenged of Mr Montford; and then Mrs Browne
+     came in to me and told me of it.'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;ATTORNEY-GENERAL:&mdash;'Were my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill both
+     together when that was said, that they stayed to be
+     revenged of Mr Montford?'</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;MRS BRACEGIRDLE:&mdash;'Yes, they were. And when Mrs Browne
+     came in and told me, I sent my brother and my maid and
+     all the people we could out of the house to Mrs Montford
+     to desire her to send, if she knew where her husband was,
+     to tell him of it; and she did. And when they came
+     indoors again I went to the door, and the doors were
+     shut, and I listened to hear if they were there still;
+     and my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill were walking up and down
+     the street. By-and-bye the watch came up to them, and
+     when the watch came they said, &quot;Gentlemen, why do you
+     walk with your swords drawn?&quot; Says my Lord Mohun, &quot;I am a
+     peer of England&mdash;touch me if you dare!&quot; Then the watch
+     left them, and they went away; and a little after there
+     was a cry of &quot;murder.&quot; And that is all I know, my lord.'</p></div>
+
+<p>When at the close of the case Lord Mohun was asked if he had anything to
+say in his defence, he answered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;My lords, I hope it will be no disadvantage to me my not
+     summing up my evidence like a lawyer. I <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>think I have
+     made it plainly appear that there never was any formal
+     quarrel or malice between Mr Montford and me. I have also
+     made appear the reason why we stayed so long in the
+     street, which was for Mr Hill to speak with Mrs
+     Bracegirdle and ask her pardon, and I stayed with him as
+     my friend. So plainly appeareth I had no hand in killing
+     Mr Montford, and upon the confidence of my own innocency
+     I surrendered myself to this honourable house, where I
+     know I shall have all the justice in the world.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The trial, which lasted five days, resulted in a verdict of
+acquittal&mdash;sixty-nine peers voting Lord Mohun &quot;Not Guilty,&quot; and fourteen
+finding him &quot;Guilty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One would have thought that such a severe lesson and narrow escape would
+have given Mohun pause in his career of vice and crime. On the contrary,
+it seems merely to have whetted his appetite for similar adventures. He
+plunged into still deeper dissipation; one mad revel succeeded another;
+duel followed duel, all without provocation on any part but his own. He
+killed in cold blood two more men who had innocently provoked his
+enmity, &quot;as if increase of appetite did grow by that it fed on,&quot; until
+he rightly became the most dreaded and hated man in all England, a man
+to whom a glance, a gesture, or a harmless word might mean death.</p>
+
+<p>But his evil days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died
+in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed
+<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known
+partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided
+that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there
+be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the
+fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled swordsman of his day?</p>
+
+<p>Mohun jumped at the vile suggestion, and lost no time in seeking the
+Duke and insulting him in public. His Grace, however, who knew the man's
+reputation only too well, treated the insult with the silence and
+contempt it deserved; whereupon Mohun, roused to fury by this studied
+slight, changed his <i>r&ocirc;le</i> to that of challenger. Thrice he sent his
+second, one Major-General Macartney, almost as big a scoundrel as
+himself, to the Duke's house in St James's Square; the fourth time a
+meeting was arranged for the following morning at the Ring, in Hyde
+Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night
+hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning&mdash;the morning of 15th
+November 1712&mdash;the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously
+at the Ring&mdash;in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the
+early morning hours a desolate part of the Park&mdash;and the preliminaries
+were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: &quot;I am well
+assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you
+shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton,
+will entertain you.&quot; &quot;<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>I wish for no better partner,&quot; Macartney replied;
+&quot;the Colonel may command me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords
+flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in
+lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on
+the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as
+grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the
+blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded
+in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the
+very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his
+opponent, but the others fought on&mdash;gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting,
+the strength ebbing with each thrust.</p>
+
+<p>At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword
+passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling
+forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into
+the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him
+in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it
+into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as
+fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland.</p>
+
+<p>Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen,
+he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed
+to his wounds&mdash;the &quot;Dog Mohun,&quot; as Swift called him, lying in death but
+a few yards from his victim.<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I am infinitely concerned,&quot; Swift wrote the same day,
+     &quot;for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man.
+     I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well
+earned his unenviable title, &quot;The wicked Baron.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV" /><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h4>A FAIR <i>INTRIGANTE</i></h4>
+
+
+<p>The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a
+diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a
+half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour,
+and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her
+allurements and her shame.</p>
+
+<p>If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal
+in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged
+to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centuries of
+noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or
+remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that
+is known of this Queen of <i>intrigantes</i> is that she had for father a
+worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in
+the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter
+part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and
+two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among
+his neighbours. It was at Brest that Evelyn enjoyed <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>this hospitality
+for a brief period; and the diarist has nothing but what is good to say
+of the retired tradesman.</p>
+
+<p>But the worthy merchant had his hands full with one at least of his two
+daughters, who was developing dangerous fascinations, and with them a
+precocious knowledge of how to turn them to account. He was thankful to
+pack Louise off to a boarding-school, where she seems to have led her
+teachers such a dance that it became necessary to place her in stronger
+hands; and with this view the foolish father sent her to Paris, the last
+place in the world for such a charming and designing minx, and to the
+custody of a weak-willed aunt.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have suited Louise better than this change of arena for
+the exercise of her wilfulness and witchery. Before she had been many
+days in the French capital she was able to twist her aunt round her
+little finger&mdash;indeed her power of captivating was, to the end of her
+life, her chief dower&mdash;and to obtain all the freedom she wanted. And it
+was not long before her allurements won the admiration of the dissolute
+Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France, a man skilled in all the arts
+of love. The girl's bourgeois head was completely turned by the
+splendour of her first captive; and, to make him secure, she counted no
+sacrifice too great. Not, indeed, that she ever regarded her virtue as
+anything but the principal piece she intended to play on the chessboard
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>For a few years Louise revelled in the new life <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>which the amorous Duc
+opened to her, and which only came to an end when the Admiral was
+despatched, in command of a fleet, against the Turks, an expedition from
+which he was fated never to return. Before he said good-bye, however,
+Louise took care to make the next step on her ladder of world-conquest
+secure. Through the Duc's influence she was appointed maid-of-honour to
+Madame, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., and sister to the second Charles of
+England, now restored to the throne of his fathers.</p>
+
+<p>We can well imagine that the wool merchant's daughter wasted no sighs on
+the lover she had lost. She had now a much wider and more splendid field
+at the Court of France, for the exploiting of her dangerous gifts and
+the indulgence of her ambition. That the new maid had no lack of lovers
+we may be sure; for though she was not richly dowered with beauty she
+always seems to have had a magnetic power over the hearts of men. We
+know, too, that she singled out for special favour, the Comte de Sault,
+the handsomest noble in France, a man skilled above all his fellows in
+the then moribund knightly exercises; and that her <i>liaison</i> with the
+Comte, in a court where such intimacies were the fashion, added to,
+rather than detracted from, her social prestige.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the life of Louise de Querouaille up to the time when she made
+her first acquaintance with the land in which she was destined to crown
+her adventurous career, and to make herself at once the most dazzling
+and the most hated figure in England. <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>At this time Louis' designs on
+Spain and Holland had received a rude check by the signing of an
+alliance between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces; and it
+became a matter of vital importance to detach England from a combination
+so fatal to his schemes. With this object he decided to send Henrietta,
+Duchess of Orleans, on a visit, ostensibly of affection, to her brother
+Charles II., charged with a secret mission to induce him by every
+artifice in her power to withdraw from the alliance.</p>
+
+<p>How Henrietta returned flushed with triumph from this iniquitous
+embassy, after ten days of high revelry at Dover, is well-known history.
+Charles, in response to his favourite sister's pleading and bribes, not
+only consented to desert his allies, but, as soon as he decently could,
+to follow in the steps of his brother, the Duke of York, to Rome; and in
+return for these evidences of friendship, Louis was gracious enough to
+promise him substantial aid and protection; and, further, to grant him a
+subsidy of &pound;1,000,000 a year if he would take up arms with France
+against Holland.</p>
+
+<p>It is more to our purpose to know that among the gay galaxy of courtiers
+who accompanied Madame to England was Louise de Querouaille, who thus
+first set eyes on the King, in whose life-drama she was to play so
+brilliant and baleful a <i>r&ocirc;le</i>; and that before Charles, with streaming
+eyes, said &quot;good-bye&quot; to his scheming sister, she had made excellent use
+of her opportunities to enslave this English &quot;King of Hearts.&quot; So much
+at least was reported to Louis <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>on the return of the embassy, when he
+was assured by Madame that, of all the beautiful women in her train, the
+only one to make any impression on her Royal brother was Louise de
+Querouaille.</p>
+
+<p>This information, no doubt, was in Louis' mind when, later, it became
+necessary to cement Charles's allegiance to his compact. Gold was always
+a potent lure to the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot; whose purse was never deep enough
+for the demands made on it by his extravagance; but a still more
+seductive bait was a beautiful woman to add to his seraglio. The Duchess
+of Cleveland had now lost her youth and good looks; the incomparable
+Stuart's beauty had been fatally marred by small-pox. Of all the fair
+and frail women who had held Charles in thrall there was none left to
+dispute the palm with the French maid-of-honour except Nell Gwynn, the
+Drury Lane orange-girl, whose sauciness and vulgarity gave to the jaded
+Sybarite a piquant relish to her charms.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a splendid opportunity for Louis to complete the conquest of
+his vacillating cousin whose allegiance was so vital to his plans of
+aggrandisement. Louise should go to Whitehall to play the part of
+beautiful spy on Charles, and, by her favours, to make him a pliant tool
+in the hand of &quot;le Roi Soleil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Charles, who was by no means loth to renew his Dover acquaintance with
+the bewitching maid-of-honour, sent a yacht to Dieppe to bring her to
+England, and charged no less a personage than the Duke of Buckingham to
+be her escort to Whitehall. The Duke, however, who was probably too much
+<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>occupied with his own affairs of the heart, &quot;totally forgot both the
+lady and his promise; and, leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe, to
+manage as best she could, passed over to England by way of Calais,&quot;&mdash;a
+slight which the indignant Louise never forgave.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that the new favourite of the King made her journey across
+the Channel under the escort of the English Ambassador, and was given by
+him into the charge of Buckingham's political rival, Lord Arlington.
+&quot;The Duke of Buckingham thus,&quot; to quote Bishop Burnet, &quot;lost all merit
+he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his strange
+conduct threw into the hands of his enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of the &quot;French spy,&quot; whose mission was well understood, was
+hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few
+stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent
+verses by St Evremond&mdash;efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded
+with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her
+without having even seen her was a matter of small concern&mdash;she was
+prepared for it. All she cared for was that Charles should give her a
+cordial welcome; and this he did with effusiveness and open arms. Apart
+from her character as ambassadress to his &quot;dear brother&quot; of France, she
+was a new and piquant stimulus to his sated appetite&mdash;a &quot;dainty dish to
+set before a King.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was installed at Whitehall to the flourish of trumpets; was
+appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen, who frankly disliked and dreaded
+this new rival in <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>her husband's accommodating affection; and at once
+assumed her position as chief of those women the King delighted to
+honour. And with such restraint and discretion did she conduct herself
+during these early days at Whitehall that she disarmed the jealousy of
+the Court ladies, while receiving the homage of their gallants.</p>
+
+<p>To Charles she was coyness itself&mdash;virtue personified. While smiling
+graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her
+attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she
+guard her favours that the French Ambassador began to show alarm.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I believe,&quot; he wrote at this time, &quot;that she has so got
+     round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to
+     our Sovereign lord and master, <i>if</i> she only does her
+     duty.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>That Louise was fully conscious of her duty and meant to do it, was
+never really in question&mdash;but the time to unbend was not yet. It was no
+part of her clever strategy to drop like a ripe plum into Charles's
+mouth. <i>Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter.</i> She would be accounted all
+the greater prize for proving difficult to win.</p>
+
+<p>The psychical moment, she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited
+Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where,
+removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house
+freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the
+revels of which Euston was 183 <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>the scene during a few intoxicating
+weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the
+merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, experts in gallantry,
+and his ladies, with most of whom an acquaintance with virtue was but a
+faded memory, it is no difficult matter to raise a corner of the curtain
+in imagination. One typical scene Forneron records thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium
+     of October evenings in a country-house, got up a
+     burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the
+     bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest
+     ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the
+     retirement of the former into the nuptial chamber.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was precisely such a ceremony in which, a few years earlier, Charles
+had figured with <i>La belle Stuart</i>, while Lady Castlemaine looked on
+with laughter and applause.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-184-t.jpg" alt="LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH" title="LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that
+Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed <i>maitresse en
+titre</i> to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the
+confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of
+the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of
+Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool
+merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange
+for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war
+with Holland; <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother
+and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.</p>
+
+<p>Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the
+wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a
+double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of
+a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might
+her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London,
+throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his &quot;petite
+Louise&quot; had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed
+at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for
+when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was
+probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the
+throne.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She has got the notion,&quot; wrote the French Ambassador,
+     &quot;that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She
+     talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as
+     if they were mortal.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to
+be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which,
+nominally &pound;10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of
+&pound;136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range
+of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>pardons
+and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably
+the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten
+gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with
+the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When
+Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and
+     splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice
+     or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and
+     expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed
+     some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for
+     design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of
+     the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some
+     pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of
+     the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes,
+     exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for
+     Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of
+     wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras,
+     etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides
+     some of his Majesty's best paintings!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise
+de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, &quot;gutter-rival&quot; of hers,
+Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's
+affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of
+French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a
+disconcerting <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful
+rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle
+in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
+Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court <i>salons</i> and corridors, as if
+she were carrion.</p>
+
+<p>And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
+Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to &quot;chuck
+Charles's royal chin,&quot; and to call him her &quot;Charles the third,&quot; in
+unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
+favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
+all, was no better than herself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Duchess,&quot; she would say, &quot;pretends to be a person of quality. She
+says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
+person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
+quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
+my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
+just as fond of me as he is of his French miss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
+gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
+progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
+the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
+possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
+providing a French bride for his successor, the <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>Duke of York, promise
+much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
+James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
+from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
+suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
+had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
+declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
+concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
+promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
+become her crowning ambition to win the right to a <i>tabouret</i> at the
+Court of Versailles&mdash;the highest privilege accorded to the old
+<i>noblesse</i>, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
+this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
+France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
+but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
+<i>tabouret</i> went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
+the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
+would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
+commands he might lay upon her.</p>
+
+<p>His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
+by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
+Franche Comt&eacute;, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
+discovered that for once his vaulting <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ambition had overleaped itself.
+The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
+sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
+Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
+paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
+Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
+popular rage against the &quot;painted French spy&quot; who was regarded, and
+perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
+enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
+heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
+imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
+Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
+exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless
+beauty to complete her conquest of the amorous Sovereign&mdash;&quot;the last
+conquest of her conquering eyes,&quot; as Waller wrote in his fulsome
+greeting of the new divinity of the Whitehall seraglio.</p>
+
+<p>For once Louise's indomitable courage showed signs of yielding. The
+whole armoury of fate seemed arrayed against her at this crisis in her
+life; even Louis, for whom she had striven so hard, began to distrust
+her powers and to show indifference to her. When Forneron paid her a
+visit at this time he found her in tears. &quot;She opened her heart to him,
+in the presence of her two French maids, who stood by <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>with downcast
+eyes. Tears rained down her cheeks; and her speech was broken with sobs
+and sighs.&quot; Never had this designing beauty been so near the verge of
+absolute ruin.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary perhaps to follow the Duchess through the period of
+her eclipse; to watch the weak-kneed Charles sink deeper and deeper into
+the morass of his disloyalty until, in return for a subsidy of
+&pound;4,000,000, he offered to dissolve parliament and to make England the
+bond-slave of Louis's designs on Europe; or to see Louise, the chief
+instrument of all this ignominy, reach the climax of her disgrace and
+her peril when mobs besieged Whitehall, and clamoured that the &quot;Jezebel&quot;
+should be sent to the scaffold.</p>
+
+<p>It is sufficient for our purpose to know that through all this terrible
+time she steered her way with almost superhuman skill back to the
+sunshine of success and favour. Her life-long ambition was crowned when
+Louis gave her the d'Aubigny lands and, with them, the <i>tabouret</i> which
+had so long dazzled her eyes and eluded her grasp. When the sky in
+England had at last cleared she paid a visit to her native land. For
+four ecstatic months the wool merchant's daughter made a triumphant
+progress through France, acclaimed and f&ecirc;ted as a Queen. At her castle
+of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
+to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
+her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
+visit to the Capucines in <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>Paris her approach was heralded by a
+procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
+cross. &quot;She was received,&quot; we are told, &quot;as if she were a Queen, which
+quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour.&quot; To
+such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
+actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
+reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
+favourite of the King, all his other mistresses&mdash;even the Queen herself
+being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
+did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
+himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
+England&mdash;<i>plus roi que le Roi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
+more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
+The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
+Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
+which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
+of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
+she had was the rakish Philippe de Vend&ocirc;me, grandson of Henri IV. and
+nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
+seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
+seems to have conducted an open and shameless <a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>intrigue with De
+Vend&ocirc;me&mdash;a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
+for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
+despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
+her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
+withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
+written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
+by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
+was able to breathe again.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
+the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
+courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
+light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
+was shocked at such scenes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I was told to-night,&quot; he writes, &quot;that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won &pound;15,400
+     in one night, and lost &pound;25,000 in another night at play,
+     and has played &pound;1000 and &pound;1500 at a cast.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
+     and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above &pound;8000, in doing
+     which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
+     satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
+     favour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
+them was on the night of <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>1st February 1685&mdash;the last Sunday Charles was
+permitted to spend on earth.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The great courtiers,&quot; says Evelyn, &quot;and other dissolute
+     persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
+     a bank of at least &pound;2000 before them. The King, though
+     not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
+     occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
+     shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
+     Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
+     stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
+     glorious gallery. Six days after,&quot; he adds, &quot;all was in
+     the dust.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
+concern&mdash;for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
+to Louis, her paymaster&mdash;was that Charles should at least die an avowed
+Catholic.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I found her,&quot; Barillon wrote to Louis, &quot;overcome with
+     grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
+     changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
+     and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
+     to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
+     pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
+     there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
+     not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
+     his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
+     with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
+     conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
+     near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
+     his brother's soul.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
+queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
+before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
+were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
+that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
+and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
+pension of &pound;800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
+True, she was still able to claim her <i>tabouret</i> at the Court of
+Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
+the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
+her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
+refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
+vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
+one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
+eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
+such havoc in the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV" /><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MERRY DUCHESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
+centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
+Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
+romantic and adventurous <i>r&ocirc;le</i> Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
+life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
+distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
+infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
+dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
+an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
+daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
+she was long out of the nursery she vowed that &quot;she would be a Duchess,&quot;
+and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
+of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
+short frocks she was a finished coquette.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
+precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
+his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
+where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
+the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
+of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
+now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
+appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.</p>
+
+<p>In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
+almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
+Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
+conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
+where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
+her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
+himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;
+but while, with tantalising coquetry, she kept them all dangling, one
+alone tempted her&mdash;that which was laid at her feet by the Duke of
+Hamilton, a gallant whose high rank was rivalled by his handsome face
+and figure, and his many courtly accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>When the Duke asked her to be his wife she graciously consented, and her
+Duchess's coronet seemed assured thus early, with a prospect of
+happiness that does not always accompany it; for in this case she seems
+to have given her heart where she <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>gave her hand. For a time the course
+of true love ran smoothly, and the maid-of-honour became a model of
+decorum as the affianced wife of the man she loved.</p>
+
+<p>But her dream of happiness was destined to be short-lived. An intriguing
+aunt, Mrs Hanmer, who had no love for the Hamiltons, set to work to dash
+the cup of happiness from her niece's lips. She intercepted the Duke's
+letters, poured into Elizabeth's ears poisonous stories of his
+infidelities and entanglements to account for his silence, and, when the
+poison began to show signs of working, whisked her niece away on a visit
+to the country-house of her cousin, Mr Merrill, at Lainston, where among
+her fellow-guests was a dashing young naval lieutenant, the Hon.
+Augustus Hervey, who was second heir to his father's Earldom of Bristol.</p>
+
+<p>The lieutenant, as was inevitable, perhaps, fell promptly under the
+spell of the maid-of-honour's charms, and made violent love to her,
+with, of course, Mrs Hanmer's whole-hearted connivance. The girl,
+blazing with resentment of the Duke's coldness, and his apparent
+indifference to her beauty and his vows, lent a willing ear to his
+pleadings, and within a few days had promised to be wife to a man whom,
+as she confessed later, she &quot;almost hated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was, by mutual consent, to be secret, partly on account of
+the bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear
+of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in
+1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>and made its
+way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the
+light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and
+mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which
+was to lead to such dramatic developments.</p>
+
+<p>Forty-eight hours later the bridegroom had joined his ship at
+Portsmouth; and his bride's greatest joy, as she confessed, was when he
+had departed. Such a marriage, the fruit of pique and anger, boded ill
+for happiness. Frankly, the union was one long misery, broken by the
+intervals when the husband was away at sea, and accentuated during his,
+happily brief, visits to her. Two children were born to this
+ill-assorted pair, but both died young; and Elizabeth Hervey had
+abundant opportunity to follow her natural bent, by seeking
+forgetfulness in dissipation.</p>
+
+<p>In the full glow of her beauty, a wife who was no wife, she resumed her
+broken career of conquest. She made a tour of Europe, leaving a train of
+broken-hearted and languishing lovers behind her. At Berlin she brought
+Frederick the Great to his knees, and made an abject slave of him; she
+shocked the ladies of the Dresden Court by her laxity and the prodigal
+display of her charms, and by the same arts bewitched the men. She led,
+we are told, a life of shameless dissipation, which only her beauty and
+intellectual gifts redeemed from vulgar depravity. She had lovers in
+every capital she visited, and discarded them as lightly as so many
+playthings.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to England, so anxious was she <a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>to obliterate that fatal
+episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to
+Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page
+out of the marriage register.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the naval lieutenant had blossomed into an Earl, on his
+father's death; and when the new Earl, her husband, showed signs of
+failing health, and there was an early prospect of graduating as a
+wealthy dowager Countess, she saw the wisdom of making another journey
+to Lainston to replace the record of her marriage. Alas, for her
+scheming; the moribund Earl took a new lease of life, and the gilded
+dowagerhood became nebulous and remote again.</p>
+
+<p>But Elizabeth Chudleigh was not to be long baulked in her ambitious
+designs. Though her charms had grown too opulent and were faded&mdash;for she
+was now near her fiftieth birthday&mdash;she was able to count among her
+slaves the aged Duke of Kingston, an amiable and weak old gentleman of
+enormous wealth, and with one accommodating foot already &quot;in the grave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Wife, or no wife, she now made up her mind to be a Duchess at last. She
+appealed to Lord Bristol, the husband from whom she had so long been
+estranged, to divorce her, even going so far as to offer to qualify for
+the divorce by an open and flagrant act of infidelity; but his lordship
+only shrugged a scornful shoulder. Still, not to be thwarted, she
+brought a suit of jactitation of marriage, and, by a lavish use of
+bribes and cajolery, got a <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>sentence from the Ecclesiastical Court which
+at last set her free. Within a month she had blossomed into &quot;the most
+high and <i>puissante</i> Princess, the Duchess of Kingston,&quot; thus realising
+her childish ambition.</p>
+
+<p>For four and a half years the Duchess was a dignified pattern of all the
+virtues. The passions of youth had lost their fires; the scenes of
+revelry and coarse dissipation to which they had given birth were only a
+memory. She would yet die in the odour of sanctity, however tardy. But
+storms were brewing, and the Duke's death, in 1746, precipitated them,
+though not before she had had another fling with the riches he left to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing aside her widow's weeds, she flung herself again&mdash;old, obese,
+and faded as she was&mdash;into a round of dissipation which shocked and
+disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the
+&quot;quality,&quot; until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she
+had brought on her head.</p>
+
+<p>She bought a magnificent yacht and sailed away to Rome, where Pope and
+Cardinal alike conspired to do her honour; and was only saved from
+eloping with a titled swindler by his arrest and later suicide in
+prison. It was while in Rome that news came to her that her late
+husband's heirs were planning a charge of bigamy against her, with a
+view to setting aside his will in her favour.</p>
+
+<p>Her exchequer was empty for the time; but, presenting herself before her
+banker, pistol in hand, <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>she compelled him to provide her with funds to
+enable her to return to London&mdash;to find all arrangements already made
+for her trial in Westminster Hall on a charge of bigamy. Public opinion
+was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and
+lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy
+entitled, &quot;A Trip to Calais.&quot; But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her
+fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of
+ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid
+equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene,
+smiling, contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>It was of this period of her life that the following story is told. One
+day when driving in London her gorgeous carriage was brought to a halt
+by a coal-cart which was being unloaded in a narrow street. The Duchess
+was furious at the delay, and protruding her head and shoulders from the
+carriage and leaning her arms on the door, she cried out to the
+offending carter: &quot;How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman of quality in
+the street?&quot; &quot;Woman of quality!&quot; sneered the man. &quot;Yes, fellow,&quot;
+rejoined her Grace, &quot;don't you see my arms upon my carriage?&quot; &quot;Indeed I
+do,&quot; he answered, &quot;and a pair of d&mdash;&mdash; coarse arms they are, too!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seldom has a trial excited such widespread excitement and interest.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Everybody,&quot; Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir
+     Horace Mann, &quot;is on the quest for tickets for her Grace
+     of Kingston's trial. I am persuaded that <a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>her impudence
+     will operate in some singular manner; probably she will
+     appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster
+     Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when
+     she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil
+     to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce,
+     novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think
+     cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of
+     Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles
+     the waters.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if Walpole resisted the temptation to witness a scene so piquant and
+remarkable, hundreds of the highest in the land, including Queen
+Charlotte herself, the Prince of Wales and many another Royal personage,
+ambassadors and statesmen, flocked to Westminster to see the notorious
+Duchess on her trial on the charge of bigamy. And the vast Hall was
+packed with a curious and expectant crowd when her Grace made her
+stately entry with a retinue of <i>femmes de chambre</i>, her doctor,
+apothecary, and secretary, and proceeded to her seat, in front of her
+six bewigged Counsel, with the dignified step and haughty mien of an
+Empress.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah More, who was present at the trial, says that hardly a trace of
+her once enchanting beauty was visible; and that, had it not been for
+her white face, &quot;she might easily have been taken for a bundle of
+bombasin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trial lasted several days, during the whole of which the Duchess
+conducted herself with remarkable dignity and composure, in face of the
+damning array of evidence that was brought against her&mdash;<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>the evidence of
+a maid who had witnessed her midnight marriage in Lainston Church; of
+the widow of the parson who officiated at the nuptials; and of Serjeant
+Hawkins, who authenticated the birth of her first child by Augustus
+Hervey.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The scene opened on Wednesday with all its pomp,&quot; wrote
+     Walpole, who although not present seems to have followed
+     the trial with the keenest interest, &quot;and the
+     doubly-noble prisoner went through her part with
+     universal admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious
+     folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her conduct
+     was decent, and even seemed natural. Her dress was
+     entirely black and plain; her attendants not too
+     numerous; her dismay at first perfectly unaffected. A few
+     tears balanced cheerfulness enough, and her presence of
+     mind and attention never deserted her. This rational
+     behaviour and the pleadings of her Counsel, who contended
+     for the finality of her Ecclesiastical Court's sentence
+     against a second trial, carried her triumphantly through
+     the first day, and turned the stream much in her favour.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The following day proved a much more severe test to her Grace's
+composure; and no sooner had the Court risen than &quot;she had to be
+blooded, and fell into a great passion of tears.&quot; And each succeeding
+day added to the tension and anxieties which she struggled so bravely to
+conceal.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day of the trial Walpole says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The plot thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges
+     were called on for their opinions, and <i>una voce</i>
+     dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court. The<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>
+     Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 'Life and
+     Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, <i>alias</i> Hervey,
+     <i>alias</i> the most high and <i>puissante</i> Princess, the
+     Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a
+     front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the
+     first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present
+     at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was
+     benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her
+     dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded
+     enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two
+     babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first
+     nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist
+     and become Earl of Bristol.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Three days later Horace Walpole concludes his narrative of the trial,
+which we are afraid his antipathy to the adventurous Duchess has
+coloured a little too vividly:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The wisdom of the land,&quot; he writes, &quot;has been exerted
+     for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and
+     yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess
+     to convert herself into a Duchess. After a pretty
+     defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she herself
+     had written and pronounced very well), the sages, in
+     spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished a hot iron)
+     dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the
+     fees, all voting her guilty; but the Duke of Newcastle,
+     her neighbour in the country, softening his vote by
+     adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.' So ends the
+     solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not
+     intend to leave her that title.... I am glad to have done
+     with her.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>A few days later, in spite of a writ, <i>ne exeat regno</i>, which had been
+issued against her, she was back in France, travelling in state as
+&quot;Madame la Duchesse de Kingston.&quot; From Calais she made her magnificent
+progress to Rome, where Pope and Cardinals vied in doing honour to so
+exalted and charming a lady, and entertained her as regally as if she
+had been a Queen. Returning to Calais she installed herself in a
+palatial house where she dispensed a lavish hospitality, and flung her
+gold about with prodigal hands.</p>
+
+<p>But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
+cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
+Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
+balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
+continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
+Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
+entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
+torchlight.</p>
+
+<p>Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
+in Paris, and the ch&acirc;teau of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
+alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
+Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
+by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
+of her jewels to her &quot;dear friend,&quot; the Russian Empress; a large diamond
+to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
+necklace <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
+that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
+bore the same title.</p>
+
+<p>But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
+close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
+sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
+She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
+dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. &quot;At your peril, disobey
+me!&quot; she said to her protesting attendants. &quot;I <i>will</i> get up!&quot; She got
+up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
+drained glass after glass of Madeira. &quot;I will lie down on the couch,&quot;
+she then said. &quot;I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
+again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
+felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
+fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
+life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
+pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
+found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
+indulgence of her appetites were &quot;all vanity.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI" /><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h4>THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER</h4>
+
+
+<p>If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
+whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen
+a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from
+Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of
+heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's
+blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and
+philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother,
+the lovely and frail Louise Ren&eacute;e de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
+the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women&mdash;the Duchesses of
+Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin&mdash;who spent their days in &quot;open
+dalliance&quot; with the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot; and their nights at the
+basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.</p>
+
+<p>As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast&mdash;the
+mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our
+Peerage. One <a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing
+cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his
+heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord
+Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful
+Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery;
+a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were
+immediately to be made husband and wife.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride
+the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, &quot;You are surely not going
+to marry me to that dowdy!&quot; But there was no escape; the demands of
+&quot;honour&quot; must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and
+within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were
+separated&mdash;Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his
+bride to her nursery toys.</p>
+
+<p>Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour
+round the world&mdash;a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means
+eager to renew his acquaintance with the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; who was his
+wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a
+vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no
+sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never
+yet had had power to do.</p>
+
+<p>Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. &quot;You must
+indeed be a stranger to <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>London,&quot; was the answer, &quot;if you do not know
+the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!&quot; Lady March! Could that
+exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
+married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
+introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
+indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
+his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
+the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
+without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
+a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
+the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
+mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
+nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
+George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
+pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: &quot;How do
+you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, <i>n'est-ce pas</i>?&quot;
+George was so delighted with the child's <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> that he took her up
+in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
+had promised to come and see him.</p>
+
+<p>And how the King and his &quot;little sweetheart,&quot; <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>as he called her, enjoyed
+these visits! and the merry romps they had together!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On one occasion,&quot; says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
+     of much later days), &quot;after a romp with my mother, the
+     King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
+     squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
+     to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
+     that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
+     begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
+     was quite delighted.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
+her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
+to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
+years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
+sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
+little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
+years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
+embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
+disgust: &quot;Pooh! she has grown too stupid!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
+and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend&mdash;none other
+than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
+little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
+the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
+<a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
+her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
+some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
+Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
+Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
+House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
+     When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
+     on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
+     lovely and so expressive.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
+her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
+     saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
+     hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
+     sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
+     fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
+seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it&mdash;an
+indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
+One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
+of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
+Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>summon up courage to declare
+his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
+Coronation, &quot;Ah!&quot; he exclaimed with a sigh, &quot;there will be no Coronation
+until there is a Queen.&quot; &quot;But why, sir?&quot; asked Lady Susan in surprise.
+&quot;They want me to have a foreign Queen,&quot; George answered, &quot;but I prefer
+an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
+world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: &quot;Has your
+friend given you my message?&quot; &quot;Yes, sir.&quot; &quot;And what do you think of it?
+Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
+do you think of it?&quot; &quot;Nothing, sir,&quot; Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
+downcast eyes. &quot;Pooh!&quot; exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
+&quot;nothing comes of nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
+small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
+spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
+already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
+Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
+passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
+shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
+her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, &quot;That
+will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The news of this accident, however, had a very <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>different effect on the
+young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
+passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
+surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
+to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
+to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
+unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
+and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
+Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.</p>
+
+<p>Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
+to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
+extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
+Sarah's face as she led her son away. &quot;I felt many a time,&quot; the insulted
+girl said in later years, &quot;that I should have loved to box her ears.&quot;
+But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
+the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
+such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
+brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
+George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
+attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
+rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
+rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.</p>
+
+<p>Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>lover for some days
+she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
+the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
+King that she &quot;thought nothing&quot; of his advances, had developed into the
+veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
+strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
+her own defeat.</p>
+
+<p>That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
+Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
+might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
+against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
+despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
+fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
+surrender of his liberty there was no escape.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
+quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
+favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
+Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
+was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
+life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
+the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow&mdash;to her
+vanity, if not to her heart. It was a &quot;bolt from the blue,&quot; for which
+she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I shall take care,&quot; she wrote to her friend, Lady<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>
+     Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, &quot;I shall
+     take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
+     if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
+     cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
+     what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
+     message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
+     not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
+     with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
+     not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
+     believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
+     will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
+     thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
+     shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
+     much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
+     can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
+     his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
+     as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
+     time of it.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
+Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
+consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
+of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
+retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
+no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
+compared with his ill-favoured bride, was &quot;as a queenly lily to a
+dandelion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
+Sarah's revenge, and of which <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>her son tells the following story. Among
+the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
+half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
+adherents.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
+     he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
+     knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
+     and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
+     sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
+     and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
+     know he always loved Pretenders.'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
+of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
+was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
+the score; but to one and all&mdash;including, as Walpole records, Lord
+Errol&mdash;she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
+fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
+of a mere Baronet&mdash;Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
+majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
+Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
+circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.</p>
+
+<p>More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
+baronet-husband.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;And who the d&mdash;&mdash;,&quot; she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
+     Susan, &quot;would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
+     house, good horses, greyhounds <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>for hunting, so near
+     Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
+     &pound;2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
+     would not be happy?&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
+silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
+idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
+Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
+     like my own and your description of yours, from which I
+     reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
+     me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
+     single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
+     happiest of beings.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
+she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
+flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
+rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
+resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
+He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
+not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
+handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
+baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
+with his wife. Before <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
+into a <i>liaison</i> with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
+termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
+nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
+intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
+lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
+the Leader is known to-day as the &quot;Lovers' Walk.&quot; It was a foolish
+paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
+After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
+to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate&mdash;he to travel
+abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
+brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
+(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
+night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
+chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
+that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
+remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
+bright days were still in store for her&mdash;a happy and honourable
+wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
+brother, that heralded the <a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>new dawn for her darkened life. There were
+few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
+Lord Napier, who is described as &quot;faultless in figure and features.&quot;
+When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
+he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
+but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
+he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
+years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
+of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
+not fit to be his wife.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He knows,&quot; she wrote to Lady Susan, &quot;I <i>do</i> love him;
+     and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
+     that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
+     degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
+     marrying me.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
+proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
+day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
+to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
+their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
+sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
+their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
+generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
+was the historian of the Peninsular War.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
+Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;How I wish I could go with him,&quot; she wrote; &quot;the
+     gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
+     solace into a woman's darkened heart.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
+years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
+gallant boys.</p>
+
+<p>To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
+that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
+even look on the sons she loved.</p>
+
+<p>A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
+life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
+years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
+Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
+As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
+of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
+his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
+overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
+church.</p>
+
+<p>Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
+of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
+out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
+the mental pictures that thronged her <a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>brain was, probably, that of a
+dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
+gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
+lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
+eyes, declaring that she &quot;thought nothing&quot; of her Royal lover's vows,
+though they carried a crown with them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII" /><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM</h4>
+
+
+<p>Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
+full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
+daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
+beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
+and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
+Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
+sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
+had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
+on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
+life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
+could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
+womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
+and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
+Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
+the Earl of Galloway.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>As for Susanna, the loveliest of the &quot;three Graces&quot;&mdash;&quot;Scotland's
+fairest daughter,&quot; to quote a chronicler of the time&mdash;she counted her
+high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
+long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
+luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
+stalwart and handsome young Earl&mdash;&quot;the fairest lass and bonniest lad&quot; in
+all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
+wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
+chapter of romance.</p>
+
+<p>For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
+happy.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I never thought,&quot; Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
+     &quot;that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
+     to crowd my happiness into.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.</p>
+
+<p>One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
+the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
+his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
+Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.</p>
+
+<p>After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
+of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
+continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
+advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
+Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
+jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
+the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
+leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
+from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
+unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
+the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
+horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
+roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
+with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
+drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
+to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
+antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
+entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
+dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
+tavern, where he had drunk &quot;not wisely, but too well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
+beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
+best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
+of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
+That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
+received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
+entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
+Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
+the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.</p>
+
+<p>The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
+beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
+cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
+with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
+them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
+in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
+that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
+and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
+make more lovely still.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
+dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
+model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
+passion were by no means dead in her; and to this &quot;eternal feminine&quot; we
+must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
+her story.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Countess's many servants was one <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>George Forbes, a young and
+strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
+late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
+with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
+was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
+liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
+that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
+promoted him to the charge of her stables&mdash;a proof of confidence which
+no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
+him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
+to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
+love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
+wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested&mdash;&quot;But my
+lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
+ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on.&quot;
+&quot;You must not say that,&quot; the Countess replied. &quot;You are more to me than
+rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
+you have it in your power to bestow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced,
+what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the
+consequences of such an ill-assorted union? And thus <a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>strangely and
+romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of
+Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the
+altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.</p>
+
+<p>What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.
+The Countess was disowned by her noble relatives; her friends with one
+consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the
+constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape
+with her low-born husband to the Continent.</p>
+
+<p>Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred
+contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility;
+he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she
+had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for
+which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child&mdash;the
+very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could
+not bear&mdash;was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared
+for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned,
+she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after
+nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful
+friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as
+any that has fallen to the lot of woman.</p>
+
+<p>And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains,
+and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen
+<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she
+learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice
+to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
+memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
+father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
+from her&mdash;if, indeed, they knew themselves.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
+sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
+letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
+was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
+convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
+the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
+(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
+long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
+father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
+of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
+where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
+some years.</p>
+
+<p>At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
+conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
+sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
+the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
+stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
+<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
+unwelcome.</p>
+
+<p>Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
+ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
+bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
+to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
+slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
+possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
+took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
+broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
+oppression she had left for ever.</p>
+
+<p>For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
+through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
+humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
+bread from door to door.</p>
+
+<p>At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
+fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
+farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but
+the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer
+Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last
+the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open
+arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially
+invited to make her home with them.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of Emilia's strange life-story can be <a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>told in few words. After
+a few years of peaceful and happy life in the hospitable farmhouse, she
+married the farmer's only son, an honest and worthy young fellow who
+loved her dearly. She became the mother of many children, who in their
+humble life knew nothing of their high-placed cousins, the Dukes and
+Earls of another world than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>When, in process of time, her husband died&mdash;many of her children had
+died young, the rest were far from prosperous&mdash;Mrs Lauder retired to
+spend her last days in a small cottage at St Ninian's, near Stirling,
+where for a time she lived in the utmost poverty. Then, when her life
+was almost flickering out in destitution, a few of her great relatives
+condescended to acknowledge her existence. The Earls of Galloway and
+Dunmore, the Duke of Hamilton, and Mrs Stewart Mackenzie combined to
+provide her with an annuity of &pound;100; and, thus secure against want, the
+old lady contrived to spin out the thread of her days a few years
+longer. Thus died, at the advanced age of eighty-five, eating the bread
+of charity, the woman who had in her veins the blood of Scotland's
+greatest men and her fairest women.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII" /><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h4>A NOBLE VAGABOND</h4>
+
+
+<p>The circle of the British Peerage has included many &quot;vagabonds,&quot; some of
+whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any
+one of them all has had the <i>wanderlust</i> in his veins to the same degree
+as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously
+ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been strange if this blue-blooded &quot;rolling-stone&quot; had been
+a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric
+woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who dazzled England by her beauty and
+brilliant intellect, and amused it by her oddities in the days of the
+first two Georges. This grandson of the Duke of Kingston, and
+great-grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich was &quot;his mother's
+boy&quot;&mdash;with much of his mother's physical and mental charms, and more
+than her eccentricities, as his story abundantly proves.</p>
+
+<p>As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where
+his father, the Hon. Sydney <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and
+there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English
+child to be inoculated for the small-pox. Probably, too, it was his
+boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all
+things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.</p>
+
+<p>His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy
+was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled
+against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he
+threw down his Euclid and C&aelig;sar and vanished as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in
+vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for
+his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be
+found anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the
+lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his
+father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying
+fish. &quot;That is the voice of young Montagu,&quot; he exclaimed, and promptly
+despatched his servant to bring the boy to him. The fish-seller
+innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head,
+and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.</p>
+
+<p>For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing
+that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.
+It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>to his
+master's shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice
+and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents
+and to school. Thus ignominiously ended Edward's first adventure, the
+precursor of a hundred others.</p>
+
+<p>He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he
+vanished again&mdash;this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the
+captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and
+consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into
+the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the
+vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the
+peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to
+drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by
+the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the
+prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof.</p>
+
+<p>For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his
+parents; but once more &quot;hope told a flattering tale.&quot; For the third time
+he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor
+working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This
+time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble
+any more about his prodigal son, declaring that &quot;he had made his bed and
+must lie on it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another
+mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought
+him again <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite
+clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home
+and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the
+restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that
+at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we
+find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar,
+who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of
+Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually
+developed into a pillar of the State!</p>
+
+<p>But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was
+destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep
+in debt that he vanished again&mdash;this time to escape from his creditors.
+He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed
+into the gambler and <i>rou&eacute;</i>, dividing his time between the seductive
+poles of the gaming-table and fair women.</p>
+
+<p>His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check
+one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed
+by the entry of a <i>posse</i> of officials into his room, armed with a
+warrant for his imprisonment.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On Sunday, the 31st of October 1751,&quot; Mr Montagu
+     records, &quot;when it was near one in the morning, as I was
+     undressed and going to bed, I heard a person enter my
+     room; and upon turning round and seeing a man I did not
+     know, I asked him calmly <i>what he wanted</i>? His answer was
+     that <a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a><i>I must put on my clothes.</i> I began to expostulate
+     upon the motive of his apparition, when a commissary
+     instantly entered the room with a pretty numerous
+     attendance, and told me with great gravity that he was
+     come, by virtue of a warrant for my imprisonment, to
+     carry me to the Grand Chatel&ecirc;t. I requested him again and
+     again to inform me of the crime laid to my charge; but
+     all his answer was, that <i>I must follow him</i>. I begged
+     him to give me leave to write to Lord Albemarle, the
+     English Ambassador, promising to obey the warrant if his
+     Excellency was not pleased to answer for my forthcoming.
+     But the Commissary refused me the use of pen and ink,
+     though he consented that I should send a verbal message
+     to his Excellency, telling me at the same time that he
+     would not wait the return of the messenger, because his
+     orders were to carry me instantly to prison. As
+     resistance under such circumstances must have been
+     unavailable, and might have been blameable, I obeyed the
+     warrant by following the Commissary, after ordering one
+     of my domestics to inform my Lord Albemarle of the
+     treatment I underwent.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I was carried to the Chatel&ecirc;t, where the jailors,
+     hardened by their profession, and brutal for their
+     profit, fastened upon me as upon one of those guilty
+     objects whom they lock up to be reserved for public
+     punishment; and though neither my looks nor my behaviour
+     betrayed the least symptom of guilt, yet I was treated as
+     a condemned criminal. I was thrown into prison, and
+     committed to a set of wretches who bore no character of
+     humanity but its form. My residence&mdash;to speak in the jail
+     dialect&mdash;was in the SECRET, which is no other than the
+     dungeon of the <a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>prison, where all the furniture was a
+     wretched mattress and a crazy chair. The weather was
+     cold, and I called for a fire; but I was told I could
+     have none. I was thirsty, and called for some wine and
+     water, or even a draught of water by itself, but was
+     denied it. All the favour I could obtain was a promise to
+     be waited on in the morning; and then was left by myself
+     under a hundred locks and bolts, with a bit of candle,
+     after finding that the words of my jailors were few,
+     their orders peremptory, and their favours unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I continued in this dismal dungeon till the 2nd of
+     November, entirely ignorant of the crime I was accused
+     of; but at nine in the morning of that day, I was carried
+     before a magistrate, where I underwent an examination by
+     which I understood the heads of the charge against me,
+     and which I answered in a manner that ought to have
+     cleared my own innocence.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The story of the charge and trial is a long one; but it can be briefly
+outlined as follows:&mdash;It seems that one, Abraham Paya, a Jew, who,
+disguised as &quot;Mr Roberts,&quot; was staying with a Miss Rose who was not his
+wedded wife, accused Montagu and two of his friends, Mr Taafe and Lord
+Southwell, of making him drunk as a preliminary to inveigling him into
+play and winning 870 louis d'or from him.</p>
+
+<p>As the Jew, whom his losses had sobered, refused to pay, Montagu and his
+associates had compelled him by violence and threats to give them drafts
+for the sums owing to them. Then, knowing that payment would be refused,
+&quot;Roberts&quot; shook the dust <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>of Paris off his feet, turned his back on lady
+and creditors alike, and ran away to Lyons. Whereupon, so said the
+complainant, Montagu and his fellow-thieves had ransacked his baggage
+(which he had foolishly left behind him), and appropriated all his money
+and jewels, to the value of many thousands of livres.</p>
+
+<p>To quote Mr Montagu again, the latter part of the charge was that Mr
+Taafe</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;smashed all the trunks, portmanteaus and drawers
+     belonging to the complainant, from whence he took out in
+     one bag 400 louis d'or, and out of another, to the value
+     of 300 louis d'or in French and Portuguese silver; from
+     another bag, 1200 livres in crown pieces, a pair of
+     brilliant diamond buckles, for which the complainant paid
+     8020 livres to the Sieur Pi&eacute;rre; his own picture set
+     around with diamonds to the amount of 1200 livres ...
+     laces to the amount of 3000 livres, seven or eight
+     women's robes; two brilliant diamond rings, several gold
+     snuff-boxes, a travelling-chest containing his plate and
+     china, and divers other effects, all of which Mr Taafe
+     (one of Montagu's co-defendants) packed up in one box,
+     and, by the help of his footman, carried in a coach to
+     his own apartment. That afterwards Mr Taafe carried Miss
+     Rose and her sister in another coach to his lodgings,
+     where they remained three days, and then sent them to
+     London, under the care of one of his friends.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Fortunately for Montagu, the verdict of the Court was in his favour;
+and, after such an unpleasant experience, he was glad to return to
+England, where, <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>such an adept at quick-changing was he, that we soon
+find him a full-blown Member of Parliament for Bossinery, lightening his
+legislative labours by writing a learned treatise on the rise and fall
+of ancient Republics. Was there ever such a man? Duke's grandson,
+fish-hawker, common sailor, peasant, <i>rou&eacute;</i>, gambler, Member of
+Parliament, scholar&mdash;all <i>r&ocirc;les</i> came equally easily to him; and many
+more just as varied were to follow. It was while thus wearing the halo
+of learning and high respectability that his father died, leaving him a
+substantial income, and a large estate in Yorkshire to his eldest son,
+if he should have one. And now we find him leaving his law-making and
+cultivating letters and science in Italy, further enriched by the guinea
+which was all his mother, Lady Mary, condescended to leave her vagrant
+son. The rest&mdash;an enormous property&mdash;went to his sister, the Countess of
+Bute.</p>
+
+<p>From Italy he went on a long tour through the East, where he seems to
+have played the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of Lothario very effectually. At Alexandria (to
+give only one of his love adventures) he lost his fickle heart to the
+beautiful wife of the Danish Ambassador, whom, under various pretences,
+he induced to leave the coast clear by getting him to go to Holland. The
+husband thus safely out of the way, Montagu proceeded to dispose of him.
+He showed the lady a letter from Holland giving sad details of his
+sudden death, and consoled the bereaved &quot;widow&quot; so well that she
+consented to reward him with her hand and to accompany him to Syria.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>By the time the dead husband had returned to life Montagu was already
+weary of honeymooning, and was thankful to make his escape to Italy,
+free to woo, and, if necessary, to wed again.</p>
+
+<p>We next find this human chameleon at Venice, wearing a beard down to his
+waist, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and drinking water, and
+recounting his adventures to all who cared to hear them. He was an
+Armenian, and played the part to perfection&mdash;until he wearied of it, and
+found another to play. At this time he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I have been a labourer in the fields of Switzerland and
+     Holland, and have not disdained the humble profession of
+     postillion and ploughman. I was a <i>petit maitre</i> at
+     Paris, and an abb&eacute; at Rome. I put on, at Hamburg, the
+     Lutheran ruff, and with a triple chin and a formal
+     countenance I dealt about me the word of God so as to
+     excite the envy of the clergy. My fate was similar to
+     that of a guinea, which at one time is in the hands of a
+     Queen, and at another is in the fob of a greasy
+     Israelite.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>From land to land he wandered, assuming a fresh character in each, and
+thoroughly enjoying them all. During a two years' residence at Venice he
+was visited by the Duke of Hamilton and a Dr Moore, the latter of whom
+gives the following entertaining account of the visit.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;He met us,&quot; Dr Moore writes, &quot;at the stairhead, and led
+     us through some apartments furnished in the Venetian
+     manner, into an inner room quite in a different style.
+     There were no chairs, but he <a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>desired us to seat
+     ourselves on a sofa, while he placed himself on a cushion
+     on the floor, with his legs crossed, in the Turkish
+     fashion. A young black slave sate by him; and a venerable
+     old man with a long beard served us with coffee. After
+     this collation, some aromatic gums were brought and burnt
+     in a little silver vessel. Mr Montagu held his nose over
+     the steam for some minutes, and snuffed up the perfume
+     with peculiar satisfaction; he afterwards endeavoured to
+     collect the smoke with his hands, spreading and rubbing
+     it carefully along his beard, which hung in hoary
+     ringlets to his girdle. This manner of perfuming the
+     beard seems more cleanly, and rather an improvement upon
+     that used by the Jews in ancient times.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;We had a great conversation with this venerable-looking
+     person, who is, to the last degree, acute, communicative,
+     and entertaining, and in whose discourse and manners are
+     blended the vivacity of a Frenchman with the gravity of a
+     Turk. We found him, however, wonderfully prejudiced in
+     favour of the Turkish characters and manners, which he
+     thinks infinitely preferable to the European, or those of
+     any other nation. He describes the Turks in general as a
+     people of great sense and integrity; the most hospitable,
+     generous, and the happiest of mankind. He talks of
+     returning as soon as possible to Egypt, which he paints
+     as a perfect paradise. Though Mr Montagu hardly ever
+     stirs abroad, he returned the Duke's visit, and as we
+     were not provided with cushions, he sate, while he
+     stayed, upon a sofa with his legs under him, as he had
+     done at his own house. This posture, by long habit, has
+     become the most agreeable to him, and he insists upon its
+     being <a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>by far the most natural and convenient; but,
+     indeed, he seems to cherish the same opinion with regard
+     to all customs which prevail among the Turks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was during this interview that Mr Montagu declared: &quot;I have never
+once been guilty of a small folly in the whole course of my
+life&quot;&mdash;probably making the mental reservation that all his follies had
+been great ones. Thus this singular sprig of nobility drifted through
+his kaleidoscopic life, changing his religion as lightly as he changed
+from priest to ploughman, or from debauchee to Armenian storyteller.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever did was the publication of the
+following advertisement, the object of which was evidently to secure the
+large Yorkshire estate devised by his father to any son he might have:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;MATRIMONY.&mdash;A gentleman who hath filled two succeeding
+     seats in Parliament, is near sixty years of age, lives in
+     great splendour and hospitality, and from whom a
+     considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue,
+     hath no objection to marry any lady, provided the party
+     be of genteel birth, polished manners, and about to
+     become a mother. Letters directed to &mdash;&mdash; Brecknock,
+     Esq., at Wills's Coffeehouse, facing the Admiralty, will
+     be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every
+     possible mark of respect.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>At this time Montagu was the father of three children&mdash;two sons (one a
+black boy of thirteen, who <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>was his favourite companion) and a daughter;
+but they all lacked the sanction of the altar.</p>
+
+<p>A lady answering these delicate requirements was actually found, and
+Montagu would probably have graduated as a respectable husband and
+father of another man's child had not his vagabond career been cut
+tragically short. One day, when he was dining at Padua with Romney, the
+famous artist, a partridge-bone lodged in the old man's throat, and
+refused to budge. He was suffocating; his face grew purple&mdash;almost
+black. In terrified haste a priest was summoned to administer the last
+consolations of religion; but the dying man would have none of him. When
+he was asked in what faith he wished to leave the world, he gasped, &quot;A
+good Mussulman, I hope.&quot; A few moments later Edward Wortley Montagu, who
+had played more parts on the world's stage than almost any other man who
+ever lived, was a corpse. This grandson of a Duke had begun his life of
+adventure as a fish-hawker, and ended it as &quot;a good Mussulman.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX" /><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h4>FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS</h4>
+
+
+<p>Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
+third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
+Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
+coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
+allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
+the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.</p>
+
+<p>The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
+with one foot in the grave, when the &quot;nightingale&quot; of the London
+theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
+her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
+twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
+Channel.</p>
+
+<p>Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
+him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
+Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
+     me an account of the excessive <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>sufferings he had passed
+     through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
+     he had ended his domestic affairs through such
+     difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
+     of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
+     the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
+     (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
+     only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
+     since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
+     her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
+     of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
+     travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
+     has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
+     thing, persuade him to spare himself.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
+for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
+Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
+his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
+more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
+the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
+but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
+and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous <i>Beggar's Opera</i> that pointed
+the way to three of them.</p>
+
+<p>Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
+Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
+might&mdash;<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>indeed, he could not have failed to&mdash;have made the acquaintance
+of a &quot;little witch&quot; (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
+destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
+dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
+Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
+favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
+coffee-house.</p>
+
+<p>She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
+with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
+drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
+all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
+take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
+her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
+her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in <i>The Orphan</i>. Her
+<i>d&eacute;but</i> was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
+wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
+Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
+gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
+over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
+laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
+than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.</p>
+
+<p>Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
+<i>Beaux's Stratagem</i> with <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>brilliant success she was offered the part of
+Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
+the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
+doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
+intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
+filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
+painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
+forth&mdash;&quot;The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum.&quot; And the
+news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
+tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
+of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
+no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
+the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
+Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.</p>
+
+<p>As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
+opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
+cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
+Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.</p>
+
+<p>Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
+who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
+in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
+child the sweetness of her voice <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>and the grace of her movements charmed
+all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
+and when only sixteen she made a brilliant <i>d&eacute;but</i> as Polly, recalling
+all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. &quot;So
+pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
+the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
+that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage.&quot; It is little wonder
+that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
+personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
+fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
+brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
+her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.</p>
+
+<p>Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
+London was losing its head over still another &quot;Polly Peachum&quot;&mdash;Catherine
+Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
+Stephens, who like her predecessors in the <i>r&ocirc;le</i>, sang divinely even as
+a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
+fame at a bound, as Mandano in <i>Artaxerxes</i>. One triumph succeeded
+another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
+<i>Beggar's Opera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
+too much wedded to her <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
+even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
+verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
+became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
+The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
+her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
+a year of their nuptial-day.</p>
+
+<p>Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet&mdash;and before&mdash;many an actress
+has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
+who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
+the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
+potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
+premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
+Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
+gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
+possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
+girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
+make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
+Bickerstaff's <i>Love in a Village.</i></p>
+
+<p>So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
+made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in <i>She Stoops to
+Conquer</i>; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
+of theatre-going London; <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>while her refinement, at that time by no means
+common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
+circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
+sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
+his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
+statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
+fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
+Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
+of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
+at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
+persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
+placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
+Grosvenor Square house.</p>
+
+<p>For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
+splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
+George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
+blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
+beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
+Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
+girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
+buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
+of things theatrical was in her veins; and while <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>she was still playing
+with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
+Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
+won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
+a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
+London and to a wider sphere of activity.</p>
+
+<p>From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
+     the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
+     genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
+     make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
+     juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
+     subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
+     very long family, to which I have given a decided
+     negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
+     seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
+     is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
+     the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
+     forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
+     companions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
+gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
+discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
+ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
+the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
+firmament of the drama, winning as much <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>popularity off as on the stage,
+before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
+sought it&mdash;Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
+distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as &quot;my Lady,&quot; and to
+see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
+the second Earl of Listowel.</p>
+
+<p>Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
+another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
+Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
+cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
+at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
+actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
+Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
+flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
+it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
+theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
+time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
+to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in <i>The Provoked
+Husband</i>; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
+been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
+not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
+beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, &quot;combined the stateliness
+of Juno with the gentler <a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>and beauty of a Venus,&quot; made her a Queen of
+Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
+left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
+blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
+Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
+stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
+record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
+had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
+nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
+enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-252-t.jpg" alt="HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS" title="HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS" />
+</div>
+
+<p>For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
+with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
+theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
+the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in <i>The Rivals</i>, to her farewell
+appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
+career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
+chronicler,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
+     her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
+     fascinations.</p></div>
+
+<p>That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
+army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
+a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
+money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
+had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
+though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
+have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
+used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
+into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
+generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
+was too good.</p>
+
+<p>One day&mdash;it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale&mdash;Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
+came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
+diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
+Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
+its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: &quot;How happy I should be with such
+a splendid piece of jewellery!&quot; &quot;What is it worth?&quot; enquired her
+husband. &quot;I could not possibly part with it for less than &pound;15,000,&quot; the
+jeweller replied. &quot;Bring me a pen and ink,&quot; was the only remark of the
+doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
+delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore<br /></span>
+<span>Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this devotion&mdash;idolatry almost&mdash;lasted as long as life itself,
+reaching its climax in his will, in <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>which he left his actress-wife
+every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to &pound;900,000, &quot;for her
+sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
+deduction of a single legacy to any other person.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
+of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
+retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
+Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
+Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
+her one June day in 1827.</p>
+
+<p>For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
+her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
+charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
+alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
+home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
+Queens.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory,&quot; Mr
+     Howitt records, &quot;her splendid f&ecirc;tes to Royalty, in some
+     of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
+     bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
+     trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
+     music.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
+proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
+she <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>possessed, a fortune now swollen to &pound;1,800,000, to Miss Angela
+Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
+a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
+proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
+vast wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
+stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
+Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
+into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX" /><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h4>A PEASANT COUNTESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
+traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
+which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
+the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
+under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
+was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
+of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.</p>
+
+<p>He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
+thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
+twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
+village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
+pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
+storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
+handsomely. &quot;I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on,&quot; added the
+weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
+to offer him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>Very well,&quot; said the farmer, relenting. &quot;Come in, and we'll do the
+best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
+out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that.&quot; And a few
+minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
+kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
+overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
+of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
+travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
+proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
+the man he was thus &quot;entertaining unawares,&quot; or all that was to come
+from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
+so entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
+man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
+the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
+his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
+and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
+their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
+famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
+Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
+<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;he had four places of residence&mdash;his lodgings at Court,
+     his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
+     his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
+     to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
+     London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
+     without counting those who attended him in public.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
+     tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
+     always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
+     Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
+     more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
+     royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
+     Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
+     cost between &pound;1,000 and &pound;2,000), the only wonder is that
+     his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
+     leave his son &pound;25,000 in money and valuable effects,
+     besides &pound;4,000 a year in landed estates.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
+raised to Earldoms&mdash;of Exeter and Salisbury&mdash;on the same day.</p>
+
+<p>Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms&mdash;that of
+Exeter&mdash;and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
+although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
+his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
+the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
+married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>Miss Vernon,
+who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
+far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
+liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
+months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.</p>
+
+<p>Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
+a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
+determined that if ever he took another wife she should be &quot;a plain,
+homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
+her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
+Queen.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
+knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
+&quot;beggar-maid&quot; who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
+not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
+could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
+of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
+village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
+his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
+was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
+of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
+of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>summers,
+with a complexion of &quot;cream and roses,&quot; with a wealth of brown hair, and
+lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
+good-looking stranger.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
+responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
+following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
+showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
+and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
+a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
+spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
+pay well for the hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
+pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
+they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
+were halcyon days for the world-weary man&mdash;delightful days of sketching
+in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
+spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
+the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
+Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
+butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
+outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
+heads in glory.</p>
+
+<p>To Sarah he was known as &quot;Mr Jones&quot;; and to her innocent mind it never
+occurred that he could be <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>other than the painter he professed to be.
+The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
+pleasant man who always gave them a cheery &quot;good-day,&quot; and gossiped with
+them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
+connected with him, all agreed. &quot;Painter chaps&quot; were notoriously poor,
+and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
+he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
+Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
+doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
+must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
+coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
+relieved of their valuables.</p>
+
+<p>Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
+village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
+house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a &quot;mint o' money.&quot; But Mr
+Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
+than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
+of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
+&quot;beggar-maid,&quot; and happiness was at last within his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
+good lady was indignant. &quot;Marry Sarah!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;What, to a fine
+gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>But the farmer for once put his foot down. &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, &quot;he shall
+marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
+too, and plenty of money to keep her?&quot; And thus it came to pass that one
+October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
+put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
+a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
+altar by her &quot;highwayman&quot; bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the
+fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh
+Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded,
+and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even
+appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while
+under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the
+village gossips, &quot;quite the lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this
+idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he
+had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the
+world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of
+peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the
+coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take
+them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the
+&quot;baubles,&quot; and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had
+turned his back?</p>
+
+<p>The struggle between duty and inclination was <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>long and bitter; but in
+the end duty carried the day. He would go to &quot;Burghley House by Stamford
+Town,&quot; and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his
+wife he merely said: &quot;To-morrow we must start on a journey to
+Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together,&quot; a
+proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see
+something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak next morning &quot;Mr Jones&quot; said good-bye to his kind hosts and
+relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting
+his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant
+Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they
+rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to
+the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some
+modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure
+artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he
+not her hero, one of &quot;Nature's gentlemen,&quot; and as such the equal of any
+man in the land?</p>
+
+<p>At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days,
+they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at
+sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, &quot;Oh, what a
+beautiful house!&quot; &quot;Yes,&quot; answered her husband, reining in his horse to
+enjoy the view; &quot;it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
+Sally, to be its mistress?&quot; Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
+&quot;Only fancy <i>me</i>,&quot; she said, &quot;<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>mistress of such a noble house! It's too
+funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
+live in it!&quot; &quot;I am so glad you like it, darling,&quot; answered her husband,
+as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; &quot;for it
+is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you&mdash;well, you are my
+Countess&mdash;and my Queen.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'<br /></span>
+<span>She believed him wild, but his words were truth,<br /></span>
+<span>For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, &quot;blow his horn with a
+lordly air&quot;; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
+Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Many a gallant gay domestic<br /></span>
+<span>Bow before him at the door;<br /></span>
+<span>And they speak in gentle murmur<br /></span>
+<span>When they answer to his call,<br /></span>
+<span>While he treads with footsteps firmer<br /></span>
+<span>Leading on from hall to hall.<br /></span>
+<span>And while now she wanders blindly,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor the meaning can divine,<br /></span>
+<span>Proudly turns he round and kindly,<br /></span>
+<span>'All of that is mine and thine.'&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
+chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
+army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
+county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
+by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
+heroine.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
+splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
+dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
+bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
+transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
+roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, &quot;like a lily
+drooping, she bowed down her head and died,&quot; tenderly and lovingly
+nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
+promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
+daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond&mdash;thus mingling the peasant blood
+of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the &quot;Merrie Monarch,&quot;&mdash;and survived
+until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable
+Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of
+Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic
+beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by &quot;Mr
+Jones, the highwayman,&quot; when George the Third was King.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI" /><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h4>THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN</h4>
+
+
+<p>When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was
+already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to
+kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke
+contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere
+squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than
+Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry
+VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with
+ill-gotten gold, and paid for his enterprise with his head when the
+eighth Henry set himself to the paying off of old scores. His father,
+the knight, was that John Dudley, King Henry's trusted friend and
+executor of his will, Admiral and Earl Marshal of England, whose
+splendid gifts and boundless ambition won a dukedom for him, and made
+him for a time more powerful than his King.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-266-t.jpg" alt="ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER" title="ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Such was the parentage of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's
+fifth son, who inherited, with his grandfather's scheming brain and
+plausible <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>tongue, the ambition and love of splendour which made his
+father the most brilliant subject of two kings. And this great, if
+dangerous heritage was not long in manifesting itself in the young
+lordling, who was destined to add to his family's story a chapter more
+romantic and dazzling than that of which his father was the hero.</p>
+
+<p>As a boy in the schoolroom he was quick to show gifts of mind almost
+phenomenal in one so young. Latin and Italian, mathematics and abstruse
+sciences came as easily to this scion of the Dudleys as reading and
+arithmetic to less-dowered boys. And with this precocity of mind he
+developed physical graces and skill no less remarkable until, by the
+time he was well in his 'teens, few grown men could ride a horse, couch
+a lance, or speed an arrow with such skill as he.</p>
+
+<p>At the Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome
+boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
+promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
+still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
+Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
+who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
+precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
+accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
+the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
+as best man.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it was really a love-match or not is <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>open to doubt, perhaps;
+for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
+bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
+exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
+XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
+knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
+was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
+to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
+son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
+unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
+which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
+soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
+in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
+blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
+Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
+a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
+the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
+<i>entourage</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
+unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
+a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
+Edward, on his death-bed, to <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>nominate as his successor; and
+Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
+insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
+scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
+his daring project failed is well-known history&mdash;how the Princess Mary
+on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
+intercept her; how she equally outwitted Northumberland and his army,
+and made her triumphant entry into London as Queen; and how her
+vengeance fell on those who had sought to snatch the crown from her.</p>
+
+<p>From the Duke and Lady Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had
+conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided
+ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband
+were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those
+who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious
+hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of
+their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll
+disconsolately on the Tower leads by way of melancholy exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Robert, it is said, found many of these hours of duress far from
+unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the
+Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the
+throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there
+were many sweet and stolen meetings between the fair young Princess and
+the captive knight, when bribed warders turned a <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>blind eye on their
+dallying. And rumour even goes so far as to speak of secret nuptials,
+the fruits of which were, in late years, to bear such high names as my
+Lord of Essex and Francis Bacon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fairy tales,&quot; no doubt; but, stripped of such ornamental embellishment,
+there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that
+Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in
+whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should
+wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant to her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>A year of such pleasantly-qualified captivity, and Robert Dudley was a
+free man again, sent to purge his treason, by a Queen, indulgent to his
+youth and it may be to his good looks, by wielding a sword in the war
+then raging between Spain and France; and here he acquitted himself so
+valiantly for Mary's Spanish allies that, on his return in 1558, covered
+with glory, the ban on the Dudleys was removed; and Robert and his
+brothers and sisters were restored to all the rank and rights their
+father's treason had forfeited.</p>
+
+<p>A few months later Queen Mary died; and when Elizabeth ascended the
+throne, Dudley's sun burst into splendour. The romance which had been
+cradled amidst the fearful joys of prison-meetings, was now to flourish
+under vastly-changed conditions. That the new Queen had lost her heart
+to the handsome and accomplished cavalier, whose prowess in war had set
+the seal on the favour won by his graces <a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>of person and mind and his
+ingratiating charm, there can be small doubt; and as little that Dudley,
+forgetful of the wife left to pine in solitude in her Norfolk home,
+returned the devotion of the lady, now his Sovereign, who had made his
+Tower prison a palace of delight.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Elizabeth make any concealment of her passion. She was a Queen;
+and none should question her right to smile on any man, be he subject or
+king. Before she had been a year on the Throne, Dudley was proudly
+wearing the coveted Garter; was a Privy Councillor and Master of Her
+Majesty's horse. She gave him fat lands and monasteries to add to the
+large possessions with which her brother Edward had endowed his
+favourite; and wherever she went on her Royal progresses, Robert Dudley
+rode gallantly at her right hand, a King in all but name. And no Queen
+ever had more splendid escort.</p>
+
+<p>He was, indeed, a man after her own heart, the <i>beau ideal</i> of a
+cavalier; a lover, like herself, of pomp and splendour, a past-master of
+the arts of pageantry and pleasure, and the owner of a tongue as skilled
+in the language of adroit flattery as in the use of honeyed words. Such
+was Robert Dudley who loved his Queen; and such the Queen who returned
+undisguised admiration for flattery, and love for love.</p>
+
+<p>That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's
+hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to
+press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her.
+Her hand was her own as much as <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>her Crown&mdash;she would dispose of it as
+she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her
+people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as
+indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could
+afford to smile at them all&mdash;and she did.</p>
+
+<p>And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the
+Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in
+Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then,
+and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to
+wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it;
+and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for
+deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice.
+Dudley's wife had been poisoned&mdash;by her husband, it was said with bated
+breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish
+Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that &quot;Lord
+Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a
+staircase.&quot; And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While
+Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his
+devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a
+staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.</p>
+
+<p>How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the
+questions that passed fear-fully <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>from mouth to mouth, from end to end
+of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on
+what must always remain more or less a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart
+(for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose
+early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and
+suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was
+staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair
+at Abingdon. &quot;As for me,&quot; she said, &quot;I shall be quite happy alone. I
+have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are
+enjoying themselves, even if I cannot.&quot; Eagerly responsive to such a
+welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the
+hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy
+Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose
+suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing,
+and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants
+returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.</p>
+
+<p>Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either
+conclusion, and gave as their verdict &quot;accidental death.&quot; That Amy
+Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret
+to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release
+death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting
+this <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley
+as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed
+one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall
+succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose
+that Amy Robsart by her own act&mdash;wilful, at the dictate of a brain
+disordered by grief, or accidental&mdash;removed the barrier to her husband's
+passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not
+actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no
+pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.</p>
+
+<p>His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the
+unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent
+than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to
+claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in
+no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to
+distraction by her caprices. One moment she would &quot;rap him on the
+knuckles,&quot; only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would
+flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection;
+the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing
+the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one
+Royal offer of marriage after another&mdash;now it was Philip, the Spanish
+King, now His Majesty of <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>Sweden&mdash;canvassing their respective merits and
+charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured
+to ridicule his august rivals.</p>
+
+<p>She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a
+match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a
+worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long
+dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester
+was no unfit husband for her &quot;Royal sister&quot;; certainly a much more
+possible personage than &quot;Sir Robert&quot; could have been. But she never
+intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was
+relieved&mdash;though she affected to be angry&mdash;when news came that Mary had
+chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's
+gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and
+power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced
+her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a
+princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her
+deputy&mdash;to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in
+her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
+the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the &quot;country squire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
+wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. &quot;I am
+spoken <a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>of,&quot; she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, &quot;as if I
+were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
+because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
+young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
+they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
+it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
+calumny will not fasten on me for ever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
+allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
+which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
+once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
+from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.</p>
+
+<p>To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
+indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
+gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
+to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
+cunningly-devised entertainments&mdash;from the splendid pageantry of her
+welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
+bear-baiting&mdash;all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
+most gorgeous of Queens had never known.</p>
+
+<p>Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
+affections of his Sovereign&mdash;a pre-eminence which was never seriously
+endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>transferred to other
+women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
+outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
+she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
+Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
+aroused. &quot;If a man may flirt,&quot; she would mockingly say, &quot;why not a
+woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?&quot; And, of course, to this
+question there was no other answer for my lord than to &quot;kiss and be
+friends,&quot; and to promise to be more discreet in the future.</p>
+
+<p>But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
+all his vows could not long be true even to his Queen. He lost his heart
+to the lovely wife of Lord Sheffield; and when her husband died
+conveniently and mysteriously (it was said that Leicester, with his
+doctor's help, removed him by a dose of poison) it was not long before
+he wedded her in secret, only just in time to make her child, whose
+name, &quot;Robert Dudley,&quot; made no concealment of his parentage, legitimate.
+Before the child was many months old, however, the father was caught in
+the toils of another charmer, my Lady Essex, and after deserting his
+wife and, it is said, unsuccessfully trying to poison her, he made Lady
+Essex his Countess, in defiance of that secret wedding with Sheffield's
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that
+attended it, reached the Queen's ears, her rage knew no bounds. She
+vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his
+head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>only when her
+anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and
+she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her &quot;sweet
+Robin&quot; was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to
+resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies
+seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty
+and his love-making had ever done.</p>
+
+<p>These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed. When, in
+1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the
+struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the
+expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a
+quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and
+his fellow Princess-captive's side to give his sword its baptism of
+blood in Picardy. At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the
+great English Earl and friend of England's Queen was received with the
+rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.
+All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and
+before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at
+Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and
+insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land
+he had come to save.</p>
+
+<p>Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester's ambition to resist.
+Without troubling to consult his <a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>Sovereign at home he accepted the
+&quot;throne&quot; that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had
+elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news
+of his promotion. Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed
+by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had
+heard news of her favourite's presumption, and her Royal anger blazed
+into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without
+consulting her pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the
+Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out
+the vials of her wrath on Leicester's head.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been
+     used,&quot; she wrote, &quot;you shall by the bearer understand. We
+     could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in
+     experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+     extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of
+     this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken
+     our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in
+     honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and
+     commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart,
+     you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey
+     and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you
+     to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will
+     answer the contrary at your uttermost peril.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>One can imagine Leicester's feelings on reading such words of Royal
+anger and reproach from the woman who had always shown such indulgence
+to him. His impulse was to resign his governorship <a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>forthwith, and to
+hasten back to London to beg forgiveness on his knees; but before he
+could give effect to this decision he had learned that Burghley had
+interceded for him with the Queen to such effect that, supported by a
+petition from the States-General, he was to be allowed to retain his
+office with Elizabeth's reluctant consent.</p>
+
+<p>A few months of rule, however, were sufficient to disillusionise the
+Dutchmen. Leicester proved as incapable to govern a country, as to lead
+an army. His arrogance, his outspoken contempt for his subjects, his
+incompetence and his capricious temper, so thoroughly disgusted the
+nation that had welcomed him with open arms, that he was asked to resign
+his office as unanimously as he had been invited to accept it; and in
+November of 1587, the Earl returned ignominiously to England, eager to
+repair his damaged credit by at least making peace with his Queen.</p>
+
+<p>To his delight he was received with as much cordiality as if he had done
+naught at all to earn his Lady's displeasure. Elizabeth had undoubtedly
+missed her favourite, her right-hand man. She had in fact become so
+accustomed to him that she could not be long happy unless he was at her
+side; and it was by her side that he rode and shared the acclamations
+with which her soldiers greeted her when she paid that historic visit to
+the camp at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada.</p>
+
+<p>But Leicester's adventurous life was now drifting to its close. His
+health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588,
+he left <a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking
+healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many letters to
+the Queen.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I most humbly beseech your Majesty,&quot; he wrote, &quot;to
+     pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending
+     to know how my gracious Lady doth and what ease of her
+     late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this
+     world I do pray for is for her to have good health and
+     long life. For my own poor case I continue still your
+     medicine, and find it amend much better than with any
+     other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find
+     perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my
+     wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation,
+     I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycott
+     this Thursday morning ready to take on my journey. By
+     your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant,&mdash;
+     R. LEYCESTER.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But the Earl was not destined to reach the baths. His course was run. He
+got as far on his journey as Coventry; and there, on the 4th of
+September, he drew his last breath. Some said that his end was hastened
+by a dose of poison administered by his Countess, eager to pursue
+unchecked her intrigue with Christopher Blount; others that she
+accidentally gave him a draught from a bottle of poison which he had
+designed for her. But neither suspicion seems to have any evidence to
+support it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus perished, little past the prime of life, a man who more than any
+other of his day drained the cup of pride and pleasure, to find its
+dregs exceeding bitter to the taste.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII" /><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h4>TWO IRISH BEAUTIES</h4>
+
+
+<p>In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high
+excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of
+Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
+man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
+to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
+pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
+     like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
+     other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
+     drawn over them.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
+ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
+Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
+happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
+life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
+the time <a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
+modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
+mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
+first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
+statement of fact. The young &quot;bloods&quot; of the capital were their slaves
+to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
+gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
+with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
+is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
+hugged each in turn, declared that she &quot;had never seen anything half so
+sweet&quot;; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
+the majesty of their beauty.</p>
+
+<p>It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
+they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
+birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
+danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
+and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
+on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
+sight.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;With Betty as with Maria,&quot; says Mr Frankfort Moore, &quot;the
+     art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
+     languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
+     movements of her feet and lithe <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>body, and the curves
+     made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
+     everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the
+     coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her
+     movements&mdash;all the graces and charms inwoven that make up
+     the poem of the minuet&mdash;became visible by the art of that
+     exquisite girl, until all other dancers became
+     common-place by comparison.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters
+were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests
+they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried
+away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot,
+appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected
+their rescue.</p>
+
+<p>But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs
+Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in
+their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl&mdash;certainly not an
+Irish squire or impoverished lord&mdash;was a fitting match for her
+daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with
+their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across
+the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike
+in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly
+brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a
+pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes
+and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less
+radiant than her dashing sister.<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Each was,&quot; to quote another description, &quot;divinely tall,
+     with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity
+     enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head.
+     Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with
+     their long, slender tapering fingers.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in
+the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping
+lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory
+pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a
+gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took
+London by storm, and who &quot;made more noise than any of their predecessors
+since the days of Helen,&quot; in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was
+immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were
+the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house.
+Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision,
+and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one
+accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad &quot;they were beset by a
+curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters
+fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another
+occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from
+the mob.&quot; When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found
+themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand <a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>spectators, struggling
+to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the &quot;hem of their
+garments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was
+at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at
+bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited
+Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were &quot;lionising&quot;
+the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the
+apartment known as the &quot;Beauty Room,&quot; with the significant remark,
+&quot;<i>These</i> are the beauties, gentlemen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all
+the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were
+at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a
+coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted
+her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured
+wooer.</p>
+
+<p>Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, &quot;a grave
+young lord&quot; of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled
+himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria
+gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown
+into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to
+     Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite
+     beauty and of those accomplishments <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>which will add Grace
+     and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the
+     ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat
+     at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was
+beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by
+the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's
+Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour
+which was readily granted to &quot;the most beautiful woman in England,&quot;
+Thus, on one occasion, we are told,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange
+     procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone
+     to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front
+     marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped
+     the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband
+     and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke,
+     while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of
+discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age,
+was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. &quot;Are
+you not sorry,&quot; His Majesty enquired, &quot;that there are to be no more
+masquerades?&quot; &quot;Indeed, no,&quot; was the answer. &quot;I am quite weary of them
+and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really
+anxious to see, and that is a <i>coronation</i>!&quot; This unflattering wish she
+was not <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish
+beauty by a fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She
+spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and
+embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in
+adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which
+the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a
+wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching f&ecirc;te.
+The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots
+of the size of a shilling. &quot;And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr
+Selwyn?&quot; she archly asked. &quot;Why,&quot; he replied, &quot;you will look like change
+for a guinea.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/fp-288-t.jpg" alt="MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY" title="MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating
+period of her vanity.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Yesterday after chapel,&quot; she writes, &quot;the Duchess
+     brought home Lady Coventry to feast me&mdash;and a feast she
+     was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome,
+     notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month;
+     she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence
+     that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made
+     for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it
+     trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced
+     handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine
+     mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that
+     just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in
+     the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended;
+     frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied
+     with pink and green ribbon&mdash;a head-dress that would<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a> have
+     charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and
+     prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at
+     the corners, but fine for all that.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by
+Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was
+splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom
+long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride
+consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of
+pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was
+doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and,
+with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last
+dregs.</p>
+
+<p>She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its
+decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave
+smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable
+end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the
+murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and
+     most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement
+     of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what
+     surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but
+     one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been
+     ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She
+     was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of
+     eyes' with her former flame, <a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>Lord Bolingbroke, an
+     unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to
+     make her the victim of his passion.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Her levities,&quot; says a chronicler of the time, &quot;were very
+     publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to
+     her which were greatly believed. However, they were never
+     brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped
+     with only a little private scandal, which generally falls
+     to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is
+     envied by the rest of her sex.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in
+her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Until the last few days,&quot; says Mr Horace Bleackley, &quot;the
+     pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her
+     hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of
+     her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was
+     unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had
+     vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for
+     the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn,
+     permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken
+     cheeks.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly
+realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on
+October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last
+homage to her in Pirton churchyard.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger
+sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic
+conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the
+annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man
+who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had
+heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.
+The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very
+unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had
+drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he
+should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical
+wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful
+excesses.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable
+rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade
+that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this
+jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of
+being introduced he was, Walpole says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my
+     Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at
+     pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank
+     nor his own cards, which were of &pound;300 each. He soon lost
+     a thousand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom
+she was to marry&mdash;a man <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>who, even in the thraldom of a violent love,
+could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed
+was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our
+entertaining gossip again,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while
+     her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found
+     himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The
+     doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or
+     ring&mdash;the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At
+     last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain,
+     at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
+     The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty
+     has had its effect.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should
+have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had
+achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen
+had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter
+would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was
+&quot;debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person,&quot; he was her very
+slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have
+borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed,
+have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a &quot;dilapidated
+farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland,&quot; so naturally did <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>she take to her
+new <i>r&ocirc;le</i>. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her
+curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the
+     drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at
+     her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her
+     chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre
+     when it is known that she will be there.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride
+to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal
+bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire
+route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds
+struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story
+had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When
+they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, &quot;seven hundred people,&quot; we
+are told, &quot;sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the
+Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
+that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
+strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
+cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
+could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The Duke of Hamilton,&quot; says Walpole, to whom the world
+     is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
+     sisters, &quot;is the abstract of Scotch pride. <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>He and the
+     Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
+     their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
+     table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
+     the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed,&quot; the genial old
+     chatterbox adds, &quot;one wonder how they could get anybody,
+     either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
+     all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
+     guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
+     to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence&mdash;the
+     insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
+     is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
+     life.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
+with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
+&quot;dear, dirty&quot; city she had known in the days of her poverty and
+obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
+house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
+budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
+triumph. &quot;No Queen,&quot; she said, &quot;could have been more handsomely
+treated.&quot; Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
+glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
+could win a smile from the &quot;darlint Duchess&quot; who had brought so much
+glory to old Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
+foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
+but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
+life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
+three months <a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
+Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
+fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
+he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the
+only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John
+Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of
+Argyll; and she gave her hand to &quot;handsome Jack&quot; within twelve months of
+weeping over the grave of her first husband.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It was a match,&quot; Walpole says, &quot;that would not disgrace
+     Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in
+     some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most
+     pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they
+     could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English
+     weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life,
+     when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their
+     subjects and their sheep.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her
+second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.
+Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her
+next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel
+Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of
+stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time
+her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;As she is not quite so charming as she was,&quot; says
+     Walpole, &quot;I do not know whether it is not better<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a> to
+     change her title than to retain that which puts one in
+     mind of her beauty.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social
+prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte;
+and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess
+Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband,
+George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of
+the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs
+of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon
+which the frightened young Princess remarked, &quot;My dear Duchess, you may
+laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me.&quot; Her
+life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of
+roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the
+beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she
+contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually
+written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of
+its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, &quot;Though <i>I</i>
+wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
+Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
+Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
+drawing-room and announced his name,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the Duchess,&quot; he says, &quot;who was sitting with her
+     daughter and some other ladies, took not the least<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>
+     notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
+     coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
+     world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
+     had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
+     Duke.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
+she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
+deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
+to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous &quot;I fancy you must be a
+Methodist.&quot; In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
+had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
+famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
+doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
+hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
+Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, &quot;I know
+nothing of Mr Boswell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
+Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
+of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
+years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
+behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.</p>
+
+<p>To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
+of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
+others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
+Argyll.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII" /><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS</h4>
+
+
+<p>A century and a half ago the &quot;Douglas cause&quot; was a subject of hot debate
+from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
+and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
+families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
+generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
+the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
+into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
+Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
+ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
+he was nothing of the sort.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. &quot;Sir, sir,&quot;
+Johnson said to his friend and biographer, &quot;don't be too severe upon the
+gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
+was <i>not</i> his mother.&quot; &quot;Whereupon,&quot; Boswell says, &quot;he roused my zeal so
+much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew <a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>nothing of the
+cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case.&quot; For seven years
+the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
+and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
+pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
+remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
+throne.</p>
+
+<p>Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
+Boswell declares, &quot;shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
+foundation,&quot; the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
+Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed&mdash;a girl who
+combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
+vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
+rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
+was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
+Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
+estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
+one day inherit.</p>
+
+<p>It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
+had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
+evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
+of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
+Aberdeen and Panrnure, <i>cum multis aliis.</i> However this may be, we know
+that she had several love <a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>romances; and that one at least nearly led to
+the altar while Jean was still a &quot;wee bit lassie.&quot; The favoured suitor
+was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
+man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, &quot;of mean
+understanding and meaner habits,&quot; but who was at least devoted to her
+ladyship, and in many ways a desirable <i>parti</i>. The Duchess of Buccleuch
+was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
+Jean Douglas, &quot;a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
+saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her&quot;; and, no doubt, the
+fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
+the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
+was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
+Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court&mdash;a letter in which the
+Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
+a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
+that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
+humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
+which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
+that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
+however tempting.</p>
+
+<p>During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
+appears to have lived alone at <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
+she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
+and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
+hospitality&mdash;paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
+Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
+eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
+her. That the Duke, who is described as &quot;a person of the most wretched
+intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
+unforgiving,&quot; was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
+which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
+Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
+ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
+especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;the poor Duke,&quot; to quote Woodrow, &quot;who for many years
+     had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
+     persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
+     in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
+     stabbed him as he was sleeping.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
+was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
+although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
+delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
+warrant to &quot;confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
+and <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>take possession of it,&quot; he was generous enough to make her a
+liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
+&quot;they would heir his estate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
+Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
+enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
+unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
+insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
+&quot;villain of the play,&quot; makes his appearance on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
+repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
+then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
+later, to &quot;captivate my heart at the first sight of her.&quot; She was,
+moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
+with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
+handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
+suitors; and the &quot;Colonel,&quot; who had never won any army rank higher than
+that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
+for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
+gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
+opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
+cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him &quot;one of the
+worst of men&mdash;a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>villain&quot;&mdash;and his
+career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
+description.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
+test&mdash;and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
+     telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
+     came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
+     acknowledge it publicly if I chose. <i>Enfin</i>, I was
+     allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
+     months after she honoured me with her hand.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
+some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
+least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
+hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors&mdash;a man broken
+in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
+defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
+would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
+manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
+union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
+furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
+of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
+withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
+nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, &quot;appearing,&quot; we are told, &quot;at least
+fifteen years younger than she really was&quot;; and thus might well have
+looked for a <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a>eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
+add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
+brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
+had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
+the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
+favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
+small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
+August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
+lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
+retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
+female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
+belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
+to her man of business, Mr Haldane:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
+     the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
+     certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
+     never should have once thought of doing it; but since
+     this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
+     it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
+     backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
+     something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
+     therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
+     which has proved more happy than I could well have
+     expected.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
+assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish &quot;to do something for her
+family,&quot; which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
+Douglas lands&mdash;an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
+must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.</p>
+
+<p>Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
+Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Li&egrave;ge, and many another Continental town appear
+in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
+Jean's <i>maitre d'hotel</i>, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
+every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
+and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
+flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
+succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
+shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to &quot;lend to my Lady Jean, who
+is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
+remittances.&quot; Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
+admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
+learning from her lips that he is &quot;the man alive I would choose to be
+most obliged by.&quot; Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
+keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
+about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
+addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
+while her husband stakes his <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a>golden louis on the green cloth and
+drinks costly wines.</p>
+
+<p>Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
+devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
+her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
+Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
+must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I can assure your Grace,&quot; his lordship writes, &quot;she does
+     great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
+     respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
+     acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
+     marks of an only brother to an only sister.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
+Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
+present: &quot;Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
+virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
+going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister&mdash;I believe
+she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
+woman in the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the very time&mdash;so inconsistent was this singular woman&mdash;that Lord
+Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
+brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
+Lady Wigton, she declared with tears <a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>that it was an &quot;infamous story
+raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
+against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
+pension&quot;; and she begged Lady Wigton &quot;when she went to England to
+contradict it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
+supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
+wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
+she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
+had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
+escaping&mdash;<i>unless</i> the birth of a child might soften her brother's
+heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
+years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
+critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
+coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
+to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
+than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
+hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
+and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
+years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir&mdash;or &quot;to make
+assurance doubly sure,&quot; in Lady Jean's case&mdash;heirs.</p>
+
+<p>As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
+order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
+since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a>she was
+then living, were &quot;as ignorant as brutes.&quot; And so to the French capital
+she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
+public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
+been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
+the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
+the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
+written by Mrs Hewit, &quot;produced two lovely boys,&quot; one of whom was so
+weak and puny that the doctor &quot;begged it might be sent to the country as
+soon as possible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
+such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
+trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
+mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
+begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
+the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
+imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
+in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
+wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
+contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
+would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
+proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
+neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
+<a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a>taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
+lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
+without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
+place.</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
+declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
+Brune, a nurse&mdash;but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
+them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
+made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
+infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
+spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
+that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
+them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
+Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child&mdash;a puny infant,
+but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
+The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
+the country.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
+Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
+the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
+Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
+Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
+the Colonel <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a>at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
+proved that a &quot;foreign gentleman,&quot; exactly answering his description,
+had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
+peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?</p>
+
+<p>To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
+later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
+children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
+in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
+birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
+no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
+visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.</p>
+
+<p>On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
+that she had been blessed with &quot;two boys,&quot; one of which she begged his
+permission to call by his name&mdash;a letter which only had the effect of
+rousing His Grace's &quot;high passion and displeasure,&quot; with a threat to
+stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
+was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
+trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
+journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
+the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
+time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
+purchased from its parents in Paris by a &quot;strange monsieur&quot; who, if not
+the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it <a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>not strange that this
+late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
+robust brother, as the purchased child was?</p>
+
+<p>At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
+on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
+prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
+set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
+possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
+doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
+Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
+high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
+their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
+procured from the King a pension of &pound;300 a year, which she sorely
+needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt &quot;within
+the Rules&quot; of the King's Bench.</p>
+
+<p>Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
+the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
+against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
+loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
+and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.</p>
+
+<p>To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
+have nothing to do either with his sister or the two &quot;nunnery children&quot;
+which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
+Jean only succeeded in getting deeper <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>and deeper involved in debt,
+until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
+her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
+pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
+children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.</p>
+
+<p>One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
+     through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
+     told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
+     children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
+     Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
+     acquainted his Grace.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
+still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
+see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
+letter in which she begged &quot;to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
+and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
+inflict what punishment you please upon me,&quot; he returned no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
+Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
+cried out in her deep distress: &quot;O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
+could but have died for you!&quot; This last blow of fate seems to have
+completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
+hopeless <a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
+her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: &quot;May God bless you, my dear
+son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
+despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
+as some of your ancestors.&quot; Then, but a few moments before drawing her
+last breath, she said to those around her: &quot;As one who is soon to appear
+in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
+the two children were born of my body.&quot; Thus passed &quot;beyond these
+voices&quot; a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
+sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
+her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
+motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
+protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
+man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
+his cousin, &quot;Peggy Douglas, of Mains,&quot; a lady of strong character who
+had long vowed that &quot;she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry&quot;;
+and in Duchess &quot;Peggy&quot; Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
+gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
+many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the &quot;brat&quot; to perdition
+one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
+to her <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
+that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
+Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;DEAR JACK,&mdash;I have not had time till now to acquaint you
+     of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
+     brother Archie his whole estate.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
+stilled in death.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
+history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
+justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
+rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
+the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
+Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
+Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
+latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
+set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
+twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
+on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
+Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
+detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
+Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
+judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The judges,&quot; we are told, &quot;took up no less than eight<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>
+     days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
+     last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
+     solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
+the grave, declaring, just before his death:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
+     Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
+     in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
+     Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
+     were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
+     Archibald is the only one in life now.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
+appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
+reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.</p>
+
+<p>Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
+and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
+position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
+although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
+in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
+to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
+laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV" /><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS</h4>
+
+
+<p>For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of
+antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to
+lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their
+haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their
+family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and
+ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to
+be distinguished as &quot;Black Schulenburgs&quot; and &quot;White Schulenburgs,&quot; as
+our own Douglases were &quot;black&quot; and &quot;red.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the
+family name to such an eminence&mdash;a bad eminence&mdash;as one of its plainest
+daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full,
+imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a Duchess of
+England, but to be &quot;as much a Queen as ever there was in England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der
+Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day,
+<a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></a>were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.
+The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by
+common consent, the &quot;ugly duckling&quot; of the family&mdash;abnormally tall,
+angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany
+equipped for conquest in the field of love.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad
+to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence
+procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of
+Hanover. At any rate she was provided for&mdash;an important matter, for the
+Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud&mdash;and she was too
+unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often
+happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes
+on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in
+love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust
+of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To
+George&mdash;an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose
+morals&mdash;the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of
+beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and
+before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed
+mistress&mdash;one of many.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just look at that mawkin,&quot; the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady
+Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, &quot;and think of her
+being my <a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></a>son's mistress!&quot; But to any other than his mother, George's
+taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross
+appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife
+possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness
+of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von
+Kielmansegg&mdash;who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way&mdash;a
+lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>She had, he recalls,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two
+     lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with
+     crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not
+     distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part
+     of it restrained by stays. No wonder,&quot; he adds, &quot;that a
+     child dreaded such an ogress!&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
+of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
+English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these
+ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his
+time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted
+wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with K&ouml;nigsmarck, which
+was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment
+in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's
+Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of
+her&mdash;a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the
+tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered
+enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded,
+self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She
+moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she
+was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while
+she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal
+lover&mdash;daughters who were called her &quot;nieces,&quot; although the fiction
+deceived nobody&mdash;and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to
+her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of
+Queen Anne made &quot;the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover,
+rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland.&quot; The sluggish
+sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned
+to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such
+reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks
+the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new
+and exalted <i>r&ocirc;le</i>&mdash;and finally they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>But even then he had not counted on the &quot;fair&quot; Ehrengard. She refused
+point-blank to go with him to that &quot;odious England,&quot; where chopping off
+heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was <a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></a>quite happy in Hanover,
+and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace
+gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to
+the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert
+them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind. If her great rival
+would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day's start, she
+raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with
+open arms. The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick &quot;that
+Kielmansegg woman&quot; had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and,
+taking her &quot;nieces&quot; with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal
+lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of
+embarking for England.</p>
+
+<p>George was now happy and reconciled to his fate, for his retinue was
+complete. And what a retinue! When the King landed at Greenwich with his
+grotesque assortment of Ministers, his hideous Turks, his two
+mistresses&mdash;one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat&mdash;and
+his &quot;nieces,&quot; the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted
+the &quot;menagerie&quot; with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed
+Schulenburg the &quot;Maypole,&quot; and Kielmansegg the &quot;Elephant,&quot; and pursued
+the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goot peoples, vy you abuse us?&quot; asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt
+head and shoulders <a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>through the carriage window. &quot;Ve only gom for all
+your goots.&quot; &quot;And for all our chattels, too, &mdash;&mdash; you!&quot; came the
+stinging retort from a wag in the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>But Schulenburg soon realised that she could afford to smile and shrug
+her scraggy shoulders at the insolence of those &quot;horrid Engleesh.&quot; She
+found herself in a land of Goshen, where there were many rich plums to
+be gathered by far-reaching and unscrupulous hands such as hers. If she
+could not love the enemy, she could at least plunder them; and this she
+set to work to do with a good will, while the plastic George looked on
+and smiled encouragement. There were pensions, appointments,
+patents&mdash;boons of all kinds to be trafficked in; and who had a greater
+right to act as intermediary than herself, the King's <i>ch&egrave;re amie</i> and
+right hand?</p>
+
+<p>She sold everything that was saleable. As Walpole says, &quot;She would have
+sold the King's honour at a shilling advance to the best bidder.&quot; From
+Bolingbroke's family she took &pound;20,000 in three sums&mdash;one for a Peerage,
+another for a pardon, and the third for a fat post in the Customs. Gold
+poured in a ceaseless and glittering stream into her coffers. She
+refused no bribe&mdash;if it was big enough&mdash;and was ready to sell anything,
+from a Dukedom to a Bishopric, if her price was forthcoming. She made
+George procure her a pension of &pound;7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
+long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
+she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
+coronets&mdash;and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
+Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
+not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
+George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
+Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
+induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess&mdash;of Eberstein.
+Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
+graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
+who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
+woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
+of less degree. She might be a &quot;maypole&quot;&mdash;hated and unattractive&mdash;but at
+least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
+beauties of her &quot;Consort's&quot; Court.</p>
+
+<p>When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
+splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
+witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
+Company, whether its object was to &quot;carry on a thing that will turn to
+the advantage of the concerned,&quot; &quot;the breeding and providing for natural
+children,&quot; or &quot;for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
+silk-worms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
+and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
+her <a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></a>exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
+and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
+that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
+played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
+harm her. Only one of her many puppets&mdash;Knight, the Treasurer of the
+South Sea Company&mdash;could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
+arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
+sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
+too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
+Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
+the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.
+While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in
+solitude in distant Ahlden, the German &quot;Maypole&quot; was Queen in all but
+name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if
+iron hand. It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of
+George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than
+the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain
+that this &quot;old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess&quot; was more England's
+Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.</p>
+
+<p>She was present at every consultation between the King and his
+Ministers&mdash;indeed the conferences were <a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>invariably held in her own
+apartments, every day from five till eight. She understood and humoured
+every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent
+even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while
+she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an
+extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every
+Sunday. The only rival she had ever feared&mdash;and hated&mdash;Madame
+Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington
+was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling
+her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.</p>
+
+<p>When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia
+Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was
+the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been
+loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in
+the Palace of Osnabr&uuml;ck, in which he had drawn his first breath
+sixty-seven years earlier.</p>
+
+<p>A French fortune-teller had warned him that &quot;he would not survive his
+wife a year&quot;; and, as he neared Osnabr&uuml;ck, the home of his brother, the
+Prince Bishop, his fatal illness overtook him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;When he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic;
+     his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung
+     out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life
+     by continually crying out, as well as he could
+     articulate, 'Osnabr&uuml;ck!' 'Osnabr&uuml;ck!'&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As night fell the sweating horses galloped into <a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></a>Osnabr&uuml;ck; an hour
+later George died in his brother's arms, less than twelve months after
+his wife had drawn her last breath in her fortress-prison of Ahlden.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess of Kendal was disconsolate.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;She beat her breasts and tore her hair, and, separating
+     herself from the English ladies in her train, took the
+     road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion
+     about three months.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Returning to England, to the only solace left to her&mdash;her
+money-bags&mdash;she spent the last seventeen years of her life alternating
+between her villas at Twickenham and Isleworth. George had promised her
+that if she survived him, and if it were possible, he would revisit her
+from the spirit world.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;When,&quot; to quote Walpole again, &quot;one day a large raven
+     flew into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth,
+     she was persuaded that it was the soul of the departed
+     monarch, and received and treated it with all the respect
+     and tenderness of duty, till the Royal bird or she took
+     their last flight.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus, shorn of all her powers and splendour, in obscurity, and hoarding
+her ill-gotten gold, died the most remarkable woman who has ever figured
+in the British Peerage. Her vast fortune was divided between her two
+&quot;nieces,&quot; one of whom, created by her father, George, Countess of
+Walsingham, became the wife of that polished courtier and heartless man
+of the world, Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV" /><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h4>THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES</h4>
+
+
+<p>Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of
+our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of
+volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of
+the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance
+in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often
+reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees
+flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying
+from view the humble roots from which they derive their lordly growth.</p>
+
+<p>Although Cobden's assertion that &quot;the British aristocracy was cradled
+behind city counters&quot; errs on the side of exaggeration, there is no
+doubt that in the veins of scores of the proudest English peers runs the
+blood of ancestors who served customers in City shops.</p>
+
+<p>When, a couple of centuries ago, John Baring, son of the Bremen Lutheran
+parson, Dr Franz Baring, opened his small cloth manufactory on the
+outskirts of Exeter, his most extravagant ambition was to build up a
+business which he could hand over to <a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></a>his sons, and to provide a few
+comforts for his old age; if any one had told him that he was laying the
+foundations of four families which should hold their heads proudly among
+the highest in the land he would no doubt have laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Yet John Baring lived to see his only daughter wedded to John Dunning,
+who made a Baroness of her. Of his four sons, Francis was created a
+Baronet by William Pitt, and found a wife in the cousin and co-heir of
+his Grace of Canterbury. The second son of this union, Alexander, was
+raised to the Peerage as Baron Ashburton, won a millionaire bride in the
+daughter of Senator Bingham, of Philadelphia, and, from the immense
+scale of his financial operations, was ranked by the Duc de Richelieu as
+&quot;one of the six great powers of Europe&quot;&mdash;England, France, Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia being the other five. Sir Francis's eldest
+grandson, after serving in the exalted offices of Chancellor of the
+Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, was created Baron Northbrook,
+a peerage which his son raised to an earldom; a second grandson
+qualified for a coronet as Baron Revelstoke; and a third is known to-day
+as Earl Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, with half an alphabet of high
+dignities after his name.</p>
+
+<p>At least three dukes (Northumberland, Leeds, and Bedford) count among
+their forefathers many a humble tradesman. Glancing down the pedigree of
+his Grace of Northumberland, we find among his direct ancestors such
+names as these, William le Smythesonne, of Thornton Watlous, husbandman;
+<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>William Smitheson, of Newsham, husbandman; Ralph Smithson, tenant
+farmer; and Anthony Smithson, yeoman. It was this Anthony whose son,
+Hugh, left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and
+William Robinson, London haberdashers, and thus to take the first step
+of that successful career which made him a Baronet and a man of wealth.
+From Hugh, the London 'prentice sprang in the fourth generation, that
+other Hugh who won the hand of Lady Elizabeth Seymour, and with it the
+vast estates and historic name of Percy.</p>
+
+<p>Some years before Hugh Smithson, the farmer's son, set foot in London
+streets, Edward Osborne left the modest family roof at Ashford, in Kent,
+to serve his apprenticeship to, and sit at the board of, William Hewitt,
+a merchant of Philpot Lane, who shortly after moved his belongings to a
+more fashionable home on London Bridge. One day it chanced that while
+his only daughter, the fair &quot;Mistress Anne,&quot; was hanging her favourite
+bird outside the parlour window she lost her balance and fell into the
+river, then racing in high tide under the arches of the bridge.
+Fortunately for Mistress Anne the young apprentice saw the accident;
+quick as thought he threw off his shoes and surcoat, and, plunging into
+the swollen waters, caught the maiden by her hair as she was being swept
+away, and with difficulty dragged her to a passing barge, on which both
+found safety.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one proper sequence to this romantic incident; Mistress
+Anne lost her heart to <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>her gallant rescuer, the grateful parents smiled
+on his wooing, and one fine August morning, not many months later, the
+wedding-bells of St Magnus Church were spreading far and wide the news
+that young Osborne had found a bride in one of the fairest and richest
+heiresses of London town. In due time Osborne became, as his
+father-in-law had been before him, Lord Mayor of London; the son of this
+romantic alliance was knighted for prowess in battle; Edward Osborne's
+grandson was made a Baronet; and his great-grandson, Sir Thomas, added
+to the family dignities by becoming in turn, Baron, Viscount, Earl and
+Marquis, and, finally, Duke of Leeds. Thus only two generations
+separated the 'prentice lad of Philpot Lane from his descendant of the
+strawberry-leaves, the first of a long and still unbroken line of
+English dukes, whose blood has mingled with that of many noble families.</p>
+
+<p>The noble house of Ripon has its origin in Yorkshire tradesmen who
+carried on business in York, some of whom were Lord Mayors of that city
+two or three centuries ago. These early Robinsons added to their fortune
+and enriched their blood by alliances with some of the oldest families
+in the north of England&mdash;such as the Metcalfes of Nappa and the
+Redmaynes of Fulford&mdash;and slowly but surely laid the foundation of one
+of the wealthiest and most distinguished of great English houses. For
+four generations the head of the family was a Cabinet Minister, while
+one of them was Prime Minister of England.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"></a>The Marquises of Bath derive descent from one John o' th' Inne, who
+was, probably, a worthy publican of Church Stretton, and who was
+descended in the seventh generation from William de Bottefeld, an
+under-forester of Shropshire in the thirteenth century; while, through
+his mother, the late Marquis of Salisbury derived a strain of 'prentice
+blood from Sir Christopher Gascoigne, the first Lord Mayor of London to
+live in the Mansion House.</p>
+
+<p>Until a few years ago there might be seen in the main street of the
+village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
+better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
+It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
+husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
+far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
+and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
+way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as &quot;My lord,&quot; in his
+character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
+boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
+Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
+Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
+kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
+Appletrewick.</p>
+
+<p>The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
+his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
+mercer, <a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"></a>and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
+we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
+whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
+names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
+a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
+was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
+centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
+ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
+Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
+daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.</p>
+
+<p>The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
+poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
+a fortune as a London jeweller.</p>
+
+<p>In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
+citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
+himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
+tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
+accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
+anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
+they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
+George III. departed for once from his rule never to raise a man of
+<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>business to the Peerage, by converting Robert Smith into Baron
+Carrington. His successor abandoned the patronymic Smith for his
+title-name; and the present-day representative of John Smith, the
+Nottingham draper is Charles Robert Wynn Carrington, first Earl
+Carrington, P.C., G.C.M.G., and joint Hereditary Lord Chamberlain of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>When William Capel left the humble paternal roof at Stoke Nayland, in
+Suffolk, to see what fortune and a brave heart could do for him in
+London, it certainly never occurred to him that his name would be handed
+down through the centuries by a line of Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
+Fortune had indeed strange experiences in store for the Suffolk youth;
+for, while she made a Knight and Lord Mayor of him, she consigned him on
+a life sentence to the Tower for resisting the extortions of the
+mercenary Henry VII. Sir William's son won his knightly spurs on French
+battlefields, wedded a daughter of the ancient house of Roos of Belvoir,
+and became the ancester of the Barons Capel, Viscounts Malden, and Earls
+of Essex.</p>
+
+<p>The Earls of Radnor owe their rank and wealth to the enterprise which
+led young Laurence des Bouveries from his native Flanders to a
+commercial life at Canterbury in the days of Queen Bess. From this
+humble Flemish apprentice sprang a line of Turkey merchants, each of
+whom in turn added his contribution to the family dignities and riches,
+until Sir Jacob, the third Baronet, blossomed into a double-barrelled
+peer as Lord Longford and Viscount Folkestone. Not the least, by any
+means, <a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>of the descendants of Laurence des Bouveries was Canon Pusey,
+the great theologian, who was grandson of the first Lord Folkestone.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Harewood springs from a stock of merchants who accumulated great
+wealth in the eighteenth century; and Lord Jersey owes much of his
+riches to Francis Child, the industrious apprentice who, in Stuart days,
+married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, the goldsmith, who
+lived one door west of Temple Bar.</p>
+
+<p>Other peers who count London apprentices among their ancestors are Lord
+Aveland and Viscount Downe, both descendants of Gilbert Heathcote, whose
+commercial success was crowned by the Lord Mayoralty in 1711; the
+Marquis of Bath, a descendant of Lord Mayor Heyward, whose sixteen
+children are all portrayed in his monument in St Alphege Church, London
+Wall; and also of Richard Gresham, mercer, who waxed rich from the
+spoils of the monasteries, and whose son was founder of the Royal
+Exchange. The Earl of Eldon owes his existence to that runaway exploit
+which linked the lives of John Scott, the Newcastle tradesman's son, and
+Miss Surtees, the banker's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>If George III. during his lengthy reign only raised one business man to
+the Peerage, later years have provided a very liberal crop of coroneted
+men of commerce. To mention but a few of them, banking has been
+honoured&mdash;and the Peerage also&mdash;by the baronies granted to Lords
+Aldenham and Avebury; Lords Hindlip, Burton, Iveagh, and Ardilaun owe
+<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"></a>their wealth and rank to successful brewing; Baron Overtoun was
+proprietor of large chemical works; Lord Allerton's riches have been
+drawn from his tan-pits; Lord Armstrong's millions come from the
+far-famed Elswick engine-works at Newcastle; and Lord Masham's from his
+mills at Manningham. The Viscounty of Hambleden has sprung from a modest
+news-shop in the Strand; the Barony of Burnham was cradled in a
+newspaper office; and Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona were shepherd
+boys seventy years or more ago, before they found their way through
+commerce to the Roll of Peers.</p>
+
+<p>Although these lowly origins are as firmly established as Holy Writ, and
+are in most cases as well known to the noble families who trace rank and
+riches from them as to the expert in genealogy, they are often as
+carefully excluded from the family tree as the poor and undesirable
+relation from the doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage
+extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted
+blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families
+strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some
+obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in
+many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their own
+pedigrees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are pedigrees worth?&quot; asks Professor Freeman. &quot;I turn over a
+'Peerage' or other book of genealogy, and I find that, when a pedigree
+professes to be traced back to the times of which I know most in detail,
+it is all but invariably false. As a rule <a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>it is not only false, but
+impossible. The historical circumstances, when any are introduced, are
+for the most part not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
+which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This scathing criticism refers to pedigrees which profess to be based on
+existing records; what shall we say, then, of those family trees which
+have their ambitious roots in the dark centuries which no ray of
+genealogical light can possibly pierce? Take, for instance, that amazing
+pedigree of the Lyte family of Lytes Cary, at the head of which is
+&quot;Leitus (one of the five captains of Beotia that went to Troye),&quot; whose
+ancestors came to England first with Brute, &quot;the most noble founder of
+the Britons.&quot; (It is only fair to say that the present representative of
+this really ancient family, Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte, an expert genealogist,
+turns his back resolutely on the Beotian captain, and even on Brute
+himself, and generally lops his family tree in a merciless but most
+salutary fashion.)</p>
+
+<p>The College of Arms, among many amazing pedigrees, treasures one of a
+family &quot;whose present representative is sixty-seventh in descent in an
+unbroken male line from Belinus the Great (Beli Mawr), King of Britain,&quot;
+which actually exhibits the arms of Beli, who, poor man, died long
+centuries before heraldry was even cradled.</p>
+
+<p>Of families who derive descent from Charlemagne the name is legion; but
+even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity
+compared with <a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>others which have at their head no other progenitor than
+Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum
+roll, twenty-one feet long, of pedigrees, some of which &quot;are traced back
+to 'Adam, Son of God,' without any conscious sense of the incongruous&quot;;
+and these records, we must remember, are in the hand of &quot;a man
+thoroughly trustworthy as to the matters of his own time.&quot; There is in
+the College of Arms a similar family tree which commences boldly with
+Adam and the Garden of Eden; and an authority on Welsh pedigrees
+declares,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;A Welshman whose family was in any position in the
+     sixteenth century can, as a rule, without much trouble
+     find a pedigree thence to Adam; an Englishman who is
+     unable to do the same has a natural tendency to regard
+     all Welsh pedigrees with distrust, not to say contempt.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr Horace Round gives some startling examples of flagrant dishonesty,
+where forgery is only one of the implements used. Take, for example,
+that shameful story of the &quot;Shipway frauds,&quot; which is thus referred to
+by a clergyman of the parish.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;In the fall of 1896, by an elaborate system of impudent
+     frauds, an unscrupulous attempt was made to claim these
+     monuments for one who was an entire stranger to the
+     parish. An agent from London was employed in a search for
+     a pedigree. He, by fraudulent means, concocted a very
+     plausible story. Genealogies were manufactured, tombs
+     were desecrated, registers were falsified, wills were
+     forged&mdash;in a word, various outrages were committed, with
+     many <a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>sacred things in this parish and elsewhere. These
+     two figures, as part of the pedigree, were deposited in a
+     niche in the chantry; on either side were huge brass
+     tablets on which were engraven various untruthful and
+     unfounded statements.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In another case Hughenden Church was desecrated to gratify the vanity of
+a family of Wellesbourne, anxious to trace their descent from the
+Montforts.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;They caused a monumental effigy of an imaginary ancestor
+     to be carved in the style of the thirteenth century
+     ...they adapted the plate-armour effigy to their purpose
+     by cutting similar arms on the skirts, and they had three
+     rude effigies fabricated by way of filling up the gaps
+     between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>To give but two more out of many cases of similar imposture, the
+Deardens, many years ago, actually had a family chapel constructed in
+Rochdale Church with sham effigies, slabs, and brasses to the memory of
+wholly fictitious ancestors; while in two Scottish churches altar-tombs
+were placed to the memory of successive apocryphal lairds of Coulthart.
+Such are the lengths to which a craze for ancestry has carried some
+unprincipled persons; and there is no doubt that the arts of the forger
+are still enlisted in the service of people who crave long descent and
+do not scruple as to the methods by which they attain it.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such
+extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather
+amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian <a name="Page_338" id="Page_338"></a>and
+obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or
+at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons
+(a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are &quot;a branch of the
+baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in
+Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century.&quot; The first Cooper was not,
+as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of
+that name&mdash;no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one
+of whom was &quot;Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King&quot;; Pindar,
+the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
+the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are &quot;probably descended from
+William, a Norman of distinction&quot;; while at least one family of Brownes
+springs lineally from &quot;Turulph, a companion of Rollo,&quot; founder of the
+Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
+that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from <i>Smeeth</i>, &quot;a level
+plain&quot;; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
+certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;a particle which has been all but unknown in England
+     since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
+     has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
+     character which the French nation have chosen to assign
+     to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
+     restorations in the modern Gothic manner.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
+surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
+De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.</p>
+
+<p>This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
+the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
+it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
+accepted with a quite childlike credence:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
+     train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
+     flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
+     from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
+     Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
+     patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
+     the famous Dane....&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (<i>sic</i>) of
+     Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
+attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
+actually named &quot;Hugh Lupus&quot; at the baptismal font, while his younger
+brother was labelled Richard &quot;de Aquila&quot;; and yet it is an indisputable
+fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
+Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
+who has no more traceable <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>connection with Rollo than with the Man in
+the Moon.</p>
+
+<p>The Ducal House of Fife, we are told, &quot;derives from Fyfe Macduff, a
+chief of great wealth and power, who lived about the year 834, and
+afforded to Kenneth II., King of Scotland, strong aid against his
+enemies, the Picts.&quot; The present Duke, however, has the good sense to
+disclaim any hereditary connection with the old Earls of Fife, and to
+place at the top of his family tree one Adam Duff, who laid the
+foundation of the family prosperity in the seventeenth century. The
+Spencers, it is claimed, spring lineally from the old baronial
+Despencers, &quot;being a branche issueing from the ancient family and
+chieffe of the Spencers, of which sometymes were the Earles of
+Winchester and Glocester, and Barons of Glamorgan and Morgannocke.&quot;
+This, no doubt, is a very distinguished origin; but, alas! the earliest
+provable ancestors of this &quot;noble&quot; family were respectable and
+well-to-do Warwickshire graziers, and the first authentic title on the
+true pedigree is the knighthood conferred on John Spencer in 1519, less
+than four centuries ago. Similarly the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, are
+said to be derived from one Hugh de Russell, or Rossel (who took that
+name from his estate in Normandy), one of the Conqueror's attendant
+barons on his invasion of England. Here, again, facts fail lamentably to
+support the descent claimed, since the earliest known progenitor of this
+&quot;great house&quot; was that Henry Russell who was sent to Parliament to
+represent <a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>Weymouth in the fifteenth century, and whose great-grandson
+blossomed into the first Earl of Bedford. (It may, perhaps, be well to
+state that, although the pedigrees here criticised are those that have
+been or are widely accepted, they are not necessarily approved by the
+families whose descent they profess to give.)</p>
+
+<p>Another Norman ancestor who must go overboard is the alleged founder of
+the &quot;noble&quot; house of Bolingbroke&mdash;that &quot;William de St John who came to
+England with the Conqueror as grand master of the artillery and
+supervisor of the wagons and carriages,&quot; since it can be positively
+shewn that the St John family first set foot in England a good many
+years after William I. was safely underground; and with this mythical
+William must also go that equally nebulous progenitor of the Fortescue
+family, &quot;who&quot; according to the venerable and almost uniform tradition,
+&quot;landed in England with his master in the year 1066, and, protecting him
+with his shield from the blows of an assailant, was graciously dubbed
+'Fortescu,' the man of the stout shield.&quot; The Stourtons, so the
+&quot;Peerages&quot; say, were &quot;of considerable rank before the Conquest, and
+dictated their own terms to the Conqueror&quot;; but, as Canon Jackson, the
+learned antiquary, truly points out, &quot;of this there is no evidence. The
+name is found, apparently for the first time, among Wiltshire
+landowners, in the reign of Edward I., when a Nicholas Stourton held one
+knight's fee under the Lovells of Castle Cary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>The Duke of Norfolk has a family tree of very stately growth, and can
+well afford to repudiate a good many of the ancestors provided for him
+by &quot;Peerage&quot; editors. Certainly, if he ever read the following statement
+he must have smiled aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;The Duke's proudest boast is that his name of Howard is
+     merely that of an ancestor, Hereward the Wake, whose
+     representative, Sir Hereward Wake, is still in
+     Northamptonshire.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, his Grace's earliest known ancestor was Sir William
+Howard, &quot;who was a grown man and on the bench in 1293, whose real
+pedigree is very obscure&quot;; and who, no doubt, would have laughed as
+heartily as his descendant of to-day at his imaginary derivation from
+the Conqueror's stubborn foe of the fens, Hereward the Wake.</p>
+
+<p>In the Fitzwilliam pedigree we encounter another nebulous knight of the
+Conqueror. &quot;The Fitzwilliams,&quot; we are informed, &quot;date so far back that
+their record is lost, but Sir William, a knight of the Conqueror's day,
+married the daughter of Sir John Elmley,&quot; and so on; and further, that
+at Milton Hall, Peterborough, one may actually look on an antique scarf
+which &quot;was presented to a direct ancestor of the Fitzwilliams by William
+the Conqueror.&quot; The most skilled of our genealogists have sought in vain
+for an authentic trace of this gallant knight of Conquest days; and
+Professor Freeman does not hesitate to dismiss the story of his
+existence as &quot;pure fable.&quot; But if Sir William of Normandy must fall from
+the family tree, <a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>his place is most creditably taken by Godric, a Saxon
+Thane, who, as a forefather, is at least as respectable as any Norman
+warrior in William's train.</p>
+
+<p>The house of Fitzgerald is credited with an ancestor, one Dominus Otho,
+&quot;who is supposed to have been of the family of the Gherardini of
+Florence. This noble passed over into Normandy, and thence, in 1057,
+into England, where he became so great a favourite with Edward the
+Confessor that he excited the jealousy of the Saxon Thanes.&quot; Dominus
+Otho must too pass, with many another treasured ancestor, into the
+crowded genealogical land of the rejected; for the real founder of the
+Fitzgerald house was Walter, son of &quot;Other,&quot; whose name is first met
+with in Domesday Book in 1086. The Otho story is shown to be &quot;absolute
+fiction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In view of such examples of misplaced ingenuity exhibited by the makers
+of pedigrees for our noble families, one can almost read without a smile
+that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;there were Heneages at Hainton in the time of King Edwy;
+     they doubtless took part in the revolt which brought
+     Edgar to the throne, and it is not impossible that some
+     of them were in the train of Wulfhere, King of Mercia;&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>or that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;Lord Alington comes of a family of ancient lineage, one
+     of his ancestors being Sir Hildebrand de Alington, who
+     was marshal to William the Conqueror at the battle of
+     Hastings,&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>though we may know full well that the Sturt pedigree <a name="Page_344" id="Page_344"></a>really begins in
+the seventeenth century, and that the earliest known Heneage lived and
+died some three centuries before.</p>
+
+<p>But &quot;noble&quot; families have no monopoly of misguided genealogy. &quot;The
+immense majority of the pedigrees of the landed gentry,&quot; says a
+well-known officer of arms, &quot;cannot, I fear, be characterised as
+otherwise than utterly worthless. The errors of the 'peerage' are as
+nothing to the fables which we encounter everywhere;&quot; and the same may
+be said of many another collection of pedigrees which is a treasured
+possession in countless British homes.</p>
+
+<p>Some even justly famous men have not been proof against this insidious
+form of vanity and pretence. Edmund Spenser was ungenerous enough to
+&quot;dismiss his known ancestry of small Lancashire gentry and plant himself
+modestly in the shadow of the newly discovered shield of arms of the
+noble house of Spencer, 'of which I meanest boast myself to be.'&quot; And
+Lord Tennyson, whose ultimate ascertainable forefather was an eighteenth
+century Lincolnshire apothecary, was provided with a slightly
+differenced cadet's version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison, with whom
+he had no connection whatever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" /><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li>  Aberdeen, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Affleck, Lady, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Misses, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  Alava, General, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+<li>  Albemarle, Lord, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+<li>  Aldenham, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Alexander, Emperor, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Alington, Lord, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Hildebrand, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Allerton, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Almack's, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Andrews, Mr, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li>  Anglesey, Earl of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li>  Anne, of Austria, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Princess, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Queen, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Ardilaun, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Argyll, Duke of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Arlington, Lady, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li>  Armstrong, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Arran, Lord, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+<li>  Ashburton, Lord, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Atholl, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Avebury, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Aveland, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Aylesbury, Lady, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li>  Barillon, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Baring, Alexander, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Francis, Sir, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Franz (Dr), <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Barnard, Dr, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+<li>  Bath, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Beaconsfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  Beauchamp, Earl, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Beaufort, Duc de, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  Becher, Sir William W., <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li>  Bedford, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Dukes of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Bentinck, Lord George, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li>  Berkeley, Annie May, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li>  Bilton, Miss Belle, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Bingham, Senator, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Blantyre, Lord, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  Blessington, Countess of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+<li>  Blount, Christopher, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Boleyn, Godfrey, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Bolingbroke, Lord, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+<li>  Bolton, Duke of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary Catherine, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li>  Boothby, Brook, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Boswell, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li>  Bottefeld, William de, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Bouveries, Laurence des, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Bracegirdle, Mrs, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Bridges, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+<li>  Bridgewater, Duke of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Bristol, Earl of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  Broke, Lord, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Brougham, Lord, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Browne, family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Brunton, Louisa, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li>  Buccleuch, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  Buller, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Bunbury, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+<li>  Burke, Sir Bernard, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Burleigh, Lord, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li>  Burney, Dr Charles, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Burnham, Barony, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Burrell, Mrs Drummond, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Burton, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Bute, Countess of, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+<li>  Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Cadogan, Earl of, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li>  Campbell, Colonel John, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+<li>  Canning, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  Capel, William, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Cardigan, Earl of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Carhampton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  Carlingford, Lord, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+<li>  Carnegie, James, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+<li>  Caroline, Princess, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>  Carrington, Lords, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Castlemaine, Lady, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Castlereagh, Lady, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+<li>  Catherine, Empress, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Queen, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, the Great, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>  Cecil, Henry, (Earl of Exeter), <a href="#Page_256">256</a>-<a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord Thomas, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Chaffinch, Barbara (Countess of Jersey), <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  Charles I., <a href="#Page_1">1</a></li>
+<li>  Charles II., <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li>  Charlotte, Queen, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>  Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Child, Anne, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Francis, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  Christina, Queen of Sweden, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Chudleigh, Colonel, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>  Churchill, Arabella, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Winston, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+<li>  Clarendon, Chancellor, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+<li>  Cobden, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li>
+<li>  Cochrane, Lady Susanna, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+<li>  Compton, Lady, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  Congreve, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Conolly, Lady Louisa, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li>  Coombe, William, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Cooper family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Coutts, Thomas, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Coventry, Countess of, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li>  Cowper, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Cradock, Mr, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+<li>  Craven, Earl of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Crawford, Lord, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li>  Creevey, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+<li>  Cromer, Earl, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Crosby, Sir John, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Cumberland, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+<li></li>
+
+<li>  Dalkeith, Earl of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  Dalrymple, Mr, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  D'Arblay, Madame, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Darlington, Countess of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Darnley, Lord, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+<li>  Dashwood, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  D'Aubigny, Duchesse, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li>  Dearden family, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+<li>  De Bathe, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  De Beauchamp, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  De Freville, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Delany, Mrs, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li>  De Moleyns, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Denbigh, Earls of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Derby, Earl of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  De Reti, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  De Rodes, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  De Trafford, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  De Vere, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Devonshire, Duke of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  De Winton, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Dibdin, Charles, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Digby, Francis, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+<li>  Dillon, Colonel, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+<li>  Disraeli, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  Doran, Dr, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  D'Orsay, Count, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Dorset, Duke of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Douglas, Archibald, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, James, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Jean (Lady), <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sholto, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+<li>  Downe, Viscount, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Dryden, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  Dudley, Earls of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Edmond, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Guildford, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert (Earl of Leicester), <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Duff, Adam, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Dundalk, Baroness of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Dundonald, Earl of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Eberstein, Princess von, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Edward VI., <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li>  Eglinton, Lady, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Eldon, Earl of, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Errington, Mr Sheriff, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+<li>  Errol, Lord, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Essex, Countess of, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+<li>  Esterhazy, Princess, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Prince Paul, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Evelyn, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Exeter, Earl of, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Fane, Lady Sarah Sophia, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li>  Farmer, Captain, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+<li>  Farren, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Fenton, Lavinia, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+<li>  Ferrers, Earl of, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+<li>  Feversham, Countess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Fielding, Sir Godfrey, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Fife, Dukes of, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Fitzgerald, Henry Gerald, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Fitzwilliam family, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>-<a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Folkestone, Viscount, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Foote, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>  Forbes, George, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Susan Janet, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Forneron, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li>  Fortescue, Mr, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Frederick, The Great, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+<li>  Freeman, Professor, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Gainsborough, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li>  Galloway, Earl of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li>  Gardiner, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Gascoigne, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  George I., <a href="#Page_317">317</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; II., <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; III., <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; IV., <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+<li>  Gilchrist, Miss Constance, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+<li>  Glastonbury, Baroness of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Gloucester, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of (Richard), <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Godefroi, M., <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Godric, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Gordon, Lord William, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+<li>  Graeme, Colonel, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+<li>  Gramont, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+<li>  Granville, Lady, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Gresham, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Greville, William, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Grey, Lady Jane, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li>  Gronow, Captain, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+<li>  Grosvenor, Countess, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Guise, Comte de, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li>  Gunning, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Maria, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+<li>  Gwynn, Nell, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Haldane, Mr, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+<li>  Halhed, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+<li>  Hambleden, Viscounty of, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Hamilton, Betty (Lady), <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Colonel, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Count, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-<a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>-<a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, George, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Susanna (Lady), <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+<li>  Hanmer, Mrs, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+<li>  Harewood, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Harrington, Earl of, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Hastings, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-<a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+<li>  Hatton, Sir Christopher, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Hay, Mr, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li>
+<li>  Heathcote, Gilbert, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Heneage family, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+<li>  Henri IV., <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  Henrietta Maria, Queen, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  Hereford, Lady, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Hereward, the Wake, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Hervey, Hon. Augustus, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>-<a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li>  Hewit, Mrs, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>-<a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Hewitt, Anne, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Heyward, Lord Mayor, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Hill, Captain Richard, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Hillsborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+<li>  Hindlip, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Hoggins, Sarah (Countess of Exeter), <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Holland, Lady, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lord, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+<li>  Home, Earl of, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  Hopetoun, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Horton, Christopher, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+<li>  Howard, Bernard, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Captain Thomas, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir William, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Ibbetson, Captain, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  Irnham, Lord, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  Iveagh, Lord, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Jackson, Canon, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Jennings, Frances, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John (Sir), <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sarah, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Squire, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+<li>  Jermyn, Henry, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  Jerrold, Douglas, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Jersey, Earl of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Countess of (Sarah), <a href="#Page_41">41</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li>  Johnson, Dr, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mr John, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>-<a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Kemble, John, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+<li>  Kendal, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Kent, John, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+<li>  Ker, Captain, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li>  Kerr, Captain, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+<li>  Kielmansegg, Baroness von, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>-<a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Kildare, Lady, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+<li>  Killigrew, Harry, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Tom, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+<li>  King, Colonel, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir John, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary (Hon.), <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li>  Kingsborough, Lady, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Viscount, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li>  Kingston, Earl of, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>-<a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>  K&ouml;nigsmarck, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  La Brune, Madame, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Lauder, Farmer, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Leeds, Duke of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Leicester, Earl of, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>-<a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Countess of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li>  Lennox, Lady Sarah, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li>  Lieven, Princess of, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Lindores, Lord, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Linley, Elizabeth Ann, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mary, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+<li>  Long, Mr, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+<li>  Louis XIV., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Napoleon (Prince), <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  Lovelace, Lord, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Luttrell, Anne, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Colonel, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  Lyndhurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Lyon of Brigton, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li>  Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li>
+<li>  Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Macartney, Major-General, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+<li>  Madden, Dr, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Mancini, Hortense de, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li>  Mann, Sir Horace, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+<li>  Mansfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Manvers, Lord, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+<li>  March, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li>  Marsante, Comte de, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+<li>  Mary, Queen, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, &mdash;&mdash; of Scots, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li>
+<li>  Masham, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Matthews, Major, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li>  Mazarin, Duchesse de, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Meath, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li>  Mellon, Harriet, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>  Meredith, Sir William, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+<li>  Merrill, Mr, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+<li>  Messalina, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Metcalfes, of Nappa, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Michele, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+<li>  Mohun, Charles Lord, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir William de, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+<li>  Monaldeschi, Count, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Monmouth, Duke of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Montagu, Edward Wortley, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li>
+<li>  Montford, Jack, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+<li>  Montgomery, Mr, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Miss, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Moore, Dr, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+<li>  More, Hannah, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Morland, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+<li>  Mornington, Lady, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+<li>  Mount Stephen, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Munster, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+<li>  Murray, Captain, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Napier, Hon. George, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+<li>  Napier, Lord, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+<li>  Neave, Sir Digby, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+<li>  Newbattle, Lord, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+<li>  Newcastle, Duke of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  Ney, Marshal, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+<li>  Norfolk, Duke of, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Northbrook, Lord, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Northumberland, Duke of, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  O'Neill, Eliza, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li>  Orleans, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+<li>  Ormond, Duke of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+<li>  Ormonde, Lord, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Osborne, Edward, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Osnabr&uuml;ck, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  &quot;Other,&quot; <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Otho, Dominus, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+<li>  Overtoun, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Page, Mr, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+<li>  Paget, Lady Florence, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+<li>  Panmure, Earl of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li>  Parker family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Payne, George, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+<li>  Peach, Joseph, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+<li>  Pelham, Mr, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Pepys, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Peterborough, Earl of, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Pierce, Mr, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+<li>  Pierrepoint, Hon. H.M., <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Pindar, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Pope, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+<li>  Portland, Duke of, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+<li>  Portsmouth, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li>  Power, Edmund, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Marguerite, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li>  Pulteney, Mr, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li>  Pusey, Canon, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Queensbury, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>,</li>
+<li>  Querouaille, Louise de, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Radnor, Earls of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Radzivill, Prince, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li>  Raikes, Mr T., <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+<li>  Rawlins, Colonel Giles, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+<li>  Redmaynes (of Fulford), <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Revelstoke, Baron, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Reynolds, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li>  Richelieu, Duc de, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+<li>  Richmond, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Duke of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Ripon, Marquesses of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Robinson, Anastasia, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+<li>  Robinsons, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+<li>  Robsart, Amy, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li>  Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
+<li>  Rollo, Duke of Normandy, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+<li>  Rotier, Phillipe, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+<li>  Round, Mr Horace, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+<li>  Rowe, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+<li>  Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Ruvigny, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+<li>  Ryder, Lady Susanna, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  St Albans, Duke of, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li>  St Aldegonde, Count, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  St Evremond, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li>  St John family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  St Simon, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+<li>  Salisbury, Marquess of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li>  Sandwich, Earl of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+<li>  Sault, Comte de, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+<li>  Schulenburg, Ehrengard von der, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>-<a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mathias (Count), <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+<li>  Scott, John, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  Sedley, Catherine, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+<li>  Sefton, Lady, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+<li>  Selkirk, Earl of, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  Selwyn, George, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li>  Sentinelli, Count, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+<li>  Seymour, Lady Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+<li>  Shaw, Lady, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+<li>  Sheffield, Lord, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+<li>  Sheridan, Charles, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Mrs (E. Linley), <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Richard Brinsley, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas (Dr), <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Thomas, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+<li>  Shipway frauds, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+<li>  Shirley, Lady Barbara, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Laurence, (Earl of Ferrers), <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+<li>  Shrewsbury, Anna Maria, Countess of, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Earl of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  Smith, Albert, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, General, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Robert, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Smithson, Hugh, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li>
+<li>  Smythesonne, Smitheson, etc., <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li>  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Dorothea of Zell, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li>  Southwell, Lord, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+<li>  Spencer, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; family, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li>
+<li>  Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Standish, Charles, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+<li>  Stanley, Lord, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li>  Stephens, Catherine, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li>  Stewart, Andrew, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash; Colonel John, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+<li>  Stourton, family, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+<li>  Stow, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+<li>  Strangways, Lady Susan, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Strathcona, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+<li>  Strathmore, Earl of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li>  Stuart, La belle, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Lady Louisa, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Madame, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Walter, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+<li>  Sturt pedigree, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Suffolk, Lady, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+<li>  Surtees, Miss, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Taafe, Mr, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+<li>  Talbot, Sir John, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Richard, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li>  Tenison, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Tennyson, Lord, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+<li>  Thackeray, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li>  Thormanby, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+<li>  Thurlow, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Edward, Lord, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li>  Tripp, Baron, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+<li>  Turenne, Marshal, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+<li>  Tyrconnel, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Vaillant, Sheriff, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+<li>  Vend&ocirc;me, Philippe de, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li>  Vernon, Miss, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+<li>  Villiers, Adela, Lady, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Barbara, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Clementina, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, Sir George, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, George, Earl of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  Wake, Sir Hereward, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li>
+<li>  Wales, Prince of (Henry Frederick), <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+<li>  Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Walsingham, Countess of, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li>  Warburton, General, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li>  Ward, Mr Plumer, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+<li>  &mdash;&mdash;, William, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Warwick, Earl of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+<li>  Wellesbourne family, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+<li>  Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+<li>  Wentworth, Lord, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+<li>  Westmorland, Earl of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li>  Wigton, Lady, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li>  Wilberforce, William, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+<li>  Wilkes, John, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li>  William III., <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+<li>  Willis, Mr, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+<li>  Wilton, Earl of, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li>  Wood, Major, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+<li>  Woodrow, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li></li>
+<li>  York, Duke of (James), <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
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+Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Love Romances of the Aristocracy
+
+Author: Thornton Hall
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #14193]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Morgan and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY
+
+By
+
+THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.
+
+
+BARRISTER-AT-LAW
+
+AUTHOR OF "LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS," ETC. ETC.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+LONDON
+
+T. WERNER LAURIE
+
+CLIFFORD'S INN
+
+
+[Illustration: ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON]
+
+
+_TO_
+
+MRS TOM HESKETH
+
+
+_L'amitie est l'amour sans ailes_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as
+possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that
+those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of
+books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the
+compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy,
+with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its
+follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable
+reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I
+have derived from its writing, I shall be more than rewarded for a
+labour which has been to me a delight.
+
+THORNTON HALL.
+
+
+_As love plays a prominent part in at least twenty of these stones, and
+is only really absent from one or two of them, I venture to hope that my
+good friends, the reviewers, who have been so kind to my previous books,
+will not find fault with my title, which, more accurately than any other
+I can think of, describes the nature and scope of my book_.
+
+T.H.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   CHAP. PAGE
+      I. A PRINCESS OF PRUDES                          1
+     II. THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH                      21
+    III. THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS                  36
+     IV. THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON          51
+      V. A GHOSTLY VISITANT                           62
+     VI. A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY       74
+    VII. A PROFLIGATE PRINCE                          87
+   VIII. THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS                        96
+     IX. A QUEEN OF COQUETTES                        110
+      X. THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER     127
+     XI. A SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELOPEMENT               136
+    XII. TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF                       148
+   XIII. THE WICKED BARON                            165
+    XIV. A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_                         177
+     XV. THE MERRY DUCHESS                           195
+    XVI. THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER            207
+   XVII. THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM          222
+  XVIII. A NOBLE VAGABOND                            231
+    XIX. FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS                     243
+     XX. A PEASANT COUNTESS                          256
+    XXI. THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN                    266
+   XXII. TWO IRISH BEAUTIES                          282
+  XXIII. THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS                        298
+   XXIV. THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS                         316
+    XXV. THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES                 326
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF HAMILTON           _Frontispiece_
+  FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND         _to face page_ 18
+  MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON                 98
+  SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH                      110
+  LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH                      184
+  HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS                      252
+  ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER                   266
+  MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY                        288
+
+
+
+
+LOVE ROMANCES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A PRINCESS OF PRUDES
+
+
+Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the "Merrie
+Monarch's" passion from the first day of his restoration to that last
+day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him "sitting
+and toying with his concubines," there was, it is said, only one of them
+all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest,
+simplest, and most designing of prudes, _La belle Stuart_.
+
+When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the
+queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful
+girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her
+future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had
+carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first
+Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in
+blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of France, where
+he had found a fresh field for his valour.
+
+Meanwhile his daughter was happy in the charge of the widowed Queen
+Henrietta Maria, who although, as Cardinal de Retz tells us, she
+frequently "lacked a faggot to leave her bed in the Louvre," and even a
+crust to stay the pangs of hunger, proved a tender foster-mother to
+brave Walter Stuart's child, and watched her growth to beauty with a
+mother's pride.
+
+Even before she emerged from short frocks, Frances Stuart had
+established herself as the pet _par excellence_ of the Court of France.
+With Anne of Austria the little Scottish maiden was a prime favourite;
+every gallant, from "Monsieur" to the rakish Comte de Guise, loved to
+romp with her, and to join in her peals of childish laughter; and the
+King himself, Louis XIV., stole many a kiss, and was proud to be called
+her "big sweetheart." So devoted was His Majesty to _La belle Ecossaise_
+that, when her mother talked of taking her away to England, he begged
+that she would not remove so fair an ornament from his Court, and vowed
+that he would provide the child with a splendid dower and a noble
+husband if she would but allow her to remain.
+
+But Madame Stuart had other designs for her pretty daughter; and when
+Henrietta Maria took boat to England to shine again at the Court of
+Whitehall, under her son's reign, Frances Stuart joined her retinue, and
+found herself transported from the schoolroom to the most brilliant and
+dangerous court in Europe. When this transformation came in her life
+Walter Stuart's daughter was just blossoming into as sweet and fragrant
+a flower as ever bloomed in woman's guise. Fair and graceful as a lily,
+with luxuriant brown hair, eyes of violet, and a proud, dainty little
+head, she had a figure which, although yet not fully formed, was
+faultless in its modelling and its exquisite grace. And these physical
+charms were allied to an unspoiled freshness, which combined the artless
+fascinations of the child with the allurements of the woman.
+
+Such was Frances Stuart when she made her appearance at the Court of
+Charles II. as maid-of-honour, to his Queen, Catherine; and one can
+scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England,
+the French "Mademoiselle," as she was called, was hailed as a new
+revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the
+bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land of her exile.
+
+To the "Merrie Monarch's" senses, sated with riper beauties and more
+stolid charms, this unspoiled child of nature was as a wild rose
+compared with exotic hot-house flowers. She was, he vowed, so "dainty,
+so fresh, so fragrant," that none but the sourest of anchorites could
+resist her--and he was no anchorite, as the world knew well. Almost at
+sight of her he fell madly in love with her, and brought to bear on her
+the battery of all his fascinations. Was ever maid placed, on the
+threshold of life, in so dangerous a predicament? For the King, who was
+her first lover, was also one of the most captivating men in England, a
+past-master in the conquest of woman. But, in response to all his
+advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a
+merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the
+gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another "big
+playfellow" to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did
+not wish to know more. He might kiss her--_vraiment_--why not? and that
+Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told
+that "he would kiss her for half an hour at a time," caring little who
+looked on.
+
+And all her other Whitehall lovers--a legion of them, from the Duke of
+Buckingham to the youngest page at Court, she treated in precisely the
+same way. Was it innocence or artfulness, this assumption of childish
+prudery? "She was a child," says Count Hamilton, "in all respects save
+playing with dolls"--a child who refused to grow into a woman, and yet,
+one shrewdly suspects that behind her childishness was a motive deeper
+than is usually associated with so much simplicity.
+
+She infected the whole Court with her exuberant youthfulness.
+Basset-tables and boudoir intrigues were alike deserted to enjoy the new
+era of nursery games which she inaugurated. Jaded gallants and sedate
+Ladies of the Bedchamber mingled their shrieks of laughter in
+blind-man's buff and hunt-the-slipper with the Stuart maid as Lady of
+Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked--or affected to
+be--one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting
+on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at "I love my love with an
+A because he is Amorous"; "I hate him with a B because he is Boring,"
+and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for,
+Pepys says, "some of them were very witty."
+
+The little madcap even carried her games and toys into the sacred
+environment of the Audience Chamber. Seated on the floor, innocently
+exposing the prettiest pair of ankles in England, and surrounded by her
+big playfellows, she would challenge them to a competition in
+castle-building with cards; and when her carefully-reared edifice
+toppled to the ground she would break into a silvery peal of laughter,
+and clap her hands for the King to come and help her to rebuild it, for
+no less distinguished assistant would she allow to touch her cards. And
+Charles never failed to respond to the summons, though he were
+hobnobbing with chancellor or archbishop, and would be sent away happy,
+with a kiss for his pains. No wonder poor Pepys was horrified at such
+unseemly goings-on.
+
+And equally small wonder that the King's mistresses and the great ladies
+of the Court cast many a jealous and vindictive glance on the child, who
+had power to lure away their slaves to her nursery shrine. The Duke of
+Buckingham, himself, was prouder to be her favourite playfellow than of
+all his conquests in the field of love. He wrote songs, and sang them
+for her pleasure; he kept her in a ripple of laughter for hours together
+by his stories and clever mimicry, and rushed to her side whenever she
+summoned him to build card-castles or to join in a romp--until what was
+"play to the child" began to prove a serious matter to the man of the
+world. He found that, while he was building castles or chasing the
+elusive fairy blindfolded, she had stolen his heart away; but when he
+ventured to tell his love to her she boxed his ears, and told him to run
+away and not be so naughty again.
+
+Was there ever so tantalising and inscrutable a maid? And as she had
+treated the King and his chief favourite, she treated all her other
+playfellows. The Earl of Arlington, a grave, dignified Lord of the
+Bedchamber, so far unbended as to make love to the little witch, who
+stood so well in the favour of his Sovereign; and never did man exert
+himself more to win the favour of a maid.
+
+     "Having provided himself," says Hamilton, "with a great
+     number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he
+     obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display
+     them; at the same time offering her his most humble
+     services in the situation to which it had pleased God and
+     her virtue to raise her. But he was only in the preface
+     of his speech, when he reminded her so ludicrously of
+     Buckingham's mimicry of him that she burst into a peal of
+     laughter in his very face, and rushed stifling from the
+     room. Thus ignominiously was sounded the death-knell of
+     Arlington's hopes!"
+
+George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in
+England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and
+tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of
+them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic;
+and for a time she revelled in his comradeship. He first won her heart
+in the following fashion. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting
+and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and
+hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. "I can do better than that,"
+exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. "Give me two candles." The candles
+were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious
+mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were
+extinguished, while _La belle Stuart_ paraded after him, clapping her
+hands and laughing in her glee.
+
+Such a feat was an efficient passport to her favour. Rollicking George
+was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was
+privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had
+ever enjoyed.
+
+     "Since the Court has been in the country," he confessed,
+     "I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You
+     know that the _deshabille_ of the bath is a great
+     convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to
+     their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all
+     their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully
+     acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all
+     other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any
+     lady at Court for a well-turned arm and a fine leg, but
+     she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
+     After all, a man must be very insensible to remain
+     unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions."
+
+It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless
+encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest
+where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont,
+taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of
+flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and
+persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.
+
+Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her
+riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.
+
+     "I followed them," he says, "up into Whitehall, and into
+     the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked,
+     talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and
+     changing and trying one another's by one another's heads
+     and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse,
+     with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes,
+     little Roman nose, and excellent _taille_, is now the
+     greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if
+     ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least
+     in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which
+     I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady
+     Castlemaine."
+
+How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her
+girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know
+that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis
+Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry,
+in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.
+
+And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her
+witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other
+than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her
+Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that
+she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged
+Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a
+rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an
+artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was
+carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the
+cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of
+throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked
+on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments,
+between the pair--"with ring and all other ceremonies of church service
+and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking,
+evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion
+with great spirit."
+
+And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely
+saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.
+
+     "The King," to quote Hamilton again, "who seldom
+     neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom
+     failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most
+     indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment;
+     however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's
+     appearing with her in such a situation, being confident
+     that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all
+     the advantages which these opportunities could afford
+     Miss Stuart."
+
+As a matter of fact Charles's _maitresse en titre_ regarded the
+"Mademoiselle" as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
+"She is a lovely little thing," she once said patronisingly, "but she is
+only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest
+lover in the world." But she was not long left in this unsuspicious
+Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the "child" had made a conquest
+of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held
+the throne of his heart.
+
+Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by
+Gramont with "the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a
+'calash') that had ever been seen." The Queen herself and Lady
+Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to
+take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to
+create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and
+eloquence to secure this concession from the King.
+
+     "Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested
+     to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen
+     retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King
+     was driven to distraction between the cajoling and
+     threats of the two rival beauties."
+
+It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's
+unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in
+the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.
+
+According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the
+"prude" her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she
+was no such compliant maid. The only passport to her favours, though a
+King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a
+dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a
+bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever
+found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of
+Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as _La belle Stuart;_
+though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition "to be a
+Duchess" that she declared she was "ready to marry any gentleman of
+fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour."
+
+And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so
+cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his
+passion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she
+treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.
+
+     "Mr Pierce tells me," Pepys writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he
+     do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of
+     all business in the world, and to the open slighting of
+     the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by
+     while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in
+     her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him
+     going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or
+     any of the Nobles, when they would ask where the King is,
+     they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
+     meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly
+     disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court."
+
+Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were
+her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which
+she moved a splendid, but unassailable Queen, for every man who came
+within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
+One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the
+youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to
+England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration
+of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was
+asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe
+Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace
+of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in
+love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of
+his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on
+millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the
+faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the
+verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.
+
+It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the
+handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most
+insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good
+looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such
+a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox,
+who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the
+maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.
+
+Small in stature, deformed in figure--a caricature of a man, His Grace
+of Richmond was the last degenerate scion of the Stuarts of
+Richmond-d'Aubigny, a man of depraved tastes and besotted brain, the
+butt and the clown of Charles's Court. That this middle-aged buffoon
+should aspire to the hand of the loveliest and most elusive woman in
+England was only less amazing than that she should smile on his suit.
+The Court was struck with consternation--and convulsed with laughter.
+Nothing so utterly astonishing and so ludicrous had come within its
+experience. But there could be no doubt about it. _La belle Stuart_, who
+had so long resisted the King, and given the cold shoulder to such
+gallants as the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, was not only
+smiling on her ill-favoured suitor, she was actually giving him midnight
+assignations in her own apartments, and risking for a clown the
+reputation a King had been powerless to sully.
+
+Here, at last, was a fine weapon placed in the hands of the outraged and
+vindictive Castlemaine. Here was a splendid opportunity of paying off
+old scores, of showing to her Royal lover the kind of woman for whom he
+had supplanted her, and of reinstating herself in his good graces. One
+night, as he returned in an evil temper from a fruitless visit to Miss
+Stuart's apartments, from which he had been sent away on some frivolous
+pretext, he was accosted by my Lady Castlemaine, who, with ill-concealed
+triumph, told him that at the moment _La belle Stuart_ turned him away
+from her door, she was actually dallying with his new and contemptible
+rival, the Duke of Richmond, at the other side of it.
+
+Charles was incredulous, furious at the suggestion. "Come with me," Lady
+Castlemaine answered, "and I will prove that I am telling you the simple
+truth;" and taking his hand she led him exultantly down the gallery from
+his apartments to the threshold of Miss Stuart's door, where, with a
+sweeping curtsy and an invitation to enter, she left him. On throwing
+open the door, to quote Hamilton, the King
+
+     "found Miss Stuart in bed, but far from being asleep. The
+     Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all
+     probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The
+     King, who of all men was usually one of the most mild
+     and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of
+     Richmond in such terms as he had never used before. The
+     Duke was speechless and almost petrified; he saw his
+     master and King justly irritated. The first transports
+     which rage inspires on such occasions are dangerous. Miss
+     Stuart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge,
+     the Thames flowing close beneath it. He cast his eyes
+     upon it, and seeing those of the King more incensed and
+     fired with indignation than he thought his nature capable
+     of, he made a profound bow, and retired without replying
+     a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces
+     that were poured on him."
+
+But if the Duke proved thus a poltroon, Miss Stuart showed a very
+different metal. She was furious at the indignity of the King's
+intrusion on her privacy, and proceeded to read him such a lecture as
+his Royal ears had never listened to. She was no slave, she said, with
+flashing eyes, to be treated in such a manner, not to be allowed to
+receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with
+honourable intentions. She was perfectly free to dispose of her hand as
+she thought proper; and if she could not do it in England, there was no
+power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and
+throwing herself into a convent to enjoy that tranquillity that was
+denied her in his Court! And the enraged beauty wound up her lecture by
+pointing imperiously to the door and bidding the King begone, "to leave
+her in repose, at least for the remainder of the night."
+
+Charles went away baffled and cowed, but with a fierce rage in his
+heart. He had been defied, browbeaten, insulted by the woman for whom he
+would almost have bartered his crown; and he vowed that he would be
+revenged. On the following morning Miss Stuart, her anger now cooled,
+and awake to the enormity of her offence against Charles, sought an
+audience with Queen Catherine, to whom she told the whole story, begging
+her to appease the King, and to induce him to allow her to retire to a
+convent. So affecting was this interview that, we are told, the Queen
+and the maid-of-honour mingled their tears together, and Catherine
+promised to do her utmost to bring about a reconciliation.
+
+One final attempt Charles made to capture the prize before it was lost
+to him for ever. He offered to dismiss all his mistresses, from the
+Castlemaine herself to saucy Nell Gwynn, and to dower her with large
+revenues and splendid titles if she would but consent to be his
+_maitresse en titre_; but to all his seductions and bribes the
+inflexible maid-of-honour turned a blind eye. No future, however
+dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession.
+"I hope," said the King at last, "I may live to see you old and
+willing," as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with
+the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his
+sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be in proportion to the
+offence.
+
+But the fair Stuart had finally made up her mind. It had long been her
+ambition--from childhood, it is said--to be a Duchess, and she was not
+going to let the opportunity slip for all the kings in the world. What
+might come after was another matter. A Duchess's coronet and a
+wedding-ring were her immediate goal. Thus it came to pass that one dark
+night she stole away from the Palace of Whitehall, and was rowed to
+London Bridge, where the Duke awaited her in his coach. Through the
+night the runaway pair were driven to Cobham Hall, in Kent, where, long
+before morning dawned, an obliging parson had made them man and wife.
+Frances Stuart was a Duchess at last; and Charles's long intrigue had
+ended (or so it seemed) in final discomfiture.
+
+On hearing the news the King was beside himself with anger. He forbade
+the runaways ever to show their faces near his Court--he even dismissed
+his Chancellor Clarendon, whom he suspected of having a hand in the
+plot.
+
+But all his wrath fell impotently on the new Duchess, who returned his
+presents and settled smilingly down to enjoy her new dignities and her
+honeymoon. Within a year--so powerless is anger against love--Charles
+summoned the truants back to favour, and the Duchess, as Lady of the
+Bedchamber to the Queen, was installed once more at Whitehall, more
+splendid and pre-eminent than ever. During her brief exile, she had held
+a rival court of her own as near Whitehall as Somerset House, where,
+says Pepys,
+
+     "she was visited for her beauty's sake by people, as the
+     Queen is at nights. And they say also she is likely to go
+     to Court again, and there put my Lady Castlemaine's nose
+     out of joint. God knows that would make a great turn."
+
+How far the Duke's bride succeeded in putting Lady Castlemaine's "nose
+out of joint" must remain a matter of speculation. There seems little
+doubt that as a wife she proved more complaisant to Charles than as a
+maid. She had carried her virtue unstained to the altar and a Duchess's
+coronet, and this seems to have been the main concern of the beautiful
+prude. That Charles was more infatuated even with the wife than with the
+maid-of-honour is incontestable. He not only made open love to her at
+Court, but, especially after he had packed off her husband, the Duke, as
+Ambassador to Denmark, his pursuit took a clandestine and more dangerous
+shape. Pepys throws a light on what looks like a secret amour, when he
+tells us, on the authority of Mr Pierce, that Charles once "did take a
+pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to
+Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden-door not open,
+himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to the Duchess, which is a
+horrid shame."
+
+[Illustration: FRANCES, DUCHESS OF RICHMOND]
+
+But the Duchess's new reign of conquest was destined to be brief. To the
+consternation of her Royal lover she was struck down with small-pox,
+
+     "by which," to quote Pepys again, "all do conclude she
+     will be wholly spoiled, which is the greatest instance of
+     the uncertainty of beauty that could be in this age; but
+     then she hath had the benefit of it to be first married,
+     and to have kept it so long, under the greatest
+     temptations in the world from a King, and yet without the
+     least imputation."
+
+That Pepys's fears were realised we know from Ruvigny's letters to Louis
+XIV., in which he says that "her matchless beauty was impaired beyond
+recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever."
+During this tragic illness Charles, who was consumed with anxiety,
+visited her more than once, thus proving, at a terrible risk, the
+sincerity of his devotion. And it is even said that his admiration of
+her was not diminished by the loss of her beauty.
+
+With this loss of her beauty, however, the Duchess's reign may be said
+to have come to an end. King Charles's eyes were soon to be dazzled by
+the fresher charms of Louise de Querouaille, whom the "Sun-King" had
+sent from France to turn his head and influence his foreign policy in
+Louis's favour; and _La belle Stuart_ was not slow to realise that at
+last her sun had set. During the remainder of her long life, at least
+until the Orange King came to the Throne, she retained her office of
+Lady of the Bedchamber to two Queens; but her appearances at Court, the
+scene of so many triumphs, were as few as she could make them.
+
+For the rest her days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books
+and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of
+years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her ducal
+robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her
+nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with
+part of it an estate, to be known as "Lennox's Love to Blantyre"; and to
+this day "Lennox-Love" perpetuates, like the Britannia of our coins, the
+memory of one of the most beautiful and tantalising women who have ever
+driven men to distraction by their beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH
+
+
+A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and
+allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the
+haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet,
+rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms,
+statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell
+mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure
+or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares
+and ceremonial alike were thrown to the winds, when the pleasure of the
+moment was the only ambition worth pursuing, and when even the prudish
+found a fearful joy in playing hide-and-seek with vice.
+
+But although the fairest women in the land flocked to Bath, by common
+consent not one of them all was so beautiful and bewitching as Elizabeth
+Ann Linley, the girl-nightingale, whose voice entranced the ear daily at
+the Assembly Rooms concerts as her loveliness feasted the eye. She was,
+as all the world knew, only the daughter of Thomas Linley,
+singing-master and organiser of the concerts, a man who had plied
+chisel and saw at the carpenter's bench before he found the music that
+was in him; but, obscure as was her birth, she reigned supreme by virtue
+of a loveliness and a gift of song which none of her sex could rival.
+
+It is thus little wonder that Elizabeth Linley's fame had travelled far
+beyond the West Country town in which she was cradled. George III. had
+summoned her to sing to him in his London palace, and had been so
+overcome by her gifts of beauty and melody that, with tears streaming
+down his cheeks, he had stroked her hair and caressed her hands, and
+declared to the blushing girl that he had never seen any one so
+beautiful or heard a voice so divinely sweet.
+
+Charles Dibdin tried to enshrine her in fitting verse, but abandoned the
+effort in despair, vowing that she was indeed of that company described
+by Milton:
+
+    "Who, as they sang, would take the prisoned soul
+    And lap it in Elysium."
+
+The Bishop of Meath, in his unepiscopal enthusiasm, declared that she
+was "the link between an angel and a woman"; while Dr Charles Burney,
+supreme musician and father of the more famous Madame d'Arblay, wrote
+more soberly of her:
+
+     "The tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting
+     as her countenance and conversation. With a
+     mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation,
+     she was possessed of the double power of delighting an
+     audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of
+     brilliant execution, which is allowed to very few
+     singers."
+
+To her Horace Walpole also paid this curious tribute:
+
+     "Miss Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The
+     king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in
+     so holy a place as oratorio."
+
+Such are a few of the tributes, of which contemporary records are full,
+paid to the fair "Nightingale of Bath," whom Gainsborough and Reynolds
+immortalised in two of their inspired canvases--the latter as
+Cecilia--her face almost superhuman in its beauty and the divine rapture
+of its expression--seated at a harpsichord and pouring out her soul in
+song.
+
+It was inevitable that a girl of such charms and gifts--"superior to all
+the handsome things I have heard of her," John Wilkes wrote, "and withal
+the most modest, pleasing and delicate flower I have seen"--should have
+lovers by the score. Every gallant who came to Bath, sought to woo, if
+not to win, her. But Elizabeth Linley was no coquette; nor was she a
+foolish girl whose head could be turned by a handsome face or pretty
+compliments, or whose eyes could be dazzled by the glitter of wealth and
+rank. She was wedded to her music, and no lover, she vowed, should wean
+her from her allegiance. It was thus a shock to the world of
+pleasure-seekers at Bath to learn that the beauty, who had turned a cold
+shoulder to so many high-placed gallants, had promised her hand to an
+elderly, unattractive wooer called Long, a man almost old enough to be
+her grandfather.
+
+That her heart had not gone with her hand we may be sure. We know that
+it was only under the strong compulsion of her father that she had given
+her consent; for Mr Long had a purse as elongated as his name, and to
+the eyes of the poor singing-master his gold-bags were irresistible. Her
+elderly wooer loaded his bride-to-be with costly presents; he showered
+jewels on her, bought her a trousseau fit for a Queen; and was on the
+eve of marrying her, when--without a word of warning, it was announced
+that the wedding, to which all Bath had been excitedly looking forward,
+would not take place!
+
+Mr Linley was furious, and threatened the terrors of the law; but the
+bridegroom that failed was adamant. It was said that, in cancelling the
+engagement, Mr Long was acting a chivalrous part, in response to Miss
+Linley's pleading that he would withdraw his suit, since her heart could
+never be his, and by withdrawing shield her from her father's anger.
+However this may have been, Mr Long steadily declined to go to the
+altar, and ultimately appeased the singing-master by settling L3,000 on
+his daughter, and allowing her to keep the valuable jewels and other
+presents he had given her.
+
+It was at this crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was
+ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome
+by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his
+appearance at Bath--a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined
+to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of
+love was none other than Richard Brinsley Sheridan, grandson of Dean
+Swift's bosom friend, Dr Thomas Sheridan, one of the two sons of another
+Thomas, who, after a roaming and profitless life, had come to Bath to
+earn a livelihood by teaching elocution.
+
+This younger Thomas Sheridan seems to have inherited none of the wit and
+cleverness of his father, Swift's boon companion. Dr Johnson considered
+him "dull, naturally dull. Such an excess of stupidity," he added, "is
+not in nature." But, in spite of his dulness, "Sherry"--as he was
+commonly called--had been clever enough to coax a pension of L200 a year
+out of the Government, and was able to send his two boys to Harrow and
+Oxford.
+
+The Sheridan boys had been but a few days in Bath when they both fell
+head over heels in love with Elizabeth Linley, with whom their sister
+had been equally quick to strike up a friendship. But from the first,
+Charles, the elder son, was hopelessly outmatched.
+
+     "On our first acquaintance," Miss Linley wrote in later
+     years, "both professed to love me--but yet I preferred
+     the youngest, as by far the most agreeable in person,
+     beloved by every one."
+
+Indeed, from a boy, Richard Sheridan seemed born to win hearts. His
+sister has confessed:
+
+     "I admired--I almost adored him. He was handsome. His
+     cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes--the finest in
+     the world--the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a
+     tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same
+     playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit that
+     was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and
+     delighted the family circle."
+
+Such was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, when, in the year 1769, he first set
+eyes on the girl, who, after many dramatic vicissitudes, was to bear his
+name and share his glories. From the first sight of her he was
+hopelessly in love, although none but his sister knew it. He was little
+more than a school-boy, and was content to "bide his time," worshipping
+mutely at the shrine of the girl whom some day he meant to make his own.
+
+He gave no sign of jealousy when his elder brother made love to her
+before his eyes--only to retire quickly, chilled by a coldness which he
+realised he could never thaw; or even when his Oxford chum, Halhed, his
+dearest friend and the colleague of his youthful pen, fell a victim to
+Elizabeth's charms, and, in his innocence, begged Sheridan to plead his
+suit with her. Halhed, too, had to retire from the hopeless suit; and
+Richard Sheridan, still silent, save, perhaps, for the eloquence of
+tell-tale eyes, held the field alone.
+
+It was at this stage of our story that a grave element of danger entered
+Elizabeth Linley's life, with the arrival at Bath of a Major Matthews, a
+handsome _roue_, with a large rent-roll from Welsh acres, and a
+dangerous reputation won in the lists of love. At sight of the fair
+Nightingale in the Assembly Rooms this hero of many conquests was
+himself laid low. He was frantically in love, and before many days had
+passed vowed that he would shoot himself if his charmer refused to smile
+on him. Her coldness only fanned his ardour; and his persecution reached
+such a pitch that in her alarm she appealed to young Sheridan for help.
+
+Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young lover than such an
+appeal and the necessity for it. It was a tribute to her esteem, and to
+his budding manliness, which delighted him. Moreover, it gave him many
+opportunities of meeting her, and talking over the situation with her.
+At any cost this persecution must end; and the result of the conferences
+was that an excellent plan was evolved. Richard was to worm himself into
+the confidence of the Major, and, in the character of friend and
+well-wisher, was to advise him, as a matter of diplomacy, to cease his
+attentions to Miss Linley for a time. Meanwhile arrangements were to be
+made for the Nightingale's escape to France, where she proposed to enter
+a convent until she was of age--thus finding a refuge from the
+persecution to which her beauty constantly subjected her, and also from
+the scandal which the Long fiasco had given rise to, and which was still
+a great source of unhappiness to her.
+
+The plot was cunningly planned and worked smoothly. The Major was
+induced by subtle pleading to leave Miss Linley in peace for a time;
+and, to quote Miss Sheridan:
+
+     "At length they fixed on an evening when Mr Linley, his
+     eldest son and Miss Mary Linley were engaged at the
+     concert (Miss Linley being excused on the plea of
+     illness) to set out on their journey. Sheridan brought a
+     sedan-chair to Mr Linley's house in the Crescent, in
+     which he had Miss Linley conveyed to a post-chaise that
+     was waiting for them on the London road. A woman was in
+     the chaise who had been hired to accompany them on this
+     extraordinary elopement."
+
+For elopement it really was, although ostensibly Sheridan was merely
+playing the part of a friendly escort to a distressed lady, whatever
+deeper scheme, unknown to her, may have been in his mind. After a brief
+stay in London a boat was taken to Dunkirk, and the journey resumed
+towards Lille.
+
+It was during this last stage of the journey that Sheridan disclosed his
+hand. With consummate, if questionable, cleverness he explained that he
+could not, in honour, leave her in a convent except as his wife; that he
+had loved her since first he met her more than anything else in life,
+and that he could not bear the thought of her fair name being sullied by
+the scandal that would surely follow this journey taken in his company.
+
+To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved
+her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent,
+Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had travelled
+many miles from Calais the runaways found an accommodating priest to
+make them one. The would-be nun thus dramatically ended her journey to
+the convent at the altar.
+
+     "It was not," she wrote to him later, "your person that
+     gained my affection. No, it was that delicacy, that
+     tender interest which you seemed to take in my welfare,
+     that were the motives which induced me to love you."
+
+The honeymoon that followed these strange nuptials was of short
+duration; for, a few days later, Mr Linley arrived, in a high state of
+anger, to reclaim and carry off his runaway daughter; and Sheridan was
+left to follow ignominiously in their wake. When he reached Bath it was
+to find his hands full. During his absence the irate Major, quick to
+discover his perfidy, had published the following notice in the local
+_Chronicle_:--
+
+     "Mr Richard S., having attempted, in a letter left behind him for
+     that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away
+     from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character and
+     that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me or my
+     knowledge, since which he has neither taken notice of my letters,
+     nor even informed his own family of the place where he has hid
+     himself, I cannot longer think he deserves the treatment of a
+     gentleman, than in this public manner to post him as a Liar and a
+     treacherous Scoundrel.--THOMAS MATTHEWS."
+
+Such a public insult could, of course, only have one issue. Sheridan
+promptly challenged Matthews to a duel, the result of which was that the
+Major was compelled to make an apology, as public as his insult. But,
+so far was he from penitence, that within a few weeks he demanded a
+second meeting--and this proved a much more serious matter for Sheridan.
+
+The rivals met the following morning on Claverton Down; and after a few
+furious exchanges both swords were broken, and the opponents were
+struggling together on the ground. Matthews, however, being much the
+stronger, was able to pin Sheridan down, and with a piece of the broken
+sword stabbed him repeatedly in the face. "Beg your life, and I will
+spare it," he demanded of the prostrate and defenceless man. "I will
+neither beg it, nor receive it from such a villain," was the unflinching
+answer.
+
+     "Matthews then renewed the attack, and, having picked up
+     the point of one of the swords, ran it through the side
+     of the throat and pinned him to the ground with it,
+     exclaiming, 'I have done for him.' He then left the
+     field, accompanied by his second, and, getting into a
+     carriage with four horses which had been waiting for him,
+     drove off."
+
+Sheridan, unconscious and apparently dying, was driven from the Downs to
+a neighbouring inn, "The White Hart," where for a time he hung betwixt
+life and death. On hearing of his condition Miss Linley (who at the time
+was singing at Cambridge) travelled post-haste to his bedside; and,
+tenderly nursed by his wife and his sister, the wounded man slowly
+fought his way back to strength.
+
+One would have thought that, after such a tragic experience and
+observing the mutual devotion of the young couple, their parents would
+have relented and given their approval of the union, however improvident
+and inexcusable it might appear to them. But, on both sides, they were
+obdurate; and Mr Sheridan carried his opposition to the extent of
+extracting from his son a promise that he would not even see his wife.
+
+But love laughs at parents' frowns and usually triumphs in the end. When
+Elizabeth Linley went away to London to sing in oratorio, her husband
+followed her; and, in the _role_ of hackney coachman, had the pleasure
+of driving not only his wife but her father, home nightly from the
+concert-room, without either of them suspecting his identity. When at
+last he revealed himself to his wife, her delight was so great as to
+leave no doubt of the sincere love she bore him. Many a secret meeting
+followed; a final joint appeal ultimately broke down the obduracy of the
+parents; and once again Sheridan led his bride to the altar, to make her
+finally and securely his own.
+
+For a time Richard Sheridan and his Nightingale found a haven in a
+remote, rose-covered cottage at East Burnham. These were days of
+unclouded happiness, when, the "world forgetting and by the world
+forgot," they lived only for love, caring nothing of the future. They
+were days of simple delights; for their entire income was the interest
+of Mr Long's L3000, which proved ample for their needs. Mrs Sheridan,
+now at the zenith of her fame, might have won thousands by her
+voice--she actually refused offers of nearly L4000 for one short
+season--but her husband wished to keep the Nightingale's voice for his
+own exclusive delight; and she was only too happy in thus turning her
+back on fame and fortune.
+
+But such halcyon days could not last long. Even Paradise might pall on
+such a restless temperament as that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He
+began to sigh for the outer world in which he felt that it was his
+destiny to shine, for an arena in which he could do justice to the gifts
+which were clamouring for scope and exercise. And thus, to Mrs
+Sheridan's lasting regret, cottage and roses and simple delights of the
+country were left behind, and she found herself installed in a Portman
+Square house, in the heart of the world of fashion.
+
+Here Sheridan, always the most improvident of men, launched out into
+extravagances more suited to an income of L5000 a year than the paltry
+L150 which was all he could command. He entertained on a lavish scale;
+and his wit and charm, supplemented by his wife's beauty and gift of
+song, soon surrounded them with a fashionable crowd eager to eat his
+dinners and to attend his wife's _soirees_. Sheridan was in his element
+in this environment of luxury and prodigality; but the Bath Nightingale
+would gladly have changed it all for "a little quiet home that I can
+enjoy in comfort," as she told her husband--above all, for the Burnham
+cottage where she had been so idyllically happy.
+
+Perhaps if Sheridan had never left the cottage and the roses, his name
+would never have been known to fame. His ambition needed some such
+stimulus as this spasm of extravagance to wake it to activity. He must
+now make money or be submerged by debts; and under this impulse of
+necessity it was that he wooed fortune with _The Rivals_, and awoke to
+find himself famous and potentially rich. Other comedies followed
+swiftly from his eager and inspired pen--_The School for Scandal_, _The
+Duenna_, and _The Critic_--each greeted with enthusiasm by a world to
+which such dramatic triumphs were a revelation and a delight. Sheridan
+was not only the "talk of the town"; he was hailed universally as the
+brightest dramatic star of the age.
+
+It is needless to say that Sheridan's fame was a delight to his wife.
+
+     "Not long ago," she wrote to a friend, "he was known as
+     'Mrs Sheridan's husband.' Now the tables are turned, and,
+     henceforth, I expect I shall be just Mr Sheridan's wife.
+     Nor could I wish any more exalted title. I am proud and
+     thankful to be the wife of the cleverest man in England,
+     and the best husband in the world!"
+
+That Mrs Sheridan adored her husband is evident from every letter she
+wrote to him. She addresses him as "my dearest Love" and "my darling
+Dick," and vows that she cannot be happy apart from him. "I cannot love
+you," she declares, "and be perfectly satisfied at such a distance from
+you. I depended upon your coming to-night, and shall not recover my
+spirits till we meet." But through her letters runs the same hankering
+after the old simple, peaceful days--the days of love in a cottage. "I
+could draw," she writes, "such a picture of happiness that it would
+almost make me wish the overthrow of all our present schemes of future
+affluence and grandeur."
+
+But greatly as he loved his wife, Sheridan was now too much wedded to
+his ambition to listen to such tempting. He had conquered fame with his
+pen; now he aspired to subdue it with his tongue. In 1780, while he was
+still in the twenties, he was sent to Parliament by Stafford suffrages;
+and from his first appearance at Westminster captivated his fellow
+law-makers by the magic of his eloquence. A new star had arisen in the
+oratorical firmament, and soon began to pale all other luminaries.
+Within two years he was a Minister of the Crown; and in another year he
+had electrified the world by the most brilliant oratory that had ever
+been heard in our tongue--notably by his historic speech in the trial of
+Warren Hastings, to the preparation of which his wife had devoted
+herself body and soul.
+
+Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband
+in Westminster Hall, she wrote:--
+
+     "It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the
+     astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the
+     breasts of every class of people. Every party prejudice
+     has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence
+     and goodness.... What my feelings must be, you can only
+     imagine. To tell you the truth, it is with some
+     difficulty that I can 'let down my mind,' as Mr Burke
+     said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.
+     But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this
+     moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last
+     week."
+
+But Mrs Sheridan's day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near
+to its close. She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of
+fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his
+marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal
+seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved
+sister, began to show themselves in her. Her illness was as swift as it
+was, happily, painless. She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly
+watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was
+pitiful to see.
+
+     "During her last days," says Mrs Canning, her devoted
+     friend, "she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
+     sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
+     niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
+     out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
+     a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
+     an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
+     and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
+     poor heart would have burst in the conflict."
+
+And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
+a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
+"choir invisible." Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
+Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
+the world has ever known "between an angel and a woman." As for Sheridan
+he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
+to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS
+
+
+The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
+far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
+George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
+"threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
+the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
+Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
+was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
+of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
+in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
+wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
+career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
+assassin's knife.
+
+His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
+second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
+playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which in
+its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
+not, as Pope says,
+
+    "In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,"
+
+at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
+Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
+Arran, said: "There is not so much as one farthing towards defraying the
+expense of his funeral."
+
+Nor have the men of Villiers' blood had any monopoly of adventure. Their
+wives and daughters have seldom been content to lead the unromantic life
+which happily contents so many of their sex. From Barbara Chaffinch,
+whose intrigues secured the Earldom of Jersey for her husband in William
+III.'s reign, to the Lady Adela Villiers who ran away with Captain
+Ibbetson, a handsome young officer of Hussars, to Gretna Green and the
+altar, they have played many diverse and sensational _roles_ on the
+stage of their time.
+
+It was but fitting that George Villiers, fifth Earl of Jersey, should
+make a Countess of the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane, in whose veins was an
+adventurous strain as marked as in his own; for she was the fruit of one
+of the most dramatic unions recorded in the annals of our Peerage. A
+year before she was cradled her mother was Anne Child, the richest
+heiress in England--the only daughter of Robert Child, head of the great
+banking firm at Temple Bar, and a descendant of Francis Child, the
+industrious London apprentice who married the daughter of his master,
+William Wheeler, goldsmith, whose riches and business he inherited.
+
+"Old Child," as Anne's father was familiarly known, had many
+aristocratic clients who used his cheques and overdrew their accounts;
+but the most prodigal, as also the most ingratiating, of them all was
+the young Earl of Westmorland, who, not content with making large
+demands on the banker's exchequer and patience, had the audacity to
+aspire to all his wealth through his daughter's hand.
+
+Anne was perhaps as naturally flattered by the attentions of a lord as
+she was fascinated by his handsome face and figure and his courtly
+manners; but the father had other designs for his heiress than marrying
+her to a prodigal young nobleman. "Your blood, my lord, is good," he
+once told him; "but money is better."
+
+Lord Westmorland was not, however, the man to be turned aside from the
+gilded goal on which he had set his heart. If he could not wed the
+heiress with her father's blessing, he would dispense with the
+benediction. That he _would_ marry her he was determined; and Anne was
+just the girl to assist a bold lover in such an ambition.
+
+One day, so the story is told, Lord Westmorland decided to bring the
+matter to a crisis. He had been dining with Mr Child, and, after the
+wine had circulated freely, he said, "Now, sir, that we have discussed
+business thoroughly, there is another matter on which I should be
+grateful for your opinion." "What's that?" enquired the banker, beaming
+benevolently on his guest, as a man who has dined well and is at peace
+with the world. "Well, sir, suppose you were deeply in love with a girl
+who returned your love, and that her father refused his consent. What
+would you do?" "What should I do?" laughed the banker, "why, run away
+with her, of course, like many a better man has done!"
+
+What more direct encouragement could an ardent lover want? It is
+possible that the next morning the banker had completely forgotten the
+conversation, and his vinous approval of runaway matches; but, two days
+later, he was destined to have a rude awaking. In the middle of the
+night he was aroused by the watchman to learn that his front door had
+been found open; and a little later the alarming discovery was made that
+his daughter had flown. His suspicions fell at once on that "rascally
+young lord"; and they were confirmed when he found that the Earl, too,
+had disappeared, and that a chaise, with four galloping horses, had been
+seen dashing northwards as fast as whip and spur could drive them.
+
+The banker was furious. He raged and stormed as he ordered his servants
+to procure the fastest horses money could command; and with lavish
+promises of reward to the postboys he set out in hot pursuit of the
+fugitives. Luckily they had no long start; and, with better horses, more
+frequent changes, and a heavier purse, he had little doubt that he would
+soon overtake them. But the chase was sterner and longer than he had
+imagined. Cupid lends wings to runaway lovers. Fast as Mr Child's
+sweating horses raced, they gained but little on the pursued. Through
+the long night, the next day, and the following night the desperate race
+continued--through sleeping villages and startled towns, over hill and
+moor, until the borderland grew near. Then, between Penrith and
+Carlisle, the quarry was at last sighted.
+
+Mr Child's horses, urged to a final effort by the postboys, slowly but
+surely reduced the interval; and now inch by inch they draw abreast of
+the runaway chaise. The moment of triumph has come. Mr Child, with body
+half protruding from the chaise, calls loudly on the fugitives to halt,
+shaking his fist at the smiling face of the Earl, who with one hand
+waves a graceful adieu, with the other presents a pistol at Mr Child's
+near leader. A flash, a report, and the horse falls dead. A few minutes
+later the Earl's chaise is a distant dark speck in a cloud of dust, at
+which the baffled banker impotently shakes his fist.
+
+Before the fallen horse could be removed and the chase resumed the
+runaways had got so long a start that they could laugh at further
+pursuit; and by the time Child's chaise rattled impotently through the
+street of Gretna village, his daughter had been a Countess a good hour.
+
+For three years the banker kept his vow that he would never forgive her
+and her shameless husband. The Earl, indeed, he never did forgive, but
+his daughter won her way back into his heart, and to her he left the
+whole of his colossal fortune, amounting, it is said, to little less
+than L100,000 a year.
+
+It was from this romantic union that the Lady Sarah Sophia Fane came,
+who was to unite the 'prentice strain of Francis Child with the blood of
+the proud Villiers. As a young girl the Lady Sarah needed no such rich
+dower as was hers to commend her to the eyes of wooers. From the Fanes
+she inherited a full share of the beauty for which their women were
+noted, and to it she added many charms of her own. She had a figure,
+tall, commanding, and of exquisite grace, eyes blue as violets, a
+luxuriant crown of dark hair, and a complexion pure and beautiful as a
+lily.
+
+It is little wonder that a young lady so dowered with gold and good
+looks should attract lovers by the score, all anxious to win so fair a
+prize. But to one only of them all would she listen, Lord Villiers, heir
+to the Earldom of Jersey, a man of towering stature and handsome face,
+aristocrat and courtier to his finger-tips, a fearless and graceful
+rider, and an expert in manly sports. Such a combination of attractions
+the daughter of Anne Child could not long, nor was she at all disposed
+to, resist. And one May day in 1804--almost twenty-two years to the day
+after her parents' dramatic flight to Gretna Green--the Lady Sarah
+became Vicountess Villiers. A year later she was Countess of Jersey.
+
+From her first entry into society the child-countess (for she was little
+more than a child) took the position of a Queen, to which her rank,
+wealth, and beauty entitled her, and which she held, supreme and
+unassailable, as long as life lasted. Her _salon_ was a second Royal
+Court to which flocked all the greatest in the land, proud to pay homage
+to the "Empress of Fashion." She entertained kings with a regal
+splendour. Their Majesties of Prussia and Belgium, Holland and Hanover,
+and the Tsar Nicholas I. were all delighted to do honour to a hostess so
+captivating and so queenly.
+
+At Middleton Park, her lord's Oxfordshire seat, she dispensed a
+hospitality which was the despair of her rivals. Her retinue of servants
+seldom numbered less than a hundred, and many a week her guests, with
+their attendants, far exceeded a thousand. Money was squandered with a
+prodigal hand. The very servants, it is said, drank champagne and hock
+like water; her housemaids had their riding horses, and dressed in silks
+and satins. Among her thousands of guests were such men as Wellington
+and Peel, Castlereagh and Canning, all humble worshippers at her shrine;
+and Lord Byron who, in his gloomy moods, would shut himself in his
+bedroom for days, living on biscuits and water, and stealing out at dead
+of night to wander ghost-like through the neighbouring woods. These
+moods of black despondency he varied by turbulent spirits, when he would
+be the gayest of the gay, and would challenge his fellow-guests to
+drinking bouts, in which he always came off the victor.
+
+Lady Jersey had no more ardent admirer than Byron, whose muse was
+inspired to many a flight in honour of
+
+                          "The grace of mien,
+    The eye that gladdens and the brow serene;
+    The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
+    Which shades, yet shows that forehead more than fair."
+
+And among her army of guests the Countess moved like a Queen, who could
+stoop to frivolity without losing a shred of dignity. Surely never was
+such superabundant energy enshrined in a form so beautiful and stately.
+
+     "Shall I tell you what Lady Jersey is like?" wrote
+     Creevey. "She is like one of her numerous gold and silver
+     dicky-birds that are in all the showrooms of this house.
+     She begins to sing at eleven o'clock, and, with the
+     interval of the hour when she retires to her cage to
+     rest, she sings till twelve at night without a moment's
+     interruption. She changes her feathers for dinner, and
+     her plumage both morning and evening is the most
+     beautiful I ever saw."
+
+She seemed indeed incapable of fatigue. Tongue and body alike never
+seemed to rest, from rising to going to bed.
+
+     "She is really wonderful," says Lady Granville; "and how
+     she can stand the life she leads is still more wonderful.
+     She sees everybody in her own house, and calls on
+     everybody in theirs. She is all over Paris, and at all
+     the _campagnes_ within ten miles, and in all _petites
+     soirees_. She begins the day with a dancing-master at
+     nine o'clock, and never  rests till midnight.... At ten
+     o'clock yesterday morning she called for me, and we never
+     stopped to take breath till eleven o'clock at night, when
+     she set me down here more dead than alive, she going to
+     end the day with the Hollands!"
+
+A life that would have killed nine women out of ten seemed powerless to
+touch her. When far advanced in the sixties she was acknowledged to be
+still one of the most beautiful women in England, retaining to an
+amazing degree the bloom and freshness of youth. And when she appeared
+at a fancy-dress ball arrayed as a Sultana, in a robe of sky-blue with
+coral embroideries and a turban of gold and white, she was by universal
+consent acclaimed as the most beautiful woman there. It may interest my
+lady readers to learn that she attributed her perpetual youth to the use
+of gruel as a substitute for soap and water.
+
+Although Lady Jersey had admirers by the hundred among the most
+fascinating men in Europe, no breath of scandal ever touched her fair
+fame. Indeed, she carried her virtue to the verge of prudery, and
+repelled with a freezing coldness the slightest approach to familiarity.
+So prudish was she that on one occasion she declined to share a carriage
+alone with Lord John Russell, one of the least physically attractive of
+men, and begged General Alava to accompany them. "Diable!" laughed the
+General, "you must be very little sure of yourself if you are afraid to
+be alone with little Lord John!"
+
+She was merciless to any of her lady friends who lapsed from virtue, or
+in any way, however slight, offended the proprieties. But the vials of
+her fiercest anger were reserved for her mother-in-law, the
+Dowager-Countess, whose shameless intrigue with the Prince Regent
+scandalised the world in an age of lax morals; and the outraged Princess
+Caroline had no more valiant champion. She not only declined to have
+anything to say to her husband's mother, she carried her disapproval to
+the extent of refusing point blank to appear at Court. So furious was
+the Regent at this slight that "the dotard with corrupted eye and
+withered heart," as Byron calls him, had her portrait removed from the
+Palace Gallery of Beauties, and returned to its owner.
+
+A few days later, however, the Countess had her revenge. At a party in
+Cavendish Square she was walking along a corridor with Samuel Rogers
+when she saw the Regent coming towards them. As he approached he drew
+himself to his full height, and passed with an insolent and disdainful
+stare, which Lady Jersey returned with a look even more cold and
+contemptuous. Then, with a toss of her proud head, she turned to Rogers
+and laughingly said, "I did that well, didn't I?"
+
+It was, perhaps, as Queen and Autocrat of "Almack's" that Lady Jersey
+won her chief fame--Almack's, that most exclusive and aristocratic club
+in Berkeley Street, Piccadilly, the membership of which was the supreme
+hall-mark of the world of fashion. No rank, however exalted, no riches,
+however great, were a passport to this innermost social circle, over
+which Lady Jersey reigned like a beautiful despot.
+
+Scores of the smartest officers of the Guards, men of rank and fashion,
+and pets of West End drawing-rooms, clamoured or cajoled for admission
+to this jealously-guarded temple, but its doors only opened to receive,
+at the most, half a dozen of them. Even such social autocrats as Her
+Grace of Bedford and Lady Harrington were coldly turned away from the
+doors by the male members of the club; while the ladies shut them in the
+face of Lord March and Brook Boothby, to the amazed disgust of these men
+of fashion and conquest--for, by the rules of the club, male members
+were selected by the ladies, and _vice versa_. But beyond all doubt the
+destinies of candidates were in the hands of the half dozen Lady
+Patronesses who formed the Committee of the club--Princess Esterhazy,
+Princess von Lieven, Ladies Jersey, Sefton and Cowper, and Mrs Drummond
+Burrell; and of these my Lady Jersey was the only one who really
+counted.
+
+     "Three-fourths even of the nobility," says a writer in
+     the _New Monthly Magazine_, "knock in vain for admission.
+     Into this _sanctum sanctorum_, of course, the sons of
+     commerce never think of intruding; and yet into the very
+     'blue chamber,' in the absence of the six necromancers,
+     have the votaries of trade contrived to intrude
+     themselves."
+
+     "Many diplomatic arts," writes Captain Gronow, "much
+     _finesse_, and a host of intrigues were set in motion to
+     get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose
+     rank and fortunes entitled them to the _entree_ anywhere,
+     were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses;
+     for the female government of Almack's was a despotism,
+     and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is
+     needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was
+     not innocent of abuses."
+
+The fair ladies who ruled supreme over this little dancing and gossiping
+world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at
+the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+_chapeau bras._ On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to
+ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when
+the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped
+forward and said, "Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers," whereupon
+the Duke, who had a great respect for orders and regulations, quietly
+walked away.
+
+Another inflexible rule of the club was that no one should be admitted
+after eleven o'clock; and it was a breach of this regulation that once
+overwhelmed the Duke of Wellington with humiliation. One evening, the
+Duke, who had promised to meet Lady Mornington at Almack's, presented
+himself for admission. "Lady Jersey," announced an attendant, "the Duke
+of Wellington is at the door, and desires to be admitted." "What o'clock
+is it?" she asked. "Seven minutes after eleven, your Ladyship." She
+paused for a moment, and then said with emphasis and distinctness, "Give
+my compliments--Lady Jersey's compliments--to the Duke of Wellington,
+and say that she is very glad that the first enforcement of the rule of
+exclusion is such that, hereafter, no one can complain of its
+application. He cannot be admitted." And the Duke, whom even Napoleon
+with all his legions had been powerless to turn back, was compelled to
+retreat before the capricious will of a woman.
+
+Such an autocrat was this "Queen of Almack's."
+
+     "While her colleagues were debating," says the author of
+     the "Key to Almack's," "she decided. Hers was the
+     master-spirit that ruled the whole machine; hers the
+     eloquent tongue that could both persuade and command. And
+     she was never idle. Her restless eye pried into
+     everything; she set the world to rights; her influence
+     was resistless, her determination uncontrollable."
+
+"Treat people like fools, and they will worship you," was her favourite
+maxim. And as Bryon, her intimate friend, once said, "She was the
+veriest tyrant that ever governed Fashion's fools, and compelled them to
+shake their cap and bells as she willed."
+
+It was at Almack's, it is interesting to recall, that Lady Jersey first
+introduced the quadrille from Paris.
+
+     "I recollect," says Captain Gronow, "the persons who
+     formed the first quadrille that was ever danced there.
+     They were Lady Jersey, Lady Harriet Buller, Lady Susan
+     Ryder, and Miss Montgomery; the men being the Count St
+     Aldegonde, Mr Montgomery, and Charles Standisti."
+
+It was at Almack's, too, that she introduced the waltz, which so
+shocked the proprieties even in that easy-going age.
+
+     "What scenes," writes Mr T. Raikes, "have we witnessed in
+     these days at Almack's! What fear and trembling in the
+     _debutantes_ at the commencement of a waltz, what
+     giddiness and confusion at the end! It was, perhaps,
+     owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an
+     opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score
+     of morality. The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and
+     cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom
+     became a scene of feud and contention."
+
+But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom
+divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and
+many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her
+victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the
+Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist,
+twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the
+waltz.
+
+For fifty years, Lord Jersey's Countess reigned supreme in the social
+world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age. As was
+inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented
+her airs and scoffed at her graces. Lady Granville called her "a
+tiresome, quarrelsome woman"; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most
+abject slaves, once exclaimed, "What ---- nonsense Lady Jersey talks!"
+and Granville declared that she had "neither wit, nor imagination, nor
+humour." But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage
+and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty
+and personal charm.
+
+The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each
+sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman. One by one,
+her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid
+her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her
+bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her
+unclouded youth. The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the
+darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the
+slayer of her hopes was not stayed. Her husband, whose devotion had so
+long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest
+son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the
+crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken
+from her.
+
+For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one
+January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the
+world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have
+ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON
+
+
+The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the
+far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly
+seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud
+'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain,
+and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.
+
+Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley "a low wretch, a mad
+assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He
+was indeed an incarnate fiend. But was he to blame? He was possessed by
+devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in
+his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle,
+whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the
+Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And
+this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy,
+and ended it in tragedy.
+
+As a boy, he was subject to violent attacks of rage, when it was not
+safe to approach him; and his madness grew with his years. Strange tales
+are told of him as a young man. We are told that he would spend hours
+pacing like a wild animal up and down his room, gnashing his teeth,
+clenching his fists, grinning diabolically, and uttering strange
+incoherent cries. He would stand before a mirror, making horrible
+grimaces at his reflection, and spitting upon it; he walked about armed
+with pistols and dagger, ready at a moment to use both on any one who
+annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
+and hatred of all around him.
+
+When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
+into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
+Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
+with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
+petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
+obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
+appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.
+
+Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
+calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
+became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
+and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.
+
+     "I still retain," writes a Mr Cradock in his "Memoirs,"
+     "a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
+     who, with the Ladies Shirley, his sisters, frequented
+     Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
+     the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
+     character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
+     but in the evening he became the terror of the
+     inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
+     to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
+     was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
+     behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
+     afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
+     My father's house was situated midway between Lord
+     Ferrers's lodgings and the Town Hall, where the race
+     assemblies were then held. He had, as was supposed,
+     obtained liquor privately, and then became outrageous;
+     for, from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to
+     the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a
+     silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies. He was
+     then secured for that evening. This was the last time of
+     his appearing at Leicester, till brought from
+     Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.
+
+     "It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady
+     Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him,
+     no greater precaution had been used with respect to his
+     own safety as well as that of all around him. Whilst
+     sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always
+     urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters
+     ventured to come with him to the races, they had an
+     absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises."
+
+Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
+lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
+surrounded himself with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
+both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
+eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
+tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
+from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
+figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.
+
+But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
+became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
+wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
+such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
+or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
+the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
+And this is how it came.
+
+The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
+received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
+his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
+lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
+this delicate post--for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
+such a "tool" he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
+who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
+his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
+Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
+was possessed of a conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
+could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.
+
+In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
+adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
+it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
+unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
+hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
+his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
+the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
+to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.
+
+One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
+steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
+was on a Friday; and punctually at two o'clock, the hour appointed, Mr
+Johnson made his appearance, and was ushered into his Lordship's study.
+Unknown to him, Lord Ferrers had sent away his housekeeper and his
+menservants on various pretexts; and, apart from the Earl and the
+steward (the spider and the fly), there was no one in all the great
+house but three maidservants, whose chief anxiety was to keep as far
+away as possible from their mad master.
+
+With a courteous greeting Lord Ferrers invited Mr Johnson to take a
+seat; and then, placing before him a document, which proved to be a
+confession of fraud and dishonesty in his office of receiver, he
+commanded his steward to sign his name to it.
+
+On reading the confession which he was ordered to sign, Mr Johnson
+indignantly refused to comply with such an outrageous demand. "You
+refuse to sign?" asked the Earl with ominous calmness. "I do," was the
+emphatic reply. "Then," continued his lordship, producing a pistol, "I
+command you to kneel." Mr Johnson, now alarmed and awake to his danger,
+looked first at the stern, cold eyes bent on him, and then at the pistol
+pointed at his heart, and sank on one knee. "Both knees!" insisted the
+Earl. Mr Johnson subsided on the other knee, looking calmly at his
+would-be murderer, though beads of perspiration were standing on his
+forehead. A moment later a shot rang out in the silent room, and the
+steward fell to the floor mortally wounded. Laying down the smoking
+weapon, Lord Ferrers opened the door and called loudly for assistance.
+The horrified servants, who had heard the report, came, huddled and
+fearful, at his bidding. One he despatched for a doctor, and, with the
+assistance of the other two, he carried the fast-dying man to a bedroom.
+When the doctor arrived he found the Earl standing by the bedside,
+trying to stop the flow of blood which was ebbing from the steward's
+chest; but the victim was beyond all human aid. He had but a few hours
+at the most to live. An hour later Lord Ferrers was lying dead drunk on
+the floor of his bedroom, while Mr Johnson's life was ebbing out in
+agony at his house, a mile away.
+
+     "As soon as it became known," to quote the account given
+     by an eye-witness in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, "that
+     Mr Johnson was really dead, the neighbours set about
+     seizing the murderer. A few persons, armed, set out for
+     Staunton, and as they entered the hall-yard they saw the
+     Earl going towards the stable, as they imagined, to take
+     horse. He appeared to be just out of bed, his stockings
+     being down and his garters in his hand, having probably
+     taken the alarm immediately on coming out of his room,
+     and finding that Johnson had been removed. One
+     Springthorpe, advancing towards his lordship, presented a
+     pistol, and required him to surrender; but his lordship
+     putting his hand to his pocket, Springthrope imagined he
+     was feeling for a pistol, and stopped short, being
+     probably intimidated. He thus suffered the Earl to escape
+     back into the house, where he fastened the doors and
+     stood on his defence.
+
+     "The crowd of people who had come to apprehend him beset
+     the house, and their number increased very fast. In about
+     two hours Lord Ferrers appeared at the garret window, and
+     called out: 'How is Johnson?' Springthorpe answered: 'He
+     is dead,' upon which his lordship insulted him, and
+     called him a liar, and swore he would not believe anybody
+     but the surgeon, Kirkland. Upon being again assured that
+     he was dead, he desired that the people might be
+     dispersed, saying that he would surrender; yet, almost in
+     the same breath, he desired that the people might be let
+     in, and have some victuals and drink; but the issue was
+     that he went away again from the window, swearing that he
+     would not be taken.
+
+     "The people, however, still continued near the house, and
+     two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one,
+     Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a
+     blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but
+     Curtis, so far from being intimidated, marched boldly up
+     to him, and his lordship was so struck with the
+     determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that
+     he suffered him to seize him without making any
+     resistance. Yet the moment that he was in custody he
+     declared that he had killed a villain, and that he
+     gloried in the deed."
+
+The tragedy is now hastening to its close. The assassin was kept in
+custody at Ashby until a coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful
+Murder" against him, when he was transferred to Leicester, and a
+fortnight later to London, making the journey in his own splendid
+equipage with six horses, and "dressed like a jockey, in a close
+riding-frock, jockey boots and cap, and a plain shirt." He was lodged in
+the Round Tower of the Tower of London, where, with a couple of warders
+at his elbow night and day, with sentries posted outside his door, and
+another on the drawbridge, he passed the last weeks of his doomed life.
+
+In mid-April he was duly tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of
+Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to
+prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a
+dissentient voice, pronounced "Guilty," and sentenced to be "hanged by
+the neck until he was dead," when his body should be handed over to the
+surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed--pitiful salve to his
+pride--that he should be hanged by a cord of silk, the privilege due to
+his rank as a Peer of the realm; and this was granted as a matter of
+course.
+
+One day in early May the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many
+other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine
+o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey--the
+most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was allowed, as
+a last favour, to travel to his death, not in the common hangman's cart
+as an ordinary criminal, but in his own landau, drawn by 'six beautiful
+horses; and thus he made his stately progress to Tyburn.
+
+Probably no man ever journeyed to the scaffold under such circumstances
+of pomp and splendour. It might well, indeed, have been the bridal
+procession of a great nobleman that the black avenues of curious
+spectators in London's streets had come to see, and not the last grim
+journey of a malefactor to the hangman's rope. His very dress was that
+of a bridegroom, consisting, as it did, to quote again from the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_,
+
+     "of a suit of light-coloured clothes, embroidered with
+     silver, said to have been his wedding-suit; and soon
+     after the Sheriff entered the landau, he said, 'You may,
+     perhaps, sir, think it strange to see me in this dress,
+     but I have my particular reasons for it.' The procession
+     then began in the following order: A very large body of
+     constables of the county of Middlesex, preceded by one of
+     the high constables; a party of horse grenadiers, and a
+     party of foot; Mr Sheriff Errington, in his chariot,
+     accompanied by his under-Sheriff, Mr Jackson; the landau
+     escorted by two other parties of horse grenadiers and
+     foot; Mr Sheriff Vaillant's chariot, in which was
+     Under-Sheriff Mr Nichols; a mourning-coach and six, with
+     some of his lordship's friends; and, lastly, a hearse and
+     six, provided for the conveyance of his lordship's corpse
+     from the place of execution to Surgeons' Hall.
+
+     "The procession moved so slowly that Lord Ferrers was two
+     hours and three-quarters in his landau but during the
+     whole time he appeared perfectly easy and composed,
+     though he often expressed his desire to have it over,
+     saying that the apparatus of death and the passing
+     through such crowds of people was ten times worse than
+     death itself. He told the Sheriff that he had written to
+     the King, begging that he might suffer where his
+     ancestor, the Earl of Essex, had suffered--namely, on
+     Tower Hill; that 'he had been in the greater hope of
+     obtaining this favour as he had the honour of quartering
+     part of the same arms and of being allied to his Majesty;
+     and that he thought it hard that he should have to die at
+     the place appointed for the execution of common felons.'
+     As to his crime, he declared that he did it 'under
+     particular circumstances, having met with so many crosses
+     and vexations that he scarcely knew what he did."
+
+At the top of Drury Lane he paused to drink his last glass of wine,
+handing a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a
+muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and
+amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he
+exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold
+coin in his hand.
+
+Thus, cold, calm, without rancour or regret, perished Laurence, Earl
+Ferrers, not even a struggle marking the moment when life left him.
+After hanging for an hour, his body was taken down and removed to
+Surgeons' Hall, where it was dissected; and, thus mutilated, it was
+exposed to public derision and malediction before it found a final
+resting-place, fourteen feet deep under the belfry of old St Pancras
+Church.
+
+Such is the stain which burns red on the Shirley shield, and such was
+the man who placed it there. But, as we have seen, Laurence Shirley was
+mad beyond all doubt, and "knew not what he did"; and in the eyes of all
+charitable and right-thinking men the 'scutcheon of the Ferrers Earldom
+remains as virtually unsullied to-day as when it was virginally fresh
+two centuries ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A GHOSTLY VISITANT
+
+
+There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more
+tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting
+climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly
+visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this
+singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear
+and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson
+declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I
+am willing to believe it."
+
+Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, son of the first Baron, the distinguished
+poet and historian, was the degenerate descendant of five centuries of
+Lyttelton ancestors, who had held their heads among the highest in the
+county of Worcester since the days of the third Henry. Unlike his
+clean-living forefathers, he was famous as a debauchee in a dissolute
+age.
+
+     "Of his morals," Sir Bernard Burke says, "we may judge by
+     the fact of his having died the victim of the coarsest
+     debauchery, and leaving behind him a diary more
+     disgustingly licentious than the pages of Aratine
+     himself."
+
+William Coombe, who had been at Eton with Lyttelton, is said to have had
+his old schoolfellow in mind when he dedicated his _Diaboliad_ "to the
+worst man in His Majesty's Dominions," and when he penned those terrible
+lines:--
+
+    "Have I not tasted every villain's part?
+     Have I not broke a noble parent's heart?
+     Do I not daily boast how I betrayed
+     The tender widow and the virtuous maid?"
+
+From the days when he wore his Eton jacket the life of this perverse
+lord seems to have been one long record of profligacy; at least, until
+that day, but six years before its end, when, to quote his own words, "I
+awoke, and behold I was a lord!"
+
+     "From the time when," Mr Stanley Makower writes,
+     "although no more than a youth of nineteen, his
+     engagement to General Warburton's daughter had been
+     broken off on the discovery of the vicious life he had
+     led in his travels in France and Italy, he had been a
+     source of shame and trouble to his family.... To measure
+     the depths of Lyttelton's vices, it is necessary to read
+     his own letters, in which the literary style is as
+     perfect as the fearless admission of fault is
+     bewildering."
+
+Indeed, even more remarkable than the viciousness of his life, was the
+brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the face of the world.
+
+With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of
+person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord
+Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time. When he
+was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the
+boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox. In
+literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily
+have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of
+statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame
+and high position in the arena of politics.
+
+Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph
+Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort
+to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert
+itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid's eyes, and
+plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find
+the pleasure he loved.
+
+Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although
+still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a
+nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of
+pleasure.
+
+And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end
+of his tether the following story proves. One day in the last month of
+his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his
+London home.
+
+     "He found," to quote the words of his lordship's
+     stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and
+     on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well,
+     cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while,
+     I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the
+     two young men walked out into the streets. In the course
+     of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James's,
+     Piccadilly. Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones,
+     said: 'Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in
+     their youth at five-and-thirty. But you and I, who are
+     gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!'"
+
+How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too,
+would be lying among the "vulgar fellows" who die in their youth at
+five-and-thirty!
+
+And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility;
+for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech
+of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp--the speech of a man in
+the prime of his powers. Such efforts as this, however, were but as the
+spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were
+followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely
+killing him.
+
+It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord
+Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days' peaceful
+life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a
+fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party,
+including several ladies, to join him. And, it should be said, no host
+could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his
+depraved tastes, Lord Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination--a
+wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.
+
+During the first day of his residence at Epsom the following
+incident--which may or may not have had a bearing on the strange events
+that followed--took place.
+
+     "Lord Lyttelton," to quote Sir Digby Neave, "had come to
+     Pit Place in very precarious health, and was ordered not
+     to take any but the gentlest exercise. As he was walking
+     in the conservatory with Lady Affleck and the Misses
+     Affleck, a robin perched on an orange-tree close to them.
+     Lord Lyttelton attempted to catch it, but failing, and
+     being laughed at by the ladies, he said he would catch it
+     even if it was the death of him. He succeeded, but he put
+     himself in a great heat by the exertion. He gave the bird
+     to Lady Affleck, who walked about with it in her hand."
+
+On the following morning his lordship appeared at the breakfast-table so
+pale and haggard that his guests, alarmed at his appearance, asked what
+was the matter. For a time he evaded their enquiries, and then made the
+following startling statement:--"Last night," he said, "after I had been
+lying in bed awake for some time, I heard what sounded like the tapping
+of a bird at my window, followed by a gentle fluttering of wings about
+my chamber. I raised myself on my arm to learn the meaning of these
+strange sounds, and was amazed at seeing a lovely female, dressed in
+white, with a small bird perched like a falcon on her hand. Walking
+towards me, the vision spoke, commanding me to prepare for death, for I
+had but a short time to live. When I was able to command my speech, I
+enquired how long I had to live. The vision then replied, 'Not three
+days; and you will depart at the hour of twelve.'"
+
+Such was the remarkable story with which Lord Lyttelton startled his
+guests on the morning of 24th November 1779. In vain they tried to cheer
+him, and to laugh away his fears. They could make no impression on the
+despondency that had settled on him; they could not shake the conviction
+that he was a doomed man. "You will see," was all the answer he would
+vouchsafe, "I shall die at midnight on Saturday."
+
+But in spite of this alarming experience and the gloomy forebodings to
+which, in his shattered state of nerves, it gave birth, Lord Lyttelton
+did not long allow it to interfere with the work he had in hand, the
+preparation of a speech on the disturbed condition in Ireland which he
+was to deliver in the House of Lords that very day--a speech which
+should enhance his great and rapidly growing reputation as an orator. He
+spent some hours absorbed in polishing and repolishing his sentences,
+and in verifying his facts; and, when he rose in the House, he was as
+full of confidence as of his subject.
+
+Never, it was the common verdict, had his lordship spoken with more
+eloquence and lucidity or with more powerful grasp of his subject and
+his hearers.
+
+     "Cast your eyes for a moment," he declared, amid
+     impressive silence, "on the state of the Empire.
+     America, that vast Continent, with all its advantages to
+     us as a commercial and maritime people--lost--for ever
+     lost to us; the West Indies abandoned; Ireland ready to
+     part from us. Ireland, my lords, is armed; and what is
+     her language? 'Give us free trade and the free
+     Constitution of England as it originally was, such as we
+     hope it will remain, the best calculated of any in the
+     world for the preservation of freedom.'"
+
+It was the speech of a far-seeing statesman; and although it proved but
+the "voice of one crying in the wilderness," Lord Lyttelton felt that he
+had done his duty and had crowned his growing political fame with the
+laurels of the patriot and the orator.
+
+On the following morning Fortescue met his cousin sauntering in St
+James's Park, as Mr Makower tells us, "with the idleness of one who has
+never known what occupation means."
+
+"Is it because Hillsborough, the stupidest of your brother peers, paid
+you such fine compliments on your speech?" he asked.
+
+Lyttelton smiled faintly. "No, it was not of that I was thinking," he
+answered. "Those are things of yesterday. Hillsborough was wrong; the
+majority who voted with him were wrong; and I was right with my
+minority. They don't know Ireland as I do. But a Government which can
+lose America can do anything. I have done with politics. I was thinking
+of something entirely different when you came upon me. I was
+thinking--of death."
+
+Fortescue laughed. But, when he had heard the story of Lyttelton's
+dream, something in the manner of the narrator conveyed to him a feeling
+of uneasiness.
+
+"No man has more thoroughly enjoyed doing wrong than I have," continued
+Lyttelton. "But I should not have enjoyed it so much if I believed in
+nothing. With me sin has been conscientious; and I enjoyed the wrong
+thing not only for itself but also because it was wrong. Suppose it be
+true that I have not more than three days to live--"
+
+"You take the thing too seriously," interposed his cousin.
+
+"Join me at Pit Place to-morrow," said Lyttelton. "Then you shall see if
+I take it too seriously."
+
+During the intervening two days he fluctuated between profound gloom and
+boisterous hilarity. One hour he was plunged into the depths of despair,
+the next he was the soul of gaiety, laughing hysterically at his fears,
+and exclaiming, "I shall cheat the lady yet!"
+
+During dinner on the third and fatal day he was the maddest and merriest
+at the table, convulsing all by his sallies of wit and his infectious
+high spirits; and, when the cloth was removed, he exclaimed jubilantly,
+"Ah, Richard is himself again!" But his gaiety was short-lived. As the
+hours wore on his spirits deserted him; he lapsed into gloom and
+silence, from which all the efforts of his friends could not rouse him.
+
+As the night advanced he began to grow restless. He could not sit still,
+but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently
+to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the
+passage of time. At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he
+retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not
+knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the
+house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, "to
+deceive him into comfort."
+
+Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the
+curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the
+mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the
+fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near
+to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find
+that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and
+straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more
+to go--half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve--and nothing
+happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the
+watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of
+laughter--discordant, jubilant, defiant.
+
+"This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find," he said to his
+valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting. "And
+now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer." The valet proceeded to
+mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was
+at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table. "You dirty fellow!" his
+lordship exclaimed. "Go down and fetch a spoon."
+
+When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror,
+his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.
+He ran downstairs again, shouting, "Help! Help! My lord is dying!" The
+alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their
+host almost at his last gasp. A few moments later he was dead, with the
+watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve. He had
+died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant
+of three nights previously.
+
+Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton,
+statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he
+would die in a dream or vision of the night. How far his death was due
+to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can
+say with certainty. That his heart was diseased, that he had had many
+former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond
+question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most
+remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the
+exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself
+three days before the event.
+
+Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it
+was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among
+Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had
+often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion
+his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will
+come and inform you."
+
+The words were probably spoken more in jest than in earnest, and Mr
+Andrews no doubt little dreamt how the promise would be fulfilled. On
+the night of Lord Lyttelton's death Mr Andrews, who expected his
+lordship to pay him a visit on the following day, had retired to bed at
+his house at Dartford, in Kent.
+
+When in bed, to quote from Mr Plumer Ward's "Illustrations of Human
+Life," he fell into a sound sleep, but was waked between eleven and
+twelve o'clock by somebody opening his curtains. It was Lord Lyttelton,
+in a nightgown and cap which Andrews recognised. He also spoke plainly
+to him, saying that he was come to tell him all was over. It seems that
+Lord Lyttelton was fond of horseplay; and, as he had often made Andrews
+the subject of it, the latter had threatened his lordship with physical
+chastisement the very next time that it should occur. On the present
+occasion, thinking that the annoyance was being renewed, he threw at
+Lord Lyttelton's head the first thing that he could find--his slippers.
+The figure retreated towards a dressing-room, which had no ingress or
+egress except through the bed-chamber; and Andrews, very angry, leaped
+out of bed in order to follow it into the dressing-room. It was not
+there, however.
+
+Surprised and amazed, he returned at once to the bedroom, which he
+strictly searched. _The door was locked on the inside_, yet no Lord
+Lyttelton was to be found. In his perplexity, Mr Andrews rang for his
+servant, and asked if Lord Lyttelton had not arrived. The man answered:
+"No, sir." "You may depend upon it," said Mr Andrews, thoroughly
+mystified and out of humour, "that he is somewhere in the house. He was
+here just now, and he is playing some trick or other. However, you can
+tell him that he won't get a bed here; he can sleep in the stable or at
+the inn if he likes."
+
+After a further vain search of the bed-chamber and the dressing-room, Mr
+Andrews returned to bed and to sleep, having no doubt whatever that his
+too jocular friend was in hiding somewhere near. On the afternoon of the
+following day news came to him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous
+night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his
+midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his
+ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews
+swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words,
+"he was not himself or a man again for three years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded
+recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that
+Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out
+while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her
+bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in
+this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a
+dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina
+or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at
+least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed to practise.
+
+No woman could have had smaller excuse for straying from the path of
+virtue, much less for making foul crimes the minister to her lust than
+Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. The descendant of a long line of
+honourable Brudenells, daughter of an Earl of Cardigan, there was
+nothing in the history of her family to account for the taint in her
+blood. She had been dowered with beauty and charms which made conquest
+easy, inevitable; and she was honourably wedded to a noble husband, the
+eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, who, although a man of no great character
+or attainments, was an indulgent and faithful husband. Nor does she,
+until she had reached the haven of married life, appear to have shown
+any trace of the wickedness that must have been slumbering in her.
+
+And yet, before she had worn her Countess's coronet a year, she had made
+herself notorious, even in Charles II.'s abandoned Court, for passions
+which would ruthlessly crush any obstacle in the way of their
+indulgence. Lover after lover, high-placed and base-born indifferently,
+succeeded one another in her fickle favour, as Catherine the Great's
+favourites trod one on the heels of the other, each in turn to be flung
+contemptuously aside to make room for a more favoured rival.
+
+Even Gramont, seasoned man of the world and far removed from a saint as
+he was, was frankly horrified at the carryings-on of this English
+Messalina, compared with whom the most lax ladies of the English Court
+were veritable prudes. "I would lay a wager," he says, "that if she had
+a man killed for her every day she would only carry her head the higher.
+I suppose she must have plenary indulgence for her conduct." The only
+indulgence she had or needed was that of her own imperious will and her
+elastic conscience.
+
+As we glance down the list of her victims, we see some of the most
+honourable names, and also some of the most despicable characters in
+the England of the Restoration. The Duke of Ormond's heir caught her
+capricious fancy for awhile; but, though his love for her drove him to
+the verge of suicide, she wearied of him and trampled him under foot to
+seek a fresh conquest.
+
+To my Lord Arran succeeded Captain Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of
+Carlisle, a shy, proud young man of irreproachable character, whose love
+for the fascinating Countess was as free from dishonour as a weakness
+for another man's wife could be. She caught him securely in the net of
+her charms, ensnared him with her _beaute de diable_, and then,
+satisfied with her ignoble triumph, proceeded to make a fool of him.
+
+Nothing pleased this Countess more than to bring her lovers together, to
+watch with gloating eyes their rivalries, their jealousies, and their
+quarrels, which frequently led to her crowning enjoyment--the shedding
+of blood. And it was with this object that one day she induced Howard to
+join her at a _petit souper_ at Spring Gardens, a favourite
+pleasure-haunt of the day, near Charing Cross. The supper had scarcely
+commenced when the _tete-a-tete_ was interrupted by the appearance of
+none other than the "invincible Jermyn," one of the handsomest and most
+notorious _roues_ of the day, a famous duellist, and one of my lady's
+most ardent lovers.
+
+Here was a prospect of amusement such as was dear to the heart of the
+Countess, who, needless to say, had arranged the plot. Jermyn needed no
+invitation to make a third at the feast of love. That was precisely
+what he had come for; and although Howard played the host with admirable
+dignity to the unwelcome intruder, Jermyn ignored his courtesy and
+brought all his skill to bear on fanning the flames of his jealousy. He
+flirted outrageously with the Countess, kept her in peals of laughter by
+his sallies of wit and scarcely-veiled gibes at her companion, until
+Howard was roused to such a pitch of silent fury that only the presence
+of a lady restrained him from running the insolent intruder through with
+his sword. Nothing would have delighted her ladyship more than such a
+climax to the little play she was enjoying so much; but Howard, with
+marvellous self-restraint, kept his temper within bounds and his sword
+in its sheath.
+
+Such an outrage, however, could not be passed over with impunity; and
+before Jermyn had eaten his breakfast on the following morning, Howard's
+friend and second, Colonel Dillon, was announced with a demand for
+satisfaction--a demand which met with a prompt acquiescence from Jermyn,
+who vowed he would "wipe the young puppy out." The duel took place in
+the "Long Alley near St James's, called Pall Mall," and proved to be of
+as sanguinary a nature as even the grossly-insulted Howard could have
+desired.
+
+On the 19th of August 1662, Pepys writes:--
+
+     "Mr Coventry did tell us of the duel between Mr Jermyn,
+     nephew to my Lord of St Alban's, and Colonel Giles
+     Rawlins, the latter of whom is killed, and the first
+     mortally wounded as it is thought. They fought against
+     Captain Thomas Howard, my Lord Carlisle's brother, and
+     another unknown; who, they say, had armour on that they
+     could not be hurt, so that one of their swords went up to
+     the hilt against it. They had horses ready and are fled.
+     But what is most strange, Howard sent one challenge
+     before, but they could not meet till yesterday at the old
+     Pall Mall at St James's; and he would not till the last
+     tell Jermyn what the quarrel was; nor do anybody know."
+
+If no one else knew of the cause of the quarrel, certainly Jermyn did;
+and never did man pay a more deserved penalty for dastardly behaviour.
+Lady Shrewsbury's delight at thus ridding herself of two lovers, of both
+of whom she seems to have grown weary, may be better imagined than
+described. Although Jermyn was carried off the field of battle, to all
+appearance a dead man, he survived until 1708 when he died, full of
+years and wickedness, Baron Jermyn of Dover.
+
+The Court, as Pepys records, was "much concerned in this fray"; but it
+was long before Lady Shrewsbury's part in it came to light, to add to
+the infamy which she had by that time heaped on herself. Her wayward
+fancy next settled on a man of a different stamp to either Howard or
+Jermyn. It seemed, indeed, to be her ambition to make her conquests as
+varied as humanity itself. Her next victim was Harry Killigrew, one of
+the most notorious profligates in London, a man of low birth and lower
+tastes, a haunter of taverns, the terror of all decent women, and a
+roystering swashbuckler, with a sword as ready to leap at a word as his
+lips to snatch a kiss from a pretty mouth.
+
+Such was my Lady Shrewsbury's successor to the aristocratic, high-minded
+brother of Lord Carlisle. Killigrew's father was a well-known man of his
+day, for he wore cap and bells at Charles's Court, and was privileged to
+practise his clowning on King and courtier and maid-of-honour with no
+heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted
+himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might
+well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a
+merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a
+painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and
+the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an
+attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was
+crucified between two thieves, but I never knew till now who they were."
+
+Such was Tom Killigrew who kept Charles's Court alive by his pranks and
+jests, and who is better remembered in our day as the man to whose
+enterprise we owe Drury Lane Theatre and the Italian Opera; and it would
+have been better for the world of his day if his son had been as decent
+a man as himself. His fun, at least, was harmless, and his life, so far
+as we know it, was reasonably clean. His son, however, was notorious as
+the most foul-mouthed, evil-living man in London, whose very contact
+was a pollution. Once Pepys, always eager for new experiences, was
+inveigled into his company and that of the "jolly blades," who were his
+boon companions; "but Lord!" the diarist says ingenuously, "their talk
+did make my heart ache!"
+
+That my Lady Shrewsbury should stoop to such a _liaison_ astonished even
+those who knew how widely she cast her net, and how indiscriminating her
+passion was in its quest for novelty. That such a man should boast of
+his conquest over the beautiful Countess was inevitable. He published it
+in every low tavern in London, gloating in his cups over "his lady's
+most secret charms, concerning which more than half the Court knew quite
+as much as he knew himself."
+
+Among those to whom Killigrew thus boasted was the dissolute second Duke
+of Buckingham, whose curiosity was so stimulated by what he heard that
+he entered the lists himself, and quickly succeeded in ousting Killigrew
+from his place in my lady's favour. To the tavern-sot thus succeeded the
+most splendid noble in England, a man who, in his record of gallantry,
+was no mean rival to the Countess herself. To be thus displaced by the
+man to whom he had boasted his conquest was a bitter blow to the
+libertine's vanity; to be cut dead by Lady Shrewsbury, who had no longer
+any use for him, roused him to a frenzy of rage in which he assailed her
+with the bitterest invectives; "painted a frightful picture of her
+conduct, and turned all her charms, which he had previously extolled,
+into defects." The Duke's warnings were powerless to stop his
+vindictive tongue; even a severe thrashing, which resulted in Killigrew
+begging abjectly for his life from his successful rival, failed to teach
+him prudence. His slanders grew more and more venomous until they
+brought on him a punishment which nearly cost him his life.
+
+But before Killigrew's tongue was thus silenced, the wooing of the Duke
+and the Countess was marred by a tragedy, to which our history happily
+furnishes no parallel. The Countess's husband had hitherto looked on
+with seeming indifference, while lover after lover succeeded each other
+in his wife's favour. But even the Earl's long forbearance had its
+limits; and these were reached when he saw the insolent coxcomb,
+Buckingham, a man whom he had always detested, usurp his place. He
+screwed up his laggard manhood to the pitch of challenging the Duke to a
+duel, which took place one January morning in 1667, and of which Pepys
+tells the following story:
+
+"Much discourse of the duel yesterday between the Duke of Buckingham,
+Holmes and one Jenkins, on one side, and my Lord Shrewsbury, Sir John
+Talbot and one Bernard Howard, on the other side; and all about my Lady
+Shrewsbury, who is at this time, and hath for a great while, been a
+mistress to the Duke of Buckingham. And so her husband challenged him,
+and they met yesterday in a close near Barne-Elmes, and there fought;
+and my Lord Shrewsbury is run through the body, from the right breast
+through the shoulder; and Sir John Talbot all along up one of his
+armes; and Jenkins killed upon the place, and the rest all, in a little
+measure, wounded. This will make the world think that the King hath good
+Councillors about him, when the Duke of Buckingham, the greatest man
+about him, is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a
+mistress."
+
+It is said that the Countess, in the guise of a page, accompanied her
+lover to the scene of this bloodthirsty duel; held his horse as, with
+sparkling eyes, she saw her husband receive his death-blow; and, when
+the foul deed was done, flung her arms around the assassin's neck in a
+transport of gratitude and affection. Never surely since Judas sent his
+Master to his death with a kiss has the world witnessed such an infamous
+betrayal.
+
+From the scene of this tragedy the Duke escorted the Countess-page to
+his own home, where he installed her as his avowed mistress in the eyes
+of the world, at the same time ordering the carriage which was to take
+his outraged wife back to her father's house. Even in such an abandoned
+and profligate Court as that of Charles II., the news of this dastardly
+crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with
+execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through
+the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the
+storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence
+flaunted their amour in the face of the world.
+
+Now that the Countess's husband had been removed from their path the
+shameless pair had time to attend to Killigrew, whose malicious tongue
+must be silenced once for all. They hired bravos to track his footsteps,
+and at a convenient moment to remove him from their path. The
+opportunity came one day when it was learnt that Killigrew, who seemed
+to know that his life was in danger and for a long time had evaded his
+enemies successfully, intended to travel from town to his house at
+Turnham Green late at night. His chaise was followed at a discreet
+distance by my Lady Shrewsbury, who arrived on the scene just in time to
+witness the prepared tragedy which was to crown her revenge. Killigrew,
+who was sleeping in his chaise, awoke, to quote a contemporary account,
+
+     "by the thrust of a sword which pierced his neck and came
+     out at the shoulder. Before he could cry out he was flung
+     from the chaise, and stabbed in three other places by the
+     Countess's assassins, while the lady herself looked on
+     from her own coach and six, and cried out to the
+     murderers, 'Kill the villain!' Nor did she drive off till
+     he was thought dead."
+
+The man whose murder she thus witnessed and encouraged was not, however,
+Killigrew, as in the darkness she imagined, but his servant. Killigrew
+himself, although severely wounded, was more fortunate in escaping with
+his life. But the lesson he had received was so severe that for the rest
+of his days he gave the Countess and her lover the widest of berths, and
+retired into the obscurity in which alone he could feel safe from such
+a revengeful virago. This second crime, like its predecessor, went
+unpunished, so powerful was Buckingham, and so deep in the King's
+favour; and he and the Countess were left in the undisturbed enjoyment
+of their lust and their triumphs.
+
+    "Gallant and gay, in Clieveden's proud alcove,
+     The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,"
+
+the infamous pair defied the world, and crowned their ignominy by
+standing together at the altar, where the Duke's chaplain made them one,
+almost before the body of the Countess's husband (who had survived his
+duel two months) was cold, and while the Duchess of Buckingham was, of
+course, still alive. The Countess was not long before her brazen
+effrontery carried her back to Court, where she took the lead in the
+revels and at the gaming-tables, and made love to the "Merrie Monarch"
+himself. Evelyn tells us that, during a visit to Newmarket, he
+
+     "found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and
+     revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout
+     than a Christian country. The Duke of Buckingham was in
+     mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the
+     Countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers."
+
+It was only with the downfall of the Stuarts that this shameless
+alliance came to an end, when Buckingham's reign of power was over, and
+he was haled before the House of Lords to answer for his crimes. He and
+the partner of his guilt were ordered to separate; and for this purpose
+to enter into security to the King in the sum of L10,000 apiece. Thus
+ignominiously closed one of the most infamous intrigues in history.
+Buckingham, buffeted by fortune, rapidly fell, as the world knows, from
+his pinnacle of power to the lowest depths of poverty, to end his days,
+friendless and destitute, in a Yorkshire inn.
+
+    "No wit, to flatter, left of all his store!
+     No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+     There reft of health, of fortune, friends,
+     And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends."
+
+To my Lady Shrewsbury, as to her paramour, the condemnation of the Lords
+marked the setting of her sun of splendour. The slumbering rage of
+England against her long career of iniquity awoke to fresh life in this
+hour of her humiliation, and she was glad to escape from its fury to the
+haven of a convent in France, where she spent some time in mock
+penitence.
+
+But the Countess was, by no means, resigned to end her days in the odour
+of a tardy and insincere piety. As soon as the sky had cleared a little
+across the Channel, she returned to England, and tried to repair her
+shattered fame by giving her hand to a son of Sir Thomas Bridges, of
+Keynsham, in Somerset, who was so enslaved by her charms that he was
+proud to lead the tarnished beauty to the altar. And with this mockery
+of wedding bells "Messalina's" history practically ended as far as the
+world, outside the Somersetshire village, where the remainder of her
+life was mostly spent, was concerned. The fires of her passion had now
+died out, and the restless and still ambitious woman exchanged love for
+political intrigue. She became the most ardent of Jacobites, and plotted
+as unscrupulously for the restoration of the Stuarts, as in earlier
+years she had planned the capture and ruin of her lovers.
+
+Not content with treading the shady and dangerous path of intrigue
+herself, she set to work to undermine the loyalty of her only son, the
+young Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most trusted ministers and friends
+of the Orange King; and such was her influence over the high-principled,
+if weak Earl that she infected him with her own treachery, until the
+man, whom William III. had called "the soul of honour," stood branded to
+the world as a spy, leagued with the King's enemies, and was compelled
+to leave England for ten years of exile and disgrace.
+
+This corruption and ruin of her own son was the crowning infamy of one
+of the worst women who ever enlisted their beauty, of their own free
+will, in the service of the devil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A PROFLIGATE PRINCE
+
+
+Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry
+Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most
+abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in
+spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious.
+Each brother had his amours--many of them highly discreditable; but for
+unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the
+unenviable palm.
+
+Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a
+solitary virtue, unless a handsome face and a passion for music can be
+placed to his credit. In his career of female conquest, which began as
+soon as he had emancipated himself from his mother's apron strings, he
+left behind him a wake of ruined lives; not the least tragic of which
+was that of the lovely and foolish Henrietta Vernon, Countess Grosvenor,
+whom he dragged through the mire of the Divorce Court, only to fling her
+aside, a soiled and crushed flower of too pliant womanhood.
+
+And yet, when his passion was in full flame, no woman was ever wooed
+with apparently more sincere ardour and devotion.
+
+     "My dear Angel," he once wrote to her, "I got to bed
+     about ten. I then prayed for you, my dearest love, kissed
+     your dearest little hair, and lay down and dreamt of you,
+     had you ten thousand times in my arms, kissing you and
+     telling you how much I loved and adored you, and you
+     seemed pleased.... I have your heart, and it is warm at
+     my breast. I hope mine feels as easy to you. Thou joy of
+     my life, adieu!"
+
+In another letter he exclaims:
+
+     "Oh, my dearest soul ... your dear heart is so safe with
+     me and feels every motion mine does. How happy will that
+     day be to me that brings you back! I shall be unable to
+     speak for joy. My dearest soul, I send you ten thousand
+     kisses."
+
+So irrepressible was his passion that it burst the bounds of prose, and
+gushed forth in verses such as this:
+
+    "Hear, solemn Jove, and, conscious Venus, hear!
+     And thou, bright maid, believe me while I swear,
+     No time, no change, no future flame shall move
+     The well-placed basis of my lasting love."
+
+When the fair and frail Countess, in a fit of alarm, took refuge at
+Eaton Hall, her Royal lover followed her in disguise, installed himself
+at a neighbouring inn, and continued his intrigue under the very nose of
+her jealous husband, who at last was driven to sue for divorce. He won
+an easy verdict, and with it L10,000 damages--a bill which George III.
+himself had ultimately to pay. Within a few months the incorrigible Duke
+had another "dearest little angel" in his toils, and pursued his
+gallantries without a thought of the Countess he had left to her shame.
+
+Such was this degenerate brother of the King when the most memorable of
+his victims crossed his blighting path one summer day in the year 1771,
+at Brighton--a radiantly beautiful young woman who had just discarded
+her widow's weeds, and was arrayed for fresh conquests.
+
+Anne Luttrell, as the widow had been known in her maiden days, was one
+of the three lovely daughters of Lord Irnham, in later years Earl of
+Carhampton, and a member of a family noted for the beauty of its women,
+and the wild, lawless living of its men. Her brother, Colonel Luttrell,
+was the most reckless swashbuckler and the deadliest duellist of his
+time--a man whose morals were as low as his temper and courage were
+high.
+
+At seventeen Anne had become the wife of Christopher Horton, a
+hard-drinking, fast-living Derbyshire squire, who left her a widow at
+twenty-two, in the prime of her beauty, and eager, as soon as decency
+permitted, to enter the matrimonial lists again.
+
+About this time Horace Walpole, who had a keen eye for female charms,
+describes her as
+
+     "extremely pretty, very well-made, with the most amorous
+     eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette
+     beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, and completely
+     mistress of all her passions and projects. Indeed,
+     eyelashes three-quarters of a yard shorter would have
+     served to conquer such a head as she has turned."
+
+In another portrait Walpole says:
+
+     "There was something so bewitching in her languishing
+     eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she
+     pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and
+     yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through
+     it, and yet as difficult to resist it. She danced
+     divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric
+     kind."
+
+Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious
+young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at
+Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit
+of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General
+Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his
+attractions. But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at
+the young widow the General's fate was sealed. She had no fancy to go to
+her grave plain "Mrs Smith" when a duchess's coronet (and a Royal one to
+boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.
+
+For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the
+Prince's legal wife, and no light-o'-love to be petted and flung aside
+when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this
+she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick. Her favours--after a
+period of coquetry and coy reluctance--were at his disposal; but the
+price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring--nothing less. And such was
+the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke--flinging scruples and
+fears aside, consented. One October day they took boat to Calais, and
+were there made man and wife. The widow had caught her Prince and meant
+the world to know she was a Princess.
+
+For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing
+his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager
+Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more. But his Duchess
+was inexorable. She declined to play any longer the _role_ of "virtuous
+mistress" in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of
+the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the
+throne.
+
+Between his wife's tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the
+Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his
+exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to
+make the plunge--to break the news to the King. Had he but known how
+inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back
+to Calais rather than face his brother's anger. George was distracted by
+trouble at home and abroad. His mother was dying; across the Atlantic
+the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged
+with danger and unrest. And when the quaking Duke presented himself
+before his brother as he was moodily walking in his palace garden,
+George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of
+worries.
+
+No sooner had the King read the ill-spelled, clumsily-worded note which
+the Duke shamefacedly placed in his hand than his anger blazed into
+flame. "You idiot! You blockhead! You villain!" he shouted, purple in
+face and hoarse with passion. "I tell you that woman shall never be a
+Royal Duchess--she shall never be anything." "What must I do, then?"
+gasped the Duke, quailing before the Royal outburst. "Go abroad until I
+can decide what to do," thundered the King, waving his brother
+imperiously away.
+
+It was a very crestfallen Duke who returned to Calais to face the
+upbraiding of Duchess Anne on his failure. But it took much more than
+this to cow a Luttrell. She at least was not afraid of any king. She
+would defy him to his face, and compel him to acknowledge her--before
+her child was born. And within a few weeks she was installed at
+Cumberland House, with all the state and more than the airs of a Royal
+Princess. The days of concealment were over; she stood avowed to the
+world, Duchess of Cumberland and sister-in-law to the King; and she only
+smiled when George, in his Royal wrath at such insolence, announced
+through his Chamberlain that "there was no road between Cumberland House
+and Windsor Castle--that the Castle doors would be closed against any
+who dared to visit his repudiated sister-in-law."
+
+There were some, however, who dared to brave George's displeasure by
+paying court to the Duchess, whose beauty and grace surrounded her with
+a small body of admirers. The daughter of an Irish nobleman played to
+perfection her new and exalted _role_ of Princess. "No woman of her
+time," says Lord Hervey, "performed the honours of her drawing-room with
+such grace, affability, and dignity." And, in spite of George's frowns,
+the only real thorn in her bed of roses was the knowledge that the
+Duchess of Gloucester, who, as the daughter of a Piccadilly sempstress,
+was infinitely her inferior by birth, and not even her superior in
+beauty, was received with open arms at the Castle, and drew to her court
+all the greatest in the land.
+
+She even made overtures to her rival and enemy, and proposed that they
+should appear together in the same box at the opera--an overture to
+which the Duchess of Gloucester retorted contemptuously: "Never! I would
+not smell at the same nosegay with her in public!"
+
+By sheer effrontery Duchess Anne at last forced her way into the Royal
+Court and public recognition as a member of George's family; and the
+fact that both the King and the Queen snubbed her mercilessly for her
+pains, detracted little from her triumph and gratification. What her
+Grace of Gloucester had won by submission and ingratiating arts, she had
+won by brazen defiance and importunity. But the goal, though so
+differently reached, was the same. Her triumph was complete.
+
+To her last day, however, she never forgave the King and Queen. While
+they had smiled on the sempstress's daughter, who had been guilty of
+precisely the same offence as herself--that of wedding a Royal Prince
+without the King's sanction--they had scorned her, a Luttrell, the
+daughter of a noble house; and terrible was the revenge she took. She
+deliberately set herself to debase the Prince of Wales--a youth whose
+natural tendencies made him a pliant tool in her hands. She enmeshed him
+in the web of her beauty and charms; she pandered to his vanity and his
+passions; while her husband initiated him into the vices of which he
+himself was a past-master--drinking, gambling, and lust. Notorious
+profligate as George IV. became, there is little doubt that he would
+have been a much better man if he had not fallen thus early into the
+hands of a revengeful and unprincipled woman. Thus infamously the
+Duchess of Cumberland repaid George and his Consort for their slights;
+and her shameless reward was when she witnessed their grief at the moral
+degradation of their eldest son.
+
+But even in the hour of her greatest triumph and splendour Anne Luttrell
+was an unhappy woman. She had climbed to the dizziest heights of the
+social ladder; her pride was more than satisfied; but her heart was
+empty and desolate. Her fickle husband soon wearied of her charms, and
+flaunted his fresh conquests before her face. In the royal family
+circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome
+stranger; and such homage as she received was conceded to her rank and
+not to herself. "Of all princesses," she once wrote to a friend, "I
+really think I am the most miserable."
+
+Her husband died at the age of forty-five, worn out with excesses,
+regretted by none, execrated by many. Of his father it had been written
+by way of epitaph:--
+
+    "He was alive and is dead,
+    And, as it is only Fred,
+    Why, there's no more to be said."
+
+Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand,
+would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of
+years--unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in
+name--harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of
+coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose
+failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the
+Duchess.
+
+The fate of Elizabeth--one of the "three beautiful Luttrells"--is among
+the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister
+died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and
+actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her
+liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower
+depths--was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the
+streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set
+her free from her fetters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS
+
+
+If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
+been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
+into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous"
+figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
+certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
+and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
+one of his most amiable characteristics.
+
+The Irish squire was a proud man--proud of his pretty and shiftless
+wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
+his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
+husbands--one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
+proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
+he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
+Marguerite, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and with no
+gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.
+
+But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
+waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
+though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
+neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
+and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
+Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as "Buck Power" and
+"Shiver-the-Frills"; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
+Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
+a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
+wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
+his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
+life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
+of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.
+
+Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
+day to dazzle the world as the "most gorgeous Lady Blessington."
+
+As with many another "ugly ducking" Marguerite Power's beauty was only
+dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
+long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
+flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
+other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
+had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
+charm--Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
+stationed at Clonmel. To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
+and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
+encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
+offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
+wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
+moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
+showed the utmost aversion. "I hate him," she protested in tears to her
+father, who supported his suit; "and I would rather die a hundred times
+than marry him."
+
+But "Beau Power" was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
+child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
+family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
+indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
+biggest scoundrel in Tipperary--a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and
+a father's ambition.
+
+[Illustration: MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON]
+
+The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
+followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
+young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
+Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
+from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
+days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.
+
+After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
+station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
+no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her
+home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
+almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
+left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
+the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
+to shield and care for her.
+
+How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
+must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
+at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
+England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
+though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
+scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
+We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
+struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
+in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
+her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,
+
+     "she received at her house only those whose age and
+     character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
+     others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
+     could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
+     Blessington, then a widower."
+
+Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
+charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
+at its close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
+as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
+during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
+this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
+ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
+and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy--or, as
+some say, in a drunken quarrel--had flung himself to his death through a
+window of his gaol.
+
+Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
+squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
+would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
+widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
+of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
+prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The "ugly
+duckling" had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
+happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
+radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.
+
+Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
+alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
+landlords, with a rent-roll of L30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
+extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
+for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous
+furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
+wife seems to have shared.
+
+When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
+revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of "crimson Genoa
+silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
+equal richness." But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
+childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
+her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
+months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
+_salon_ all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
+her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.
+
+Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
+his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
+worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
+of mind.
+
+Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
+yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
+and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
+retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
+have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
+d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
+Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
+charming a cavalier as this "Admirable Crichton" of Georgian days.
+
+     "Count d'Orsay," says Charles James Mathews, the famous
+     comedian, who knew him well, "was the beau-ideal of manly
+     dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
+     conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
+     handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
+     degree; highly educated, and of great literary
+     acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
+     mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
+     conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
+     instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
+     swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
+     horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age."
+
+Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
+Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
+its tragic close.
+
+From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
+with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
+spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
+sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
+From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
+ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
+received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
+lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, "fit for any
+queen." And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
+pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
+and its colonnade, "supporting a terrace covered with flowers"; its
+marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
+long gallery, "filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi."
+
+     "On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at
+     the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
+     and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
+     charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
+     gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
+     grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
+     tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
+     delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
+     rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
+     architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
+     oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
+     consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
+     the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
+     splendour."
+
+Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
+ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
+indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
+splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
+years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
+d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
+galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
+Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
+nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.
+
+From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
+her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
+her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
+daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
+few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
+protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
+London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
+for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
+Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
+even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
+thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.
+
+The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
+indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."
+
+     "The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
+     rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
+     exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
+     alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
+     living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
+     with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
+     and from the columns that support the frieze of the
+     recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
+     hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
+     the room opposite the fireplace--pale blue carpets,
+     silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."
+
+Her bath was of white marble; her _salle de bain_ was draped with white
+muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
+Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
+lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
+keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
+to the gilt consoles, marble-topped _chiffonieres_, and _fauteuils_
+"richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
+curtains."
+
+This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
+lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
+before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
+in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
+years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
+of his L30,000 a year was an annual income of L600, which went to his
+illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of L2,000 a year
+was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
+future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
+for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
+contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
+with which he had always surrounded her.
+
+It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
+solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
+which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
+found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of
+Beauty" were an instantaneous success--they made a strong appeal to the
+flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
+Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
+fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
+glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
+travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.
+
+In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
+jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
+so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
+_fauteuil_ of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
+and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
+her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
+and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
+gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
+tassel, and his shower of ringlets.
+
+But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
+lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
+magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
+she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
+well advanced in the forties--and this she found at Gore House, in
+Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
+and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
+spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
+within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.
+
+Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
+who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
+hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
+finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
+commands to a Court-ball.
+
+"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
+interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
+moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
+men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
+without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
+Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
+hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
+hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
+greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
+or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
+than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
+never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
+dearly-loved and devoted son.
+
+Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below L4,000 a year, it
+was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
+this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
+reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
+D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
+mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
+incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _menage_--until he found
+himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding L100,000,
+and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
+a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
+rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
+smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
+avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of
+flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
+resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
+safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
+had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
+magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.
+
+A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right
+Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were
+put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
+through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous--among
+them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
+goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
+effects brought absurdly low prices, realised L12,000--a smaller sum
+probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
+pictures.
+
+This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady
+Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
+auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
+grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She
+was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother--a true, loving mother to me."
+Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the
+Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
+designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
+graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A QUEEN OF COQUETTES
+
+
+The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
+calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
+Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
+Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
+crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
+of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
+lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
+sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
+boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.
+
+[Illustration: SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH]
+
+And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under
+the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
+clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
+twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
+opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
+little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
+birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the
+restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
+splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
+of the Sandridge baby.
+
+If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
+live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
+counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
+Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
+come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
+country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
+management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
+man in the moon.
+
+His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
+Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
+when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
+accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
+a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
+John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
+and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
+Pole.
+
+Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
+little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
+loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
+as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
+when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
+York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
+splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.
+
+The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
+her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
+speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
+notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
+promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
+but the disdainful beauty dropped the _billets-doux_ on the floor for
+any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
+was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.
+
+James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
+gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
+in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
+after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
+hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
+raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
+Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
+pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
+sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
+of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.
+
+While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
+madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
+rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
+toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
+lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
+was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
+innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
+sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
+where a very different life awaited her.
+
+She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
+the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
+glimpse of it. Her more modest _role_ was to be playfellow and companion
+of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne--a shy, backward child, a
+few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
+eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
+education to her.
+
+To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
+Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
+country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
+passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
+romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
+between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
+playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.
+
+It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into
+young womanhood--little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
+infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character--an
+imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
+inflexible will within the circle of the Court.
+
+While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
+John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
+closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
+ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
+made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
+Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
+handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
+in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
+ten years' superiority in age.
+
+John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
+one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
+aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
+who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
+hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
+of his lands and a fine of L4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
+own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
+a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
+Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
+John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
+daughter Arabella.
+
+From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
+Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
+handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
+once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
+of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
+person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
+many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
+might not have been his without the asking.
+
+Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
+the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all
+Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
+what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
+net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
+love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
+conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
+trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
+singular spectacle--that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
+and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
+an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
+lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
+inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.
+
+One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities
+were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
+packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
+before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of L5,000
+with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an
+annuity of L500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
+foundation of his subsequent fortune."
+
+A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
+to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
+proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
+under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
+under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
+of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
+who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
+outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
+handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
+that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome
+Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
+of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
+Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
+thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
+had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
+the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.
+
+It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
+Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
+as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
+queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
+at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
+towers over meaner flowers. And--such are the strange ways of love--from
+that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
+power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
+bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
+graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
+life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic--never
+has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
+
+But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man--even by a
+lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
+romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
+battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
+and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
+She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
+Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
+man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
+amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his
+ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.
+
+Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
+have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
+years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
+indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
+soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
+handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
+recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
+and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
+for at least a smile or a look of kindness.
+
+     "Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite
+     indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
+     anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
+     conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
+     ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
+     know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."
+
+But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
+is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
+him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the
+headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
+vows, in his pain,
+
+     "by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
+     my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
+     could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess,"
+     he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if
+     she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
+     chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
+     drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
+     shall come."
+
+At last the iceberg thaws a little--though it is only to charge him with
+unkindness! She assumes the _role_ of virtue; and, with a woman's
+capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
+she herself has visited on him.
+
+     "Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy,
+     for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
+     am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."
+
+Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
+her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
+word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses _him_ of
+unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
+temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.
+
+     "That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if
+     cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would
+     be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
+     your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
+     until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
+     without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
+     come to me without any prejudice to your health."
+
+At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
+if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
+take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
+of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.
+
+But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
+was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
+on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
+for his ambitious purpose--one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
+friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
+unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
+no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
+alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
+love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
+penniless beauty.
+
+For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled
+though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the
+temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had
+it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to
+marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to
+greatness!
+
+No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she
+flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she
+raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love
+amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her
+wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.
+
+     "As for seeing you," she wrote, "I am resolved I never
+     will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as
+     for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can
+     order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But
+     surely you must confess that you have been the falsest
+     creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I
+     shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it,
+     and give God thanks, though too late I see my error."
+
+Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill
+for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful
+shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other
+divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a
+man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing
+Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have
+done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of
+battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the
+negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a
+solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and
+came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.
+
+But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain
+did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life--that he
+adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.
+
+     "I vow to God," he wrote, "you do so entirely possess my
+     thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but
+     your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this
+     that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do
+     despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust
+     you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have
+     breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that
+     you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you
+     will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to
+     adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study
+     how I may deserve, though not have, your love."
+
+Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in
+seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart
+of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he
+had merely written it to amuse himself, and to "make her think that he
+had an affection for her when she was assured he had none." At last,
+however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns
+him that
+
+     "if it be only to repeat those things which you have said
+     so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most
+     ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will
+     be made ridiculous to the world."
+
+Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he
+wrote:
+
+     "I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so
+     much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be
+     better pleased with your happiness than my own,"
+
+she answered:
+
+     "If it were sure that you have that passion for me which
+     you say you have, you would find out some way to make
+     yourself happy--it is in your power. Therefore press me
+     no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour
+     approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to
+     consider who was the cause of it."
+
+At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the
+veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these--"you
+would find out some way to make yourself happy--_it is in your power_."
+And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the
+following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the
+advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room
+by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in
+his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it,
+and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by
+answering that she did it "that I may be freed from the trouble of ever
+hearing from you more!"
+
+Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated
+to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him
+in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought
+her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he
+actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.
+
+     "Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure
+     she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she
+     would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter
+     which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all
+     my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have
+     her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what
+     she has already done, let her read my letter and answer
+     it, and not use me thus like a footman."
+
+In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded
+innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to
+deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a
+poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.
+
+     "If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told
+     enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I
+     should have been more happy than I am like to be now.
+     However," she continued, "if you can be so well contented
+     never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I
+     will believe you, though I have not other people."
+
+No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and
+contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and
+merciless manner she charges him with "being content never to see her."
+Although she had never uttered or penned a syllable of love in return
+for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having
+less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand,
+or lover so patient under so much provocation?
+
+She further accused him of laughing at her when he was "at the Duke's
+side," to which he retorted "I was so far from that, that had it not
+been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who
+avoided _her_; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive
+shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I
+would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."
+
+But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's
+forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to
+strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by
+her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and
+when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his
+shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the
+first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!
+
+Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's
+Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the
+portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the
+lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill
+could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left
+to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and
+re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had
+wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER
+
+
+When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the
+eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of
+offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family
+annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done
+so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die
+in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate
+could sully her.
+
+Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of
+Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and
+preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King,
+won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish
+rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it
+was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever
+in danger.
+
+Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young
+daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as
+unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the
+Mitchelstown nursery--one of a dozen brothers and sisters--a wholesome,
+merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with
+the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its
+luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.
+
+Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one
+Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and
+thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years
+Mary's senior--indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a
+married man--had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her
+children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's
+"big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover,
+a young man of remarkable physical gifts--tall, of splendid figure, and
+strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero
+of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into
+young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked.
+He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at
+dances--in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting
+parents began to grow alarmed.
+
+One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few
+weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the
+blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the
+effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and
+friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the
+missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her
+bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have
+overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had
+ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was
+soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light
+on her fate.
+
+From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
+description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
+handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
+In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
+large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
+Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
+no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
+deed--a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
+family of the girl he had abducted.
+
+When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
+infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
+from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
+deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
+restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
+this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
+runaway than her abductor.
+
+For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
+until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
+to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
+at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
+fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
+young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
+girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
+the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.
+
+"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the
+gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and
+handsome----" began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in
+walked Fitzgerald himself. "Why," exclaimed the servant, as with
+startled eyes she looked at the intruder, "that's the very gentleman who
+visits the lady!"
+
+For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he
+turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions
+against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were
+boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and
+within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called
+on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and
+demanded a meeting on the following morning.
+
+The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park,
+Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came
+alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the
+surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the
+dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were
+placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither
+man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men
+remained uninjured.
+
+After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace
+between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his
+second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: "You are a ---- villain, and
+I will not hear a word you have to offer!" Once more the duellists took
+up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least
+effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the
+combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the
+next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock
+and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.
+
+Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington
+lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where
+at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly
+Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate,
+vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get
+Mary into his power.
+
+Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the
+enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop
+his plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had
+literally "bargained without his host," who chanced to be an old trusted
+retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little
+suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all
+day and walked abroad at night.
+
+No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had
+been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to
+communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be
+"up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried
+back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the
+suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the
+inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.
+
+Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds
+of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and
+from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the
+Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse,
+Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as
+spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the
+newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's
+room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that
+he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the
+voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.
+
+Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs
+and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with
+oaths, they broke in the door--and found themselves face to face with a
+brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King,
+stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was
+at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the
+combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into
+play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at
+last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's
+head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he
+fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his
+daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.
+
+The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the
+distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth.
+But wherever it travelled--from the shebeens of Connemara to the
+coffee-houses of Cheapside--it carried with it a wave of compassion for
+the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he
+confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish
+it had been done by some other hand than mine!"
+
+As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of
+murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a
+salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord
+Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be
+brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and
+the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his
+rank--including that of trial by his Peers.
+
+In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial
+took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony
+appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in
+Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a
+small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately
+procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl
+of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.
+
+Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and
+Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried
+"by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to
+Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of
+persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth,"
+no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared.
+One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my
+honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of
+congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.
+
+And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all
+this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was
+important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had
+subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to
+join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of
+her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment,
+she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth
+is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she
+made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of
+mind.
+
+Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled
+many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of
+her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious
+names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and
+pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for
+the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.
+
+Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had
+produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express
+such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now,
+I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be
+Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost
+lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest
+complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King
+became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was
+no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who
+had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT
+
+
+In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England
+better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the
+Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had
+raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.
+
+From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London
+in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently
+on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to
+succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few
+years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a
+business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth.
+Everything he touched seemed to "turn to gold"; before he had reached
+middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as "Rich Spencer"; and
+by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself
+in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall,
+which a century earlier Stow had described as "very large and
+beautiful, and the highest at that time in London."
+
+Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore,
+had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most
+stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants.
+When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St
+Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in
+which, to quote Sir Thomas More, "he lodged himself, and little by
+little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was
+crowded and King Henry's left desolate"; and it was in one of its
+magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept,
+the Crown of England.
+
+Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and
+has immortalised it in "Richard III."; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more
+than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure
+there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More
+when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor
+as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the
+Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was
+the historic and splendid home in which "Rich Spencer" dispensed
+hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.
+
+Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have
+his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of
+leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in Canonbury
+Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth.
+It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the
+event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that
+the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the
+Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate,
+who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him
+to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it
+failed is told by Papillon.
+
+     "Rich men," says this chronicler, "are commonly the prey
+     of thieves; for where store of gold and silver is, there
+     spirits never leave haunting, for wheresoever the carcass
+     is, there will eagles be gathered together. In Queen
+     Elizabeth's days, a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot with
+     twelve of his mates to carry away Sir John Spencer,
+     which, if he had done, L50,000 ransom had not redeemed
+     him. He came over the sea in a shallop with twelve
+     musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and
+     left the shallop in the custody of six of his men; and
+     with the other six came as far as Islington, and there
+     hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John
+     came always to his house. But by the providence of God--I
+     have this from a private record--Sir John, upon some
+     extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that
+     night; otherwise they had taken him away; and they,
+     fearing they should be discovered, in the night-time came
+     to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again.
+     This," adds Papillon, "was a desperate attempt."
+
+But proud as Sir John Spencer was of his money-bags, he was prouder
+still of his only child, Elizabeth, heiress to his vast wealth, who, as
+she grew to womanhood, developed a beauty of face and figure and graces
+of mind which pleased the merchant more than all his gold. So fair was
+she that Queen Elizabeth, on one of her many progressions through the
+city, attracted by her sparkling eyes and beautiful face at a Cheapside
+window, stopped her carriage, summoned her to her presence, and, patting
+her blushing cheeks, vowed that she had "the sweetest face I have seen
+in my City of London."
+
+That a maiden so dowered with charms and riches should have an army of
+suitors in her train was inevitable. A lovely wife who would one day
+inherit nearly a million of money was surely the most covetable prize in
+England; and, it is said, the bewitching heiress had more than one
+coronet laid at her feet before she had well left her school-books. But
+to all these offers, dazzling enough to a merchant's daughter, Elizabeth
+turned a deaf, if dainty ear. "It is not me they want," she would
+laughingly say, "but my father's money. I shall live and die, like the
+good Queen, my namesake, a maid."
+
+And so has many another much-sought maiden said in the pride of an
+untouched heart; but to them as to her the "Prince Charming," before
+whom all her defences crumble, comes at last. In Elizabeth Spencer's
+case, the conquering prince was William, second Lord Compton, one of the
+handsomest, most accomplished and fascinating young men in London. In
+person, as in position, he was alike unimpeachable--an ideal suitor to
+win even the richest heiress in England; and it is little wonder that
+the heart of the tradesman's daughter began to flutter, and her pretty
+cheeks to flame when this gallant, whose conquests at the Royal Court
+itself were notorious, began to pay marked homage to her charms.
+
+That his reputation in the field of love was none of the best, that he
+was as prodigal as he was poor, mattered little to her--probably such
+defects made him all the more romantic in her eyes, and his attentions
+all the more welcome. To Sir John, however, who was even more jealous of
+his treasure than of all his gold, the young lord's reputation and,
+above all, his poverty were fatal flaws in any would-be son-in-law of
+his. As soon as he realised the danger he put every obstacle in the way
+of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of
+locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover.
+"If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank," he told him in
+no ambiguous terms; "and if your fortune matched your family, I should
+have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly,
+I would rather see my girl dead than wedded to such as you."
+
+To his daughter's tears and pleading he was equally obdurate. She might
+ask anything else of him and he would grant it gladly, though it were
+half his wealth; but he would be unworthy to be her father if he
+encouraged such folly as this. But Spencer's daughter, when she found
+conciliatory measures of no avail, proved that she had a will as strong
+as her father's; she told him to his face that with or without his
+sanction she meant to be my Lady Compton. "I will marry him," she
+declared with flushed face and panting breast, "even if you make me a
+beggar." "And that, madam," the defied and furious father retorted, "I
+can promise you I will do; for not a shilling of mine shall Lord
+Compton's wife ever have."
+
+For a time the artful Elizabeth feigned submission to Sir John's anger;
+and he began to congratulate himself that this trouble at least,
+whatever others might follow, was at an end. But how little he knew his
+daughter, or her lover, the sequel proved.
+
+One day, a few weeks after Sir John's fierce ultimatum, a young baker,
+carrying a large flat-topped basket, called at his house, from which he
+soon emerged, touching his cap to the merchant as he passed him in the
+garden, and giving him a respectful "good day." "A civil young man," Sir
+John said to himself, as he continued his promenade; "his face seems
+somehow familiar to me." And well might it be familiar; for the baker
+who gave him such a civil greeting was none other than the scapegrace,
+Compton; and inside the basket, which he carried so lightly, was the
+merchant's only daughter and heiress, whom her lover had taken this
+daring and unconventional way of abducting under the very nose of her
+parent.
+
+It was not long before Sir John's disillusionment came. His daughter
+was nowhere to be seen; and none of his domestics knew of her
+whereabouts. Alarm gave place to suspicion, and suspicion to fury
+against his child and against the young reprobate who, he felt sure, had
+outwitted him. Messengers were despatched in all directions in chase of
+the runaways; but the escapade had been much too cunningly planned to
+fail in execution. Before Sir John set eyes on his daughter again--now
+becomingly penitent--she had blossomed into the Baroness Compton, wife
+of the last man her father would have desired to call his son-in-law.
+
+To "Rich Spencer" the blow was crushing, humiliating. It was bad enough
+to be defied and outwitted, to be made a fool of by his own daughter;
+but to know that the treasure he had lost had fallen into such
+undesirable hands was bitter beyond words. His home and his heart were
+alike desolate; and, in his despair and wrath, he vowed that he would
+never own his daughter as his child, and that not one penny of his
+should ever go into the Compton coffers.
+
+In this mood of sullen, unforgiving anger Sir John remained for a full
+year; when to his surprise and delight he received a summons to attend,
+at Whitehall, on the Queen, whose graciousness during his mayoralty he
+remembered with pleasure and gratitude; and no man in England was
+prouder or more pleased than he when, at the time appointed, he made his
+bow to his Sovereign-Lady and kissed her hand.
+
+"I have summoned you, Sir John," Her Majesty said, "to ask a great
+favour of you. I do not often stoop, as you know, to beg a favour of
+any man; nor should I now, did I not know that I have no more dutiful
+subject than yourself, and that to ask of you is to receive. I am
+interested in two young people who have had the misfortune to marry
+against the wishes of the lady's father, and who have thus forfeited his
+favour. And I wish you to give me and the youthful couple pleasure by
+taking his place and standing sponsor to their first child."
+
+To such a request made by his Sovereign Sir John could but give a
+delighted consent. He would do much more than this, he vowed, to give
+her a moment's gratification; and he not only attended the baptismal
+ceremony, but on the suggestion of the Queen, who was also present,
+allowed the child to bear his own Christian name. "More than this, your
+Majesty," he declared, "as I have now no child of my own, I will gladly
+adopt this infant as my heir."
+
+"Your goodness of heart, Sir John," Her Majesty answered, beaming with
+pleasure, "shall not go unrewarded; for the child you have now taken to
+your heart and made inheritor of your wealth is indeed of your own flesh
+and blood--the first-born son of your daughter, and my friend, Elizabeth
+Compton."
+
+Such was the dramatic plight into which "Rich Spencer's" loyalty and
+generosity had led him. He had innocently pledged himself to adopt as
+his heir, the son of the daughter he had disowned for ever. "And now,
+Sir John," continued the Queen, "that you have conceded so much to make
+me happy, will you not go one step farther and take your wilful and
+penitent daughter to your heart again?" What could the poor merchant do
+in such a predicament, when his Sovereign stooped to beg as a favour
+what his lonely heart yearned to grant? Before he was many minutes older
+he was clasping his child to his breast; and was even shaking hands with
+her graceless husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, full of years, Sir John died in 1609, his obsequies were worthy of
+his wealth and fame. He was followed to his grave in St Helen's Church
+by a thousand mourners, clad in black gowns; and three hundred and
+twenty poor men, we are told, "had each a basket given them, containing
+a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle
+of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a
+black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen points, two red herrings, four
+white herrings, six sprats and two eggs"--a quaint and lavish symbol of
+his charity when alive.
+
+So enormous was the fortune he left, that it is said Lord Compton, on
+hearing its amount (L800,000) "became distracted, and so continued for a
+considerable length of time, either through the vehement apprehension of
+joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take up
+and dispense of it."
+
+That my Lady Compton, who a few years after her father's death blossomed
+into a Countess, proved a devoted and dutiful wife to her lord there is
+no reason to doubt; but that she had an adequate idea of her own
+importance and a determination to have her share of her father's
+money-bags is shown by the following letter, which is sufficiently
+remarkable to bear quotation in full.
+
+     "My sweet life,--Now that I have declared to you my mind
+     for the settling of your estate, I suppose that it were
+     best for me to bethink what allowance were best for me;
+     for, considering what care I have ever had of your
+     estate, and how respectfully I dealt with those which
+     both by the laws of God, nature, and civil policy, wit,
+     religion, government, and honesty, you, my dear, are
+     bound to, I pray and beseech you to grant to me, your
+     most kind and loving wife, the sum of one thousand pounds
+     per an., quarterly to be paid.
+
+     "Also, I would, besides that allowance for my apparel,
+     have six hundred pounds added yearly for the performance
+     of charitable works; these I would not neither be
+     accountable for. Also, I will have three horses for my
+     own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow; none
+     lend but I, none borrow but you. Also, I would have two
+     gentlewomen, lest one should be sick; also, believe that
+     it would be an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand
+     mumping alone, when God has blest their Lord and Lady
+     with a great estate. Also, when I ride hunting or
+     hawking, or travel from one house to another, I will have
+     them attending, so for each of those said women I must
+     have a horse. Also, I will have six or eight gentlemen,
+     and will have two coaches; one lined with velvet to
+     myself, with four very fair horses; and a coach for my
+     women lined with sweet cloth, orelaid with gold; the
+     other with scarlet, and laced with watchet lace and
+     silver, with four good horses. Also, I will have two
+     coachmen, one for myself, the other for my women. Also,
+     whenever I travel, I will be allowed not only carroches
+     and spare horses for me and my women, but such carriages
+     as shall be fitting for all, orderly, not pestering my
+     things with my women's, nor theirs with chambermaids, nor
+     theirs with washmaids.
+
+     "Also, laundresses, when I travel; I will have them sent
+     away with the carriages to see all safe, and the
+     chambermaids shall go before with the grooms, that the
+     chambers may be ready, sweet, and clean.
+
+     "Also, for that it is indecent for me to croud myself
+     with my gentleman-usher in my coach, I will have him have
+     a convenient horse to attend me either in city or
+     country; and I must have four footmen; and my desire is
+     that you will defray the charges for me.
+
+     "And for myself, besides my yerely allowance, I would
+     have twenty gowns apparel, six of them excellent good
+     ones, eight of them for the country, and six others of
+     them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my
+     purse two thousand and two hundred pounds, and so you to
+     pay my debts. Also, I would have eight thousand pounds to
+     buy me jewels, and six thousand pounds for a pearl chain.
+
+     "Now seeing I have been, and am, so reasonable unto you,
+     I pray you to find my children apparel, and their
+     schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their
+     wages.
+
+     "Also, I will have all my houses furnished, and all my
+     lodging-chambers to be suited with all such furniture as
+     is fit, as beds, stools, chairs, cushions, carpets,
+     silver warming-pans, cupboards of plate, fair hangings,
+     etc.; and so for my drawing-chambers in all houses, I
+     will have them delicately furnished with hangings, couch,
+     canopy, cushions, carpets, etc.
+
+     "Also, my desire is that you would pay your debts, build
+     up Ashby House and purchase lands and lend no money (as
+     you love God) to the Lord Chamberlain, which would have
+     all, perhaps your life from you; remember his son, my
+     Lord Wildan, what entertainments he gave me when you were
+     at the Tilt-yard. If you were dead, he said, he would be
+     a husband, a father, a brother, and said he would marry
+     me. I protest I grieve to see the poor man have so little
+     wit and honesty to use his friend so vilely; also, he fed
+     me with untruths concerning the Charter-House; but that
+     is the least; he wished me much harm; you know how. God
+     keep you and me from him, and such as he is.
+
+     "So now I have declared to you my mind, what I would
+     have, and what I would not have; I pray you, when you be
+     Earl, to allow a thousand pounds more than now I desire
+     and double allowance.--Your loving wife, ELIZABETH COMPTON."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF
+
+
+In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once
+so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so
+tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of
+Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever
+has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune.
+
+When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it
+was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
+and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
+leading _role_. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
+lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
+brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
+estates and a princely rent-roll.
+
+But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
+often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
+gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenviable
+reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
+were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness"
+was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
+was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
+roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
+tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
+manifested themselves in a dangerous form.
+
+While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
+from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
+or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
+was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
+bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for L13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
+which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
+was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
+and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
+of a hansom.
+
+But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
+Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of
+half a hundred race-horses, with John Day as trainer; and was fully
+embarked on his turf-career. From the very first year of his enlarged
+venture success smiled on him. Ackworth won the Cambridgeshire for him,
+in 1864; the Duke captured the Goodwood Cup two years later; and the
+Earl carried off the Grand Prix de Paris. In the four years, 1864 to
+1867 the Marquess won over L60,000 in stakes alone, while his winnings
+in bets were larger still. So excellent a judge of a horse was he that
+he only spoke the truth when he boasted, "I could easily make L30,000 a
+year by backing other men's horses." Indeed on one race, Lecturer's
+Cesarewitch, he cleared L75,000. Such was the brilliant start of a
+racing-career which was to close so soon in failure and disgrace.
+
+In the world of the Turf the youthful Marquess was hailed as a new
+deity. At Epsom, Newmarket, and a dozen other race-courses his
+appearance created as much sensation as that of the Prince of Wales
+himself; he was greeted everywhere with cheers and a salvo of doffed
+hats; and the way in which he scattered his smiles and his bets was
+regal in its prodigality.
+
+     "As he canters on to the course," we are told, "he
+     slackens speed as he passes through the line of
+     carriages, from which come shrill, plaintive cries, 'Dear
+     Lord Hastings, do come here for one second,' and others
+     to like purpose. Conveniently deaf to the voice of the
+     charmers, he rides straight into the horseman's circle,
+     and takes up his position on the heavy-betting side.
+     'They're laying odds on yours, my lord,' exclaims a
+     bookmaker. 'What odds?' blandly asks the owner. 'Well, my
+     lord, I'll take you six monkeys to four!' 'Put it down,'
+     is the brief response. 'And me, three hundred to two--and
+     me--and me!' clamour a score of pencillers, who come
+     clustering up. 'Done with you, and you, and you'--the
+     bets are booked as freely as offered. 'And now, my lord,
+     if you've a mind for a bit more, I'll take you
+     thirty-five hundred to two thousand.' 'And so you shall!'
+     is the cheery answer, as the backer expands under the
+     genial influence of the biggest bet of the day. Then,
+     with their seventies to forties, and seven ponies to
+     four, the smaller fry are duly enregistered, and the
+     Marquess wheels his hack, his escort gathers round him,
+     and away they dash."
+
+Such was the splendid, reckless fashion in which the Marquess would
+fling about his wagers until he frequently stood to win or lose L50,000
+on a single race. If he had always kept his head under the intoxication
+of this wild gambling he might perhaps have made another fortune equal
+to that he had inherited. But his wagering was as erratic as himself,
+and his gains were punctuated by heavy losses which began to make
+inroads on even his enormous resources.
+
+The first crushing blow fell on that memorable day when Hermit struggled
+through a blinding snowstorm first past the post in the Derby of 1867,
+to the open-mouthed amazement of every looker on; for Mr Chaplin's colt
+had been considered so hopeless that odds of forty to one were freely
+laid against him.
+
+Hermit's sensational victory was the climax of a singular and romantic
+story. Three years earlier Lady Florence Paget, daughter of the second
+Marquess of Anglesey, had been the affianced bride of Mr Henry Chaplin,
+who was passionately devoted to her, little dreaming that another had
+stolen her heart from him. One day Lady Florence, with Mr Chaplin for
+escort, drove to Messrs Swan & Edgar's, ostensibly on shopping bent; but
+the shopping was merely a cloak to another and treacherous design. She
+entered the shop, slipped out through the back entrance where Lord
+Hastings was awaiting her, jumped into his cab, and was whirled away
+while her _fiance_ patiently and unsuspectingly awaited her return at
+the opposite side of the building.
+
+When Mr Chaplin realised the dastardly trick that had been played on
+him, he bore the blow to his pride and affection right bravely. No trace
+of resentment was ever shown to the world; but he would have been less
+than a man if he had not cherished thoughts of retaliation. His
+opportunity came when Hermit was offered for sale by auction, and Lord
+Hastings was among the keenest bidders for the son of Newminster and
+Eclipse. At any cost Mr Chaplin determined to baffle his betrayer for
+once--and he succeeded; for, when the Marquess stopped short at 950
+guineas, Mr Chaplin secured the colt by a further bid of 50 guineas.
+
+At the time he little realised--nor did he much care--what a bargain he
+had got; for Hermit not only sired two Derby winners in Shotover and St
+Blaise, before he died his sons and daughters had won among them
+L300,000 in stake-money alone. Not much later came that ill-starred
+Derby, which none who saw it can ever forget. Lord Hastings, angry at
+having lost the horse to his rival, laid the long odds against Hermit
+so recklessly that he stood to lose a large fortune by his success; and
+Hermit's last few gallant strides cost him over L100,000.
+
+It was a staggering blow, under which the most stoical man with the
+longest purse might well have reeled; but the Marquess met it with a
+smile of indifference; and when, a few minutes later, he drove off the
+course, with his friends, in a barouche and four to dine at Richmond, he
+seemed the gayest of the company. A few days before his death, recalling
+this tragic moment in his life, he said proudly, "Hermit fairly broke my
+heart. But I didn't show it, did I?"
+
+That his smiling face must have masked a very heavy heart, it scarcely
+needed his own confession to prove. Rich as he still was, the loss of
+more than L100,000 was a very serious matter. Indeed we know that he was
+only able to meet his liabilities by parting with his magnificent estate
+of Loudoun in Scotland, which realised L300,000. When the doors of
+Tattersall's opened on the morning of settling-day, the first to present
+themselves were his agents, who handed over L103,000 in settlement of
+all claims against the Marquess. Mr Chaplin had scored, and scored
+heavily; but at least it should never be said that his defeated rival
+had shrunk from paying the last ounce of the penalty the moment it was
+due.
+
+When next his lordship appeared on a race-course--it was at Ascot, a few
+months later--he was greeted with thunders of cheers from the
+bookmakers, a tribute to his pluck and sportsmanship, which must have
+taken away some of the sting of defeat. But fate which had dealt this
+merciless blow to the Marquess was in no mood to spare him further
+disaster. The second stroke fell within five months of the first--at the
+Newmarket second October Meeting. The favourite for the Middle Park
+Plate was Lord Hastings' filly, Elizabeth, whose chances he fancied so
+much that he backed her heavily, confident that he would recover a great
+part of his Derby losses.
+
+When Elizabeth, instead of running away from her rivals, passed the
+winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He
+uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to
+fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was
+helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. "Tell me how I stand,"
+asked her ladyship, as she placed her betting-book in his hand. The
+Marquess made the necessary calculation; and with a smile of sympathy,
+answered: "You have lost L23." And he, who could thus calmly calculate
+so trifling a loss, was L50,000 poorer by his filly's failure to win the
+Plate!
+
+He knew well that he was a ruined man--worse than this, unutterably
+galling to his proud spirit--he knew that he was a disgraced man. His
+vast fortune had crumbled away until he had not L50,000 in the world to
+pay this last debt of honour. And yet he continued to smile in the face
+of ruin, carrying through this crowning disaster the brave heart of an
+English gentleman and a sportsman.
+
+He sold the last of his remaining acres, his hunters and hounds, and
+all his personal belongings; and all the money he could raise from the
+wreckage of his fortune was a pitiful L10,000. His last sovereign was
+gone, and he was L40,000 in debt, without a hope of paying it. When he
+next appeared on a race-course the very men who had cheered him to the
+echo at Ascot greeted him with jeers and angry shouts at Epsom. The hero
+of the Turf, the idol of the Ring, was that blackest of black sheep, a
+defaulter!
+
+And not only was he thus branded as a defaulter. Strange stories were
+being circulated to his further discredit as a sportsman. The running of
+Lady Elizabeth in one race was, it was said, more than open to
+suspicion. The Earl, who was considered a certainty for the Derby, was
+unaccountably scratched on the very evening before the race, though the
+Marquess stood to win L35,000 by her, and did not hedge the stake-money.
+
+The public indignation at these discreditable incidents found a vent in
+the columns of the _Times_; and although Lord Hastings denied that there
+was "one single circumstance mentioned as regards the two horses,
+correctly stated," and offered a frank explanation in both cases, the
+public refused to be appeased, and the stigma remained.
+
+So overwhelmed was he by this combination of assaults on his fortune and
+his good name that his health--undermined no doubt by excesses--broke
+down. He spent the summer months of 1868 in his yacht, cruising among
+the northern seas in search of health; but no sea-breezes could bring
+back colour to his cheeks or hope to his heart. He was a broken man
+before he had reached his prime, and he realised that his sun was near
+its setting. When he returned to England no one who saw him could doubt
+that the end was at hand. But his ruling passion remained strong to the
+last. He was advised by his friends to stay away from the Doncaster
+races; but he would go, though he could only with difficulty hobble on
+crutches.
+
+The last pathetic glimpse the world caught of this former idol of the
+Turf was as, from a basket-carriage, with pale, haggard face and
+straining eyes, he watched Athena, a beautiful mare which had once been
+his, win a race. As she was being led to the weighing-house he struggled
+from his carriage, hobbled on his crutches up to the beautiful animal,
+and lovingly patted her glossy neck.
+
+Such was the last appearance of the ill-fated Marquess on a scene of his
+former triumphs. For a few months longer he made a gallant fight for
+life. He even contemplated another voyage, and a winter in Egypt; but,
+almost before winter had set in, on the 11th November 1868, he gave up
+the struggle and drew his last breath--"leaving neither heir to his
+honours nor the smallest vestige of his ruined fortune; but leaving, in
+spite of his final failure, the memory of a true sportsman, and of a
+perfect gentleman who was no man's enemy but his own."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before the Marquess of Hastings had mounted his first pony another
+meteor of the Turf, equally dazzling, had flashed across the sky, and
+been merged in a darkness even more tragic than his own.
+
+
+Lord William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, commonly known and
+loved as "Lord George," who was cradled at Welbeck in February 1802, was
+the second son of the fourth Duke of Portland, a keen sportsman who won
+the Derby of 1809 with Teresias. The boy thus had the love of sport in
+his veins; and a passion for racing was the dominant note in his too
+brief life from the day, in 1833, when he started a small stud of his
+own, to that fatal day on which, piqued by his repeated failure to win
+the coveted "blue riband," he sold every horse in his stables at a word,
+and abandoned the Turf in despair.
+
+     "Lord George Bentinck," wrote Thormanby, a few years ago,
+     "was the idol of the sportsmen of his own day. The
+     commanding personality of the man threw a spell over all
+     with whom he was brought into contact; they were
+     half-fascinated, half-awed--judgment and criticism
+     surrendered to admiration. There are still veterans left,
+     like old John Kent, who talk with bated breath of Lord
+     George as a superior being, a god-like man, a king of
+     men."
+
+From the day he joined the Army as a cornet of Hussars in 1819, to the
+tragic close of his life, Lord George always cut a conspicuous and
+brilliant figure in the world. He was the spoilt child of Fortune; and,
+like all such spoilt children, was constantly getting into hot
+water--and out of it again. As a subaltern, for instance, he showed such
+little respect for his seniors that, one day on parade, a Captain Kerr
+exclaimed aloud: "If you don't make this young gentleman behave himself,
+Colonel, I will." Whereupon the insubordinate sub. retorted: "Captain
+Kerr ventures to say on parade that which he dares not repeat off."
+
+Such was the youth and such the man--gay, debonair, and popular to the
+highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman
+he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course
+being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have
+envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale
+of truly regal magnificence. Though he was never by any means rich, he
+often had as many as sixty horses in training, while his racing stud
+numbered a hundred. He kept three stud farms going, and his
+out-of-pocket expenses ran to L50,000 and more a year. To provide the
+money for such prodigality he wagered enormous sums. For the Derby of
+1843, for instance, he stood to win L150,000 on his horse Gaper, and
+actually pocketed L30,000, though Gaper was not even placed. In 1845 his
+net winnings on bets reached L100,000; and he thought nothing of staking
+his entire year's private income on a single race.
+
+One by one all the great prizes of the Turf fell to him--some many
+times--but the only prize he ever cared a brass farthing for, the Derby,
+always eluded his grasp, though again and again it seemed a certainty.
+So deep at last became his disgust and mortification at the unkindness
+of Fate in withholding the only boon he coveted that, in a moment of
+pique, he decided to sell his stud and leave the turf for ever.
+
+"I'll sell you the lot," he impulsively said to George Payne at
+Goodwood, "from Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his famous jockey),
+for L100,000. Yes or no?" Payne offered him L300 to have a few hours to
+think the offer over, and handed the sum over at breakfast the next
+morning. No sooner had the forfeit been paid than Mr Mostyn, who was
+sitting at the same table, looked up quietly and said: "I'll take the
+lot, Bentinck, at L10,000, and will give you a cheque before you go on
+the course." "If you please," was Lord George's placid answer; and thus
+ended one of the most brilliant Turf careers on record.
+
+And now for the irony of Fate! Among the stud thus sold, in a fit of
+pique, for "an old song" was Surplice, the winner of the next year's
+Derby and St Leger. Lord George had actually had the great prize in his
+hand and had let it go!
+
+How keenly he felt the blow may be gathered from the following passage
+in Lord Beaconsfield's biography:
+
+     "A few days before--it was the day after the Derby, May
+     25, 1848--the writer met Lord George Bentinck in the
+     library of the House of Commons. He was standing before
+     the bookshelves with a volume in his hand, and his
+     countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolution in
+     favour of the Colonial interest, after all his labours,
+     had been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd; and on
+     the 24th, his horse, Surplice, whom he had parted with
+     among the rest of the stud, had won that paramount and
+     Olympic stake, to gain which had been the object of his
+     life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
+     sustain him, except his pride. Even that deserted him
+     before a heart, which he knew at least could yield him
+     sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.
+
+     "'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what
+     have I sacrificed it?' he murmured. It was in vain to
+     offer solace.
+
+     "'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned.
+
+     "'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the Turf.'
+
+     "'It is the Blue Riband of the Turf,' he slowly repeated
+     to himself; and, sitting down at a table, buried himself
+     in a folio of statistics."
+
+Just a few months later, on 21st September 1848, his body was found
+lying, cold and stiff, in a meadow about a mile from Welbeck. That very
+morning he had risen full of health and spirits, and at four o'clock in
+the afternoon had set out to walk across country to Thoresby, Lord
+Manvers' seat, where he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent on
+his valet by road in advance; but the night fell, and Lord George never
+made his appearance. A search with lanterns was instituted, and about
+midnight his body was discovered lying face downwards close to one of
+the deer-park gates. He had been dead for some hours.
+
+What was the cause of his mysterious death? The coroner's jury appear
+to have found no difficulty in coming to a decision. Their verdict was,
+"Died by the visitation of God--to wit, a spasm of the heart." Thus
+vanished from the world one of its most brilliant and picturesque
+ornaments, in the very prime of his life and his powers (he was only
+forty-six), and when he seemed assured of a political future even more
+dazzling than his Turf fame.
+
+But there were many, among the thousands who deplored the tragic eclipse
+of such a promising life, who were by no means satisfied with the vague
+verdict of the inquest. Lord George had always been a man of remarkable
+vigour and health, and never more so than on the day of his death. Was
+it at all likely that such a man would drop dead during a quiet and
+unexciting stroll across country? Later years, however, have brought new
+facts to light which suggest a very different explanation of this
+tragedy. "The hand of God" it was, no doubt, which struck the fatal
+blow--it always must be; but was there no other agency, and that a human
+one? Could it not be the hand of a brother? Some have said it was; and
+although the story is involved in obscurity and may be open to grave
+doubt (indeed it has been more than once flatly contradicted) there can,
+perhaps, be no harm in including it in this volume. This is the story as
+it has been told.
+
+Though Lord George Bentinck was the handsomest man, and one of the most
+eligible _partis_ of his day he never married; yet, no doubt, he had
+many an "affair of the heart." But not one of all the high-born ladies,
+who would have turned their backs on coronets to become "Lady George,"
+could in his eyes compare with Annie May Berkelay, a lovely and
+penniless girl, who could not even boast a "respectable" parentage.
+
+Miss Berkeley was, so it is said, a child of that most romantic union
+between the Earl of Berkeley and pretty Mary Cole, the butcher's
+daughter. This girl he professed to have made his countess shortly after
+in the parish church of Berkeley. That his lordship legally married his
+low-born bride at Lambeth eleven years later is beyond doubt, but that
+alleged first secret marriage was more than open to suspicion. There
+seems little doubt that the entry the in Berkeley church register was a
+forgery; and that, not until Mary Cole had borne several children to the
+Earl, did she become legally his wife by the valid knot tied at Lambeth.
+It was, in fact, decided by the House of Peers that the Berkeley
+marriage was not proven, and thus seven of the children were
+illegitimate.
+
+It was one of Lord Berkeley's children thus branded to the world who is
+said to have won the heart and the homage of Lord George Bentinck. And
+little wonder; for Annie May Berkeley had inherited more than her
+mother's beauty of face and of figure, with the patrician air and
+refinement which came from generations of noble ancestors.
+
+But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had
+enslaved. There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among
+them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder
+brother, and the future "eccentric Duke" of Portland, often referred to
+as "The Wizard of Welbeck." The Marquess and his younger brother had
+never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when
+they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden
+this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement.
+
+It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was
+more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual
+relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the
+brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George,
+whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no
+physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant
+squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord
+George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused
+to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest,
+over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved
+fatal.
+
+This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that
+September day in 1848; of that "spasm of the heart" which, according to
+the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George
+Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long
+mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is
+explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke
+of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as
+to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother,
+however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could
+be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from
+the world in sorrow and remorse?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WICKED BARON
+
+
+The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black
+sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles,
+fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence
+and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.
+
+Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and
+fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the
+Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of
+Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a
+man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there
+was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon
+with the stigma of eternal shame.
+
+From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for
+low pursuits. In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at,
+he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both. Wine and
+women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in
+each indulgence he was infamously supreme. He was twice arraigned for
+murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.
+
+Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of
+his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that
+marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman
+figures prominently--none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the
+most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of
+every man who came under the spell of her charms.
+
+Her army of lovers ranged from Congreve and Rowe, who wrote inspired and
+passionate plays for her, to the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire and Lord
+Lovelace (among a hundred other titled gallants), who were ready to shed
+their last drop of blood in defence of her fair fame; though each sought
+in vain to besmirch it in his own person. But her virtue was reputed to
+be "as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar." Dr Doran describes her as
+"that Diana of the stage, before whom Congreve and Lord Lovelace, at the
+head of a troop of bodkined fops, worshipped in vain"; although, with
+all her unassailable propriety, she did not escape outspoken suspicions
+of being Congreve's mistress all the time.
+
+Describing her charms, another chronicler says:
+
+     "She was of a lovely height, with dark brown hair and
+     eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushing
+     complexion; and, whenever she exerted herself, had an
+     involuntary flushing in her breast, neck, and face."
+
+Such, in the cold medium of print, was Mrs Bracegirdle when she became
+the central figure of a great tragedy, the horrors of which have sent a
+thrill down to our own time.
+
+Among Mrs Bracegirdle's many baffled wooers was Captain Richard Hill, a
+boon companion of Charles, Lord Mohun, and a man of unrestrained
+passion. To all the Captain's coarse advances the actress turned a
+contemptuous shoulder, until in his rage he swore that at any cost she
+should be his. There was, he was convinced, only one real obstacle to
+the success of his suit, Jack Montford, the handsomest actor of his day,
+to whom Mrs Bracegirdle was said to be very kind; and the furious
+Captain vowed: "I am resolved to have the blood of Montford, and to
+carry off his charmer by force if need be."
+
+Captain Hill made no concealment of his purpose. He mouthed his threats
+aloud at his favourite tavern in Covent Garden and elsewhere; and he
+found a willing helper in Lord Mohun, who was always ripe for any
+dastardly scheme; and, with Mohun's help, he carefully prepared his
+plans for both murder and abduction, for on both his heart was set.
+
+By lavish bribes the two conspirators engaged half a dozen soldiers to
+assist in their scheme; they arranged that a coach with two horses, and
+four others in reserve, should be in waiting at nine o'clock in Drury
+Lane, close to the theatre at which Mrs Bracegirdle made her appearance
+nightly; and, equipped with a formidable armoury of swords, daggers, and
+pistols, they repaired at the appointed time to the scene of action.
+
+For a full hour they waited, watching with lynx eyes the door from
+which the fair actress would emerge; but, as luck would have it, she was
+not playing that night. She was, in fact, at the moment supping at the
+house of a friend, Mrs Page, in Princes Street, close by; and they were
+on the point of proceeding there when the lady made her appearance, with
+her mother as companion and Mr Page and her brother for escort, on her
+way home to her lodgings in Howard Street across the Strand.
+
+At sight of their fair prey two of the soldiers rushed forward, snatched
+Mrs Bracegirdle from her mother's arm and dragged her, screaming and
+resisting, towards the coach in which Lord Mohun was sitting by his
+cases of pistols, and in which it was intended to carry her off to
+Totteridge. When her escort rushed to her rescue, Hill struck at the old
+lady with his sword; but the cries and sounds of scuffling attracted
+such a crowd that a change of plans became necessary.
+
+With consummate cleverness the adroit Captain now took each of the
+ladies by the arm and coolly conducted them himself out of the crowd to
+their lodgings, Mohun and the soldiers following ignominiously behind.
+Upon reaching Howard Street, the ladies safely indoors, the soldiers
+were dismissed, and Mohun and his ally, with drawn swords, paced up and
+down the street, vowing vengeance on the unhappy Montford, whom they
+considered the cause of all their troubles, and who, sooner or later,
+must pass through Howard Street on his way to his house in Norfolk
+Street adjoining.
+
+For two long hours they kept their bloodthirsty vigil, feeding the
+flames of hate with copious draughts of wine, which they procured from
+a neighbouring tavern. The lady had escaped them, but they would at
+least make sure of her lover, the handsome actor, who on the stroke of
+midnight turned the corner into Howard Street.
+
+Montford had, it appears, already heard of the frustrated attempt to
+carry off Mrs Bracegirdle, and that Mohun and Hill were keeping watch
+outside her lodgings; so that he was not unprepared for an unpleasant
+scene. Picture his amazement then when Lord Mohun advanced smilingly to
+meet him, and embraced him with a great show of affection. "I am not
+prepared for such cordiality," the actor said coldly, as he disengaged
+himself from the unwelcome embrace. "I should prefer to learn how you
+justify Captain Hill's abominable rudeness to a lady, or keeping company
+with such a scoundrel."
+
+At this moment the Captain, inflamed with drink, strolled insolently up
+to the pair, and, giving Montford a resounding box on the ear,
+exclaimed, "Here I am to justify myself. Draw, fellow!" But before
+Montford had time to recover from the blow and to unsheath his sword,
+Hill ran him through the body. Without a groan the wounded man sank to
+the ground. A cry of "Murder" arose; the watchmen rushed to the scene.
+But before they arrived Hill had made his escape; while Mohun, who at
+least had the courage of his race, submitted himself to arrest. His
+first question to the watchmen was, "Has Hill escaped?" And when he was
+assured that he had, he added: "I am glad of it! I should not care if I
+were hanged for him."
+
+Such was the story which sent a thrill of horror through London on the
+day following the tragedy, and which aroused a fury of anger against the
+cowardly assassins; for not only was Jack Montford a popular idol who
+had captured all hearts with his handsome face and figure, his clever
+acting and his unaffected personal charm, but his wife, who had been
+thus tragically widowed, was one of the most gifted and delightful women
+who ever adorned the stage.
+
+It was thus inevitable that Lord Mohun's trial by his Peers, which was
+opened on the 31st of January 1693, in Westminster Hall, and which was
+invested with all the pomp and ceremonial befitting such an occasion,
+should attract crowds of excited spectators, curious to see the
+principal actors in this sensational drama, and burning to see justice
+done to the noble instigator of the murder. The pent-up excitement
+culminated when Mrs Bracegirdle, looking more beautiful than ever in
+spite of her pallor and evidences of suffering, entered the witness-box;
+and every word of the story she told was listened to in a silence that
+was painful in its intensity.
+
+In answer to the Attorney-General's request that she should "give my
+lord an account of the whole of your knowledge of the attempt that was
+made upon you in Drury Lane, and what followed upon it," she said:
+
+     "'My lord, I was in Prince's Street at supper at Mr
+     Page's, and at ten o'clock at night Mr Page went home
+     with me; and, coming down Drury Lane there stood a coach
+     by my Lord Craven's door, and the hood of the coach was
+     drawn, and a great many men stood by it. Just as I came
+     to the place where the coach stood, two soldiers came and
+     pushed me from Mr Page, and four or five men came up to
+     them, and they knocked my mother down almost, for my
+     mother and my brother were with me.
+
+     "'My mother recovered and came and hung about my neck, so
+     that they could not get me into the coach, and Mr Page
+     went to call company to rescue me. Then Mr Hill came with
+     his drawn sword and struck at Mr Page and my mother; and
+     when they could not get me into the coach because company
+     came up, he said he would see me home, and he had me by
+     one hand and my mother by the other. And when we came
+     home he pulled Mr Page by the sleeve and said, "Sir, I
+     would speak with you."'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Pray, Mrs Bracegirdle, did you see
+     anybody in the coach when they pulled you to it?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, my Lord Mohun was in the coach;
+     and when they pulled me to the coach I saw my Lord Mohun
+     in it. As they led me along Drury Lane, my Lord Mohun
+     came out of the coach and followed us, and all the
+     soldiers followed them; but they were dismissed, and, as
+     I said, when we came to our lodgings, Mr Hill pulled Mr
+     Page by the sleeve and said he would speak with him.
+     Saith Mr Page, "Mr Hill, another time will do; to-morrow
+     will serve." With that, when I was within doors, Mr Page
+     was pulled into the house, and Mr Hill walked up and down
+     the street with his sword drawn. He had his sword drawn
+     when he came alone with me.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Did you observe him to say anything
+     whilst he was with you?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'As I was going down the hill he said,
+     as he held me, that he would be revenged, but he did not
+     say on whom. When I was in the house several persons went
+     to the door, and afterwards Mrs Browne (my landlady),
+     went to the door, and spoke to them, and asked them what
+     they stayed and waited there for. At last they said they
+     stayed to be revenged of Mr Montford; and then Mrs Browne
+     came in to me and told me of it.'
+
+     "ATTORNEY-GENERAL:--'Were my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill both
+     together when that was said, that they stayed to be
+     revenged of Mr Montford?'
+
+     "MRS BRACEGIRDLE:--'Yes, they were. And when Mrs Browne
+     came in and told me, I sent my brother and my maid and
+     all the people we could out of the house to Mrs Montford
+     to desire her to send, if she knew where her husband was,
+     to tell him of it; and she did. And when they came
+     indoors again I went to the door, and the doors were
+     shut, and I listened to hear if they were there still;
+     and my Lord Mohun and Mr Hill were walking up and down
+     the street. By-and-bye the watch came up to them, and
+     when the watch came they said, "Gentlemen, why do you
+     walk with your swords drawn?" Says my Lord Mohun, "I am a
+     peer of England--touch me if you dare!" Then the watch
+     left them, and they went away; and a little after there
+     was a cry of "murder." And that is all I know, my lord.'
+
+When at the close of the case Lord Mohun was asked if he had anything to
+say in his defence, he answered:
+
+     "My lords, I hope it will be no disadvantage to me my not
+     summing up my evidence like a lawyer. I think I have
+     made it plainly appear that there never was any formal
+     quarrel or malice between Mr Montford and me. I have also
+     made appear the reason why we stayed so long in the
+     street, which was for Mr Hill to speak with Mrs
+     Bracegirdle and ask her pardon, and I stayed with him as
+     my friend. So plainly appeareth I had no hand in killing
+     Mr Montford, and upon the confidence of my own innocency
+     I surrendered myself to this honourable house, where I
+     know I shall have all the justice in the world."
+
+The trial, which lasted five days, resulted in a verdict of
+acquittal--sixty-nine peers voting Lord Mohun "Not Guilty," and fourteen
+finding him "Guilty."
+
+One would have thought that such a severe lesson and narrow escape would
+have given Mohun pause in his career of vice and crime. On the contrary,
+it seems merely to have whetted his appetite for similar adventures. He
+plunged into still deeper dissipation; one mad revel succeeded another;
+duel followed duel, all without provocation on any part but his own. He
+killed in cold blood two more men who had innocently provoked his
+enmity, "as if increase of appetite did grow by that it fed on," until
+he rightly became the most dreaded and hated man in all England, a man
+to whom a glance, a gesture, or a harmless word might mean death.
+
+But his evil days were drawing to their end; and appropriately he died
+in a welter of innocent blood. When the Duke of Hamilton was appointed
+Ambassador to the French Court, the Whigs were so alarmed by his known
+partiality for the Pretender that the more unscrupulous of them decided
+that, at any cost, he must be got rid of. What simpler plan could there
+be than by provoking him to a duel; what fitter tool than the
+fire-eating, bloodthirsty Mohun, the most skilled swordsman of his day?
+
+Mohun jumped at the vile suggestion, and lost no time in seeking the
+Duke and insulting him in public. His Grace, however, who knew the man's
+reputation only too well, treated the insult with the silence and
+contempt it deserved; whereupon Mohun, roused to fury by this studied
+slight, changed his _role_ to that of challenger. Thrice he sent his
+second, one Major-General Macartney, almost as big a scoundrel as
+himself, to the Duke's house in St James's Square; the fourth time a
+meeting was arranged for the following morning at the Ring, in Hyde
+Park, a favourite duelling-ground of the time. The intervening night
+hours Mohun and his satellite spent in debauchery in a low house of
+pleasure.
+
+In the cold, grey dawn of the following morning--the morning of 15th
+November 1712--the principals and seconds appeared almost simultaneously
+at the Ring--in the daytime the haunt of beauty and fashion, in the
+early morning hours a desolate part of the Park--and the preliminaries
+were quickly arranged. Turning to Macartney, the Duke said: "I am well
+assured, sir, that all this is by your contrivance, and therefore you
+shall have your share in the dance; my friend here, Colonel Hamilton,
+will entertain you." "I wish for no better partner," Macartney replied;
+"the Colonel may command me."
+
+A few moments later the double fight began with infinite fury. Swords
+flashed and clattered; lunge and parry, parry and lunge followed in
+lightning succession; the laboured breaths went up in gusts of steam on
+the morning air. There was murder in two pairs of eyes, a resolve as
+grim as death itself in the stern set faces of their opponents. Soon the
+blood began to spurt and ooze from a dozen wounds; the Duke was wounded
+in both legs; his adversary in the groin and arm. Faces, swords, the
+very ground, became crimson. Colonel Hamilton had at last disarmed his
+opponent, but the others fought on--gasping, reeling, lunging, feinting,
+the strength ebbing with each thrust.
+
+At last each made a desperate lunge at the other; the Duke's sword
+passed clean through his adversary up to the very hilt; Mohun, reeling
+forward, with a last effort shortened his sword and plunged it deep into
+the Duke's breast. Colonel Hamilton rushed to his friend and raised him
+in his arms, when Macartney, snatching up his fallen sword, drove it
+into the dying man's heart, then took to his heels and made his way as
+fast as horse and boat could carry him to Holland.
+
+Before the Duke could be raised from the ground to which he had fallen,
+he had drawn his last breath. A few moments later Mohun, too, succumbed
+to his wounds--the "Dog Mohun," as Swift called him, lying in death but
+a few yards from his victim.
+
+     "I am infinitely concerned," Swift wrote the same day,
+     "for the poor Duke, who was an honest, good-natured man.
+     I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better."
+
+Thus, steeped in innocent blood, perished Charles Lord Mohun, who well
+earned his unenviable title, "The wicked Baron."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A FAIR _INTRIGANTE_
+
+
+The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a
+diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a
+half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour,
+and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her
+allurements and her shame.
+
+If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal
+in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged
+to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centuries of
+noble ancestors, among the greatest in France; and she was kin, near or
+remote, to every great name in the land of her birth. All, however, that
+is known of this Queen of _intrigantes_ is that she had for father a
+worthy, unassuming Breton merchant, who had made a sufficient fortune in
+the wool-trade to take his ease, as a country gentleman, for the latter
+part of his days, and whose only ambition was to bring up his son and
+two daughters respectably, and to dispense a modest hospitality among
+his neighbours. It was at Brest that Evelyn enjoyed this hospitality
+for a brief period; and the diarist has nothing but what is good to say
+of the retired tradesman.
+
+But the worthy merchant had his hands full with one at least of his two
+daughters, who was developing dangerous fascinations, and with them a
+precocious knowledge of how to turn them to account. He was thankful to
+pack Louise off to a boarding-school, where she seems to have led her
+teachers such a dance that it became necessary to place her in stronger
+hands; and with this view the foolish father sent her to Paris, the last
+place in the world for such a charming and designing minx, and to the
+custody of a weak-willed aunt.
+
+Nothing could have suited Louise better than this change of arena for
+the exercise of her wilfulness and witchery. Before she had been many
+days in the French capital she was able to twist her aunt round her
+little finger--indeed her power of captivating was, to the end of her
+life, her chief dower--and to obtain all the freedom she wanted. And it
+was not long before her allurements won the admiration of the dissolute
+Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France, a man skilled in all the arts
+of love. The girl's bourgeois head was completely turned by the
+splendour of her first captive; and, to make him secure, she counted no
+sacrifice too great. Not, indeed, that she ever regarded her virtue as
+anything but the principal piece she intended to play on the chessboard
+of life.
+
+For a few years Louise revelled in the new life which the amorous Duc
+opened to her, and which only came to an end when the Admiral was
+despatched, in command of a fleet, against the Turks, an expedition from
+which he was fated never to return. Before he said good-bye, however,
+Louise took care to make the next step on her ladder of world-conquest
+secure. Through the Duc's influence she was appointed maid-of-honour to
+Madame, sister-in-law to Louis XIV., and sister to the second Charles of
+England, now restored to the throne of his fathers.
+
+We can well imagine that the wool merchant's daughter wasted no sighs on
+the lover she had lost. She had now a much wider and more splendid field
+at the Court of France, for the exploiting of her dangerous gifts and
+the indulgence of her ambition. That the new maid had no lack of lovers
+we may be sure; for though she was not richly dowered with beauty she
+always seems to have had a magnetic power over the hearts of men. We
+know, too, that she singled out for special favour, the Comte de Sault,
+the handsomest noble in France, a man skilled above all his fellows in
+the then moribund knightly exercises; and that her _liaison_ with the
+Comte, in a court where such intimacies were the fashion, added to,
+rather than detracted from, her social prestige.
+
+Such was the life of Louise de Querouaille up to the time when she made
+her first acquaintance with the land in which she was destined to crown
+her adventurous career, and to make herself at once the most dazzling
+and the most hated figure in England. At this time Louis' designs on
+Spain and Holland had received a rude check by the signing of an
+alliance between England, Sweden, and the United Provinces; and it
+became a matter of vital importance to detach England from a combination
+so fatal to his schemes. With this object he decided to send Henrietta,
+Duchess of Orleans, on a visit, ostensibly of affection, to her brother
+Charles II., charged with a secret mission to induce him by every
+artifice in her power to withdraw from the alliance.
+
+How Henrietta returned flushed with triumph from this iniquitous
+embassy, after ten days of high revelry at Dover, is well-known history.
+Charles, in response to his favourite sister's pleading and bribes, not
+only consented to desert his allies, but, as soon as he decently could,
+to follow in the steps of his brother, the Duke of York, to Rome; and in
+return for these evidences of friendship, Louis was gracious enough to
+promise him substantial aid and protection; and, further, to grant him a
+subsidy of L1,000,000 a year if he would take up arms with France
+against Holland.
+
+It is more to our purpose to know that among the gay galaxy of courtiers
+who accompanied Madame to England was Louise de Querouaille, who thus
+first set eyes on the King, in whose life-drama she was to play so
+brilliant and baleful a _role_; and that before Charles, with streaming
+eyes, said "good-bye" to his scheming sister, she had made excellent use
+of her opportunities to enslave this English "King of Hearts." So much
+at least was reported to Louis on the return of the embassy, when he
+was assured by Madame that, of all the beautiful women in her train, the
+only one to make any impression on her Royal brother was Louise de
+Querouaille.
+
+This information, no doubt, was in Louis' mind when, later, it became
+necessary to cement Charles's allegiance to his compact. Gold was always
+a potent lure to the "Merrie Monarch," whose purse was never deep enough
+for the demands made on it by his extravagance; but a still more
+seductive bait was a beautiful woman to add to his seraglio. The Duchess
+of Cleveland had now lost her youth and good looks; the incomparable
+Stuart's beauty had been fatally marred by small-pox. Of all the fair
+and frail women who had held Charles in thrall there was none left to
+dispute the palm with the French maid-of-honour except Nell Gwynn, the
+Drury Lane orange-girl, whose sauciness and vulgarity gave to the jaded
+Sybarite a piquant relish to her charms.
+
+Here was a splendid opportunity for Louis to complete the conquest of
+his vacillating cousin whose allegiance was so vital to his plans of
+aggrandisement. Louise should go to Whitehall to play the part of
+beautiful spy on Charles, and, by her favours, to make him a pliant tool
+in the hand of "le Roi Soleil."
+
+Charles, who was by no means loth to renew his Dover acquaintance with
+the bewitching maid-of-honour, sent a yacht to Dieppe to bring her to
+England, and charged no less a personage than the Duke of Buckingham to
+be her escort to Whitehall. The Duke, however, who was probably too much
+occupied with his own affairs of the heart, "totally forgot both the
+lady and his promise; and, leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe, to
+manage as best she could, passed over to England by way of Calais,"--a
+slight which the indignant Louise never forgave.
+
+Thus it was that the new favourite of the King made her journey across
+the Channel under the escort of the English Ambassador, and was given by
+him into the charge of Buckingham's political rival, Lord Arlington.
+"The Duke of Buckingham thus," to quote Bishop Burnet, "lost all merit
+he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his strange
+conduct threw into the hands of his enemies."
+
+The arrival of the "French spy," whose mission was well understood, was
+hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few
+stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent
+verses by St Evremond--efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded
+with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her
+without having even seen her was a matter of small concern--she was
+prepared for it. All she cared for was that Charles should give her a
+cordial welcome; and this he did with effusiveness and open arms. Apart
+from her character as ambassadress to his "dear brother" of France, she
+was a new and piquant stimulus to his sated appetite--a "dainty dish to
+set before a King."
+
+She was installed at Whitehall to the flourish of trumpets; was
+appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen, who frankly disliked and dreaded
+this new rival in her husband's accommodating affection; and at once
+assumed her position as chief of those women the King delighted to
+honour. And with such restraint and discretion did she conduct herself
+during these early days at Whitehall that she disarmed the jealousy of
+the Court ladies, while receiving the homage of their gallants.
+
+To Charles she was coyness itself--virtue personified. While smiling
+graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her
+attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she
+guard her favours that the French Ambassador began to show alarm.
+
+     "I believe," he wrote at this time, "that she has so got
+     round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to
+     our Sovereign lord and master, _if_ she only does her
+     duty."
+
+That Louise was fully conscious of her duty and meant to do it, was
+never really in question--but the time to unbend was not yet. It was no
+part of her clever strategy to drop like a ripe plum into Charles's
+mouth. _Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter._ She would be accounted all
+the greater prize for proving difficult to win.
+
+The psychical moment, she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited
+Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where,
+removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house
+freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the
+revels of which Euston was 183 the scene during a few intoxicating
+weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the
+merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, experts in gallantry,
+and his ladies, with most of whom an acquaintance with virtue was but a
+faded memory, it is no difficult matter to raise a corner of the curtain
+in imagination. One typical scene Forneron records thus:
+
+     "Lady Arlington, under the pretext of killing the tedium
+     of October evenings in a country-house, got up a
+     burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Querouaille was the
+     bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest
+     ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the
+     retirement of the former into the nuptial chamber."
+
+It was precisely such a ceremony in which, a few years earlier, Charles
+had figured with _La belle Stuart_, while Lady Castlemaine looked on
+with laughter and applause.
+
+[Illustration: LOUISE, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH]
+
+Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that
+Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed _maitresse en
+titre_ to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the
+confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of
+the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of
+Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool
+merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange
+for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war
+with Holland; to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother
+and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.
+
+Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the
+wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a
+double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of
+a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might
+her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London,
+throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his "petite
+Louise" had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed
+at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for
+when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was
+probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the
+throne.
+
+     "She has got the notion," wrote the French Ambassador,
+     "that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She
+     talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as
+     if they were mortal."
+
+But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to
+be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which,
+nominally L10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of
+L136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range
+of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal pardons
+and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably
+the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten
+gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with
+the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When
+Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:
+
+     "But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and
+     splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice
+     or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and
+     expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed
+     some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.
+
+     "Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for
+     design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of
+     the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some
+     pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of
+     the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes,
+     exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for
+     Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of
+     wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras,
+     etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides
+     some of his Majesty's best paintings!"
+
+Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise
+de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, "gutter-rival" of hers,
+Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's
+affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of
+French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a
+disconcerting ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful
+rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle
+in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
+Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court _salons_ and corridors, as if
+she were carrion.
+
+And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
+Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to "chuck
+Charles's royal chin," and to call him her "Charles the third," in
+unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
+favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
+all, was no better than herself.
+
+"The Duchess," she would say, "pretends to be a person of quality. She
+says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
+person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
+quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
+my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
+just as fond of me as he is of his French miss."
+
+But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
+gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
+progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
+the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
+possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
+providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise
+much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
+James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
+from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
+suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
+had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.
+
+After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
+declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
+concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
+promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
+become her crowning ambition to win the right to a _tabouret_ at the
+Court of Versailles--the highest privilege accorded to the old
+_noblesse_, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
+this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
+France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
+but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
+_tabouret_ went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
+the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
+would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
+commands he might lay upon her.
+
+His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
+by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
+Franche Comte, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
+discovered that for once his vaulting ambition had overleaped itself.
+The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
+sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
+Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
+paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
+Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
+popular rage against the "painted French spy" who was regarded, and
+perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
+enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.
+
+To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
+heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
+imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
+Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
+exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless
+beauty to complete her conquest of the amorous Sovereign--"the last
+conquest of her conquering eyes," as Waller wrote in his fulsome
+greeting of the new divinity of the Whitehall seraglio.
+
+For once Louise's indomitable courage showed signs of yielding. The
+whole armoury of fate seemed arrayed against her at this crisis in her
+life; even Louis, for whom she had striven so hard, began to distrust
+her powers and to show indifference to her. When Forneron paid her a
+visit at this time he found her in tears. "She opened her heart to him,
+in the presence of her two French maids, who stood by with downcast
+eyes. Tears rained down her cheeks; and her speech was broken with sobs
+and sighs." Never had this designing beauty been so near the verge of
+absolute ruin.
+
+It is not necessary perhaps to follow the Duchess through the period of
+her eclipse; to watch the weak-kneed Charles sink deeper and deeper into
+the morass of his disloyalty until, in return for a subsidy of
+L4,000,000, he offered to dissolve parliament and to make England the
+bond-slave of Louis's designs on Europe; or to see Louise, the chief
+instrument of all this ignominy, reach the climax of her disgrace and
+her peril when mobs besieged Whitehall, and clamoured that the "Jezebel"
+should be sent to the scaffold.
+
+It is sufficient for our purpose to know that through all this terrible
+time she steered her way with almost superhuman skill back to the
+sunshine of success and favour. Her life-long ambition was crowned when
+Louis gave her the d'Aubigny lands and, with them, the _tabouret_ which
+had so long dazzled her eyes and eluded her grasp. When the sky in
+England had at last cleared she paid a visit to her native land. For
+four ecstatic months the wool merchant's daughter made a triumphant
+progress through France, acclaimed and feted as a Queen. At her castle
+of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
+to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
+her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
+visit to the Capucines in Paris her approach was heralded by a
+procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
+cross. "She was received," we are told, "as if she were a Queen, which
+quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour." To
+such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
+actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
+in France.
+
+On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
+reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
+favourite of the King, all his other mistresses--even the Queen herself
+being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
+did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
+himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
+England--_plus roi que le Roi_.
+
+Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
+more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
+The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
+Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
+which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
+of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
+she had was the rakish Philippe de Vendome, grandson of Henri IV. and
+nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
+seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
+seems to have conducted an open and shameless intrigue with De
+Vendome--a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
+for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
+despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
+her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
+withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
+written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
+by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
+was able to breathe again.
+
+Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
+the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
+courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
+light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
+was shocked at such scenes.
+
+     "I was told to-night," he writes, "that my Lady
+     Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won L15,400
+     in one night, and lost L25,000 in another night at play,
+     and has played L1000 and L1500 at a cast."
+
+The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,
+
+     "won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
+     and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above L8000, in doing
+     which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
+     satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
+     favour."
+
+But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
+them was on the night of 1st February 1685--the last Sunday Charles was
+permitted to spend on earth.
+
+     "The great courtiers," says Evelyn, "and other dissolute
+     persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
+     a bank of at least L2000 before them. The King, though
+     not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
+     occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
+     shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
+     Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
+     stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
+     glorious gallery. Six days after," he adds, "all was in
+     the dust."
+
+As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
+concern--for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
+to Louis, her paymaster--was that Charles should at least die an avowed
+Catholic.
+
+     "I found her," Barillon wrote to Louis, "overcome with
+     grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
+     changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
+     and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
+     to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
+     pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
+     there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
+     not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
+     his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
+     with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
+     conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
+     near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
+     his brother's soul.'"
+
+The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
+queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
+before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
+were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
+that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
+and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
+pension of L800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
+True, she was still able to claim her _tabouret_ at the Court of
+Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
+the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
+her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
+refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
+vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
+one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
+eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
+such havoc in the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MERRY DUCHESS
+
+
+When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
+centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
+Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
+romantic and adventurous _role_ Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
+life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
+distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
+infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
+dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
+an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of rare skill and
+daring, and as a profligate in petticoats.
+
+As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before
+she was long out of the nursery she vowed that "she would be a Duchess,"
+and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power
+of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from
+short frocks she was a finished coquette.
+
+Such was Elizabeth Chudleigh when, at fifteen, she blossomed into
+precocious womanhood. Her father, the Colonel, had long been dead, and
+his widow had made her home in the neighbourhood of Leicester House,
+where the Prince and Princess of Wales held their Court. Here she made
+the acquaintance of Mr Pulteney, later Earl of Bath, a great favourite
+of the weak and dissolute Prince; and through his interest, Elizabeth,
+now a radiantly lovely and supremely fascinating young woman, was
+appointed a maid-of-honour to the Princess.
+
+In the environment of a Court, surrounded by gallants, and with women
+almost as lovely as herself to pit her charms against, Colonel
+Chudleigh's daughter, eager to drink the cup of pleasure and of
+conquest, was in her element. She was the merriest madcap in a Court
+where licence was unrestrained; and she soon had high-placed lovers at
+her dainty feet, including, so they say, none other than Frederick
+himself. Coronets galore dazzled her eyes with their rival allurements;
+but while, with tantalising coquetry, she kept them all dangling, one
+alone tempted her--that which was laid at her feet by the Duke of
+Hamilton, a gallant whose high rank was rivalled by his handsome face
+and figure, and his many courtly accomplishments.
+
+When the Duke asked her to be his wife she graciously consented, and her
+Duchess's coronet seemed assured thus early, with a prospect of
+happiness that does not always accompany it; for in this case she seems
+to have given her heart where she gave her hand. For a time the course
+of true love ran smoothly, and the maid-of-honour became a model of
+decorum as the affianced wife of the man she loved.
+
+But her dream of happiness was destined to be short-lived. An intriguing
+aunt, Mrs Hanmer, who had no love for the Hamiltons, set to work to dash
+the cup of happiness from her niece's lips. She intercepted the Duke's
+letters, poured into Elizabeth's ears poisonous stories of his
+infidelities and entanglements to account for his silence, and, when the
+poison began to show signs of working, whisked her niece away on a visit
+to the country-house of her cousin, Mr Merrill, at Lainston, where among
+her fellow-guests was a dashing young naval lieutenant, the Hon.
+Augustus Hervey, who was second heir to his father's Earldom of Bristol.
+
+The lieutenant, as was inevitable, perhaps, fell promptly under the
+spell of the maid-of-honour's charms, and made violent love to her,
+with, of course, Mrs Hanmer's whole-hearted connivance. The girl,
+blazing with resentment of the Duke's coldness, and his apparent
+indifference to her beauty and his vows, lent a willing ear to his
+pleadings, and within a few days had promised to be wife to a man whom,
+as she confessed later, she "almost hated."
+
+The wedding was, by mutual consent, to be secret, partly on account of
+the bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear
+of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in
+1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, and made its
+way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the
+light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and
+mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which
+was to lead to such dramatic developments.
+
+Forty-eight hours later the bridegroom had joined his ship at
+Portsmouth; and his bride's greatest joy, as she confessed, was when he
+had departed. Such a marriage, the fruit of pique and anger, boded ill
+for happiness. Frankly, the union was one long misery, broken by the
+intervals when the husband was away at sea, and accentuated during his,
+happily brief, visits to her. Two children were born to this
+ill-assorted pair, but both died young; and Elizabeth Hervey had
+abundant opportunity to follow her natural bent, by seeking
+forgetfulness in dissipation.
+
+In the full glow of her beauty, a wife who was no wife, she resumed her
+broken career of conquest. She made a tour of Europe, leaving a train of
+broken-hearted and languishing lovers behind her. At Berlin she brought
+Frederick the Great to his knees, and made an abject slave of him; she
+shocked the ladies of the Dresden Court by her laxity and the prodigal
+display of her charms, and by the same arts bewitched the men. She led,
+we are told, a life of shameless dissipation, which only her beauty and
+intellectual gifts redeemed from vulgar depravity. She had lovers in
+every capital she visited, and discarded them as lightly as so many
+playthings.
+
+On her return to England, so anxious was she to obliterate that fatal
+episode in the dark church, she made a journey with certain friends to
+Lainston, and, while the vicar's back was turned, tore the fatal page
+out of the marriage register.
+
+Meanwhile, the naval lieutenant had blossomed into an Earl, on his
+father's death; and when the new Earl, her husband, showed signs of
+failing health, and there was an early prospect of graduating as a
+wealthy dowager Countess, she saw the wisdom of making another journey
+to Lainston to replace the record of her marriage. Alas, for her
+scheming; the moribund Earl took a new lease of life, and the gilded
+dowagerhood became nebulous and remote again.
+
+But Elizabeth Chudleigh was not to be long baulked in her ambitious
+designs. Though her charms had grown too opulent and were faded--for she
+was now near her fiftieth birthday--she was able to count among her
+slaves the aged Duke of Kingston, an amiable and weak old gentleman of
+enormous wealth, and with one accommodating foot already "in the grave."
+
+Wife, or no wife, she now made up her mind to be a Duchess at last. She
+appealed to Lord Bristol, the husband from whom she had so long been
+estranged, to divorce her, even going so far as to offer to qualify for
+the divorce by an open and flagrant act of infidelity; but his lordship
+only shrugged a scornful shoulder. Still, not to be thwarted, she
+brought a suit of jactitation of marriage, and, by a lavish use of
+bribes and cajolery, got a sentence from the Ecclesiastical Court which
+at last set her free. Within a month she had blossomed into "the most
+high and _puissante_ Princess, the Duchess of Kingston," thus realising
+her childish ambition.
+
+For four and a half years the Duchess was a dignified pattern of all the
+virtues. The passions of youth had lost their fires; the scenes of
+revelry and coarse dissipation to which they had given birth were only a
+memory. She would yet die in the odour of sanctity, however tardy. But
+storms were brewing, and the Duke's death, in 1746, precipitated them,
+though not before she had had another fling with the riches he left to
+her.
+
+Throwing aside her widow's weeds, she flung herself again--old, obese,
+and faded as she was--into a round of dissipation which shocked and
+disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the
+"quality," until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she
+had brought on her head.
+
+She bought a magnificent yacht and sailed away to Rome, where Pope and
+Cardinal alike conspired to do her honour; and was only saved from
+eloping with a titled swindler by his arrest and later suicide in
+prison. It was while in Rome that news came to her that her late
+husband's heirs were planning a charge of bigamy against her, with a
+view to setting aside his will in her favour.
+
+Her exchequer was empty for the time; but, presenting herself before her
+banker, pistol in hand, she compelled him to provide her with funds to
+enable her to return to London--to find all arrangements already made
+for her trial in Westminster Hall on a charge of bigamy. Public opinion
+was arrayed against her; she was received with abuse, jeers, and
+lampoons. Foote made her the object of universal ridicule by a comedy
+entitled, "A Trip to Calais." But the Duchess metaphorically snapped her
+fingers at them all. She was no woman to bow before the storm of
+ridicule and censure. She openly defied it to do its worst. Her splendid
+equipage was to be seen everywhere, with the autocratic Duchess, serene,
+smiling, contemptuous.
+
+It was of this period of her life that the following story is told. One
+day when driving in London her gorgeous carriage was brought to a halt
+by a coal-cart which was being unloaded in a narrow street. The Duchess
+was furious at the delay, and protruding her head and shoulders from the
+carriage and leaning her arms on the door, she cried out to the
+offending carter: "How dare you, sirrah, to stop a woman of quality in
+the street?" "Woman of quality!" sneered the man. "Yes, fellow,"
+rejoined her Grace, "don't you see my arms upon my carriage?" "Indeed I
+do," he answered, "and a pair of d---- coarse arms they are, too!"
+
+Seldom has a trial excited such widespread excitement and interest.
+
+     "Everybody," Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Sir
+     Horace Mann, "is on the quest for tickets for her Grace
+     of Kingston's trial. I am persuaded that her impudence
+     will operate in some singular manner; probably she will
+     appear in weeds, with a train to reach across Westminster
+     Hall, with mourning maids-of-honour to support her when
+     she swoons at the dear Duke's name, and in a black veil
+     to conceal her blushing or not blushing. To this farce,
+     novel and curious as it will be, I shall not go. I think
+     cripples have no business in crowds, but at the Pool of
+     Bethesda; and, to be sure, this is no angel that troubles
+     the waters."
+
+But if Walpole resisted the temptation to witness a scene so piquant and
+remarkable, hundreds of the highest in the land, including Queen
+Charlotte herself, the Prince of Wales and many another Royal personage,
+ambassadors and statesmen, flocked to Westminster to see the notorious
+Duchess on her trial on the charge of bigamy. And the vast Hall was
+packed with a curious and expectant crowd when her Grace made her
+stately entry with a retinue of _femmes de chambre_, her doctor,
+apothecary, and secretary, and proceeded to her seat, in front of her
+six bewigged Counsel, with the dignified step and haughty mien of an
+Empress.
+
+Hannah More, who was present at the trial, says that hardly a trace of
+her once enchanting beauty was visible; and that, had it not been for
+her white face, "she might easily have been taken for a bundle of
+bombasin."
+
+The trial lasted several days, during the whole of which the Duchess
+conducted herself with remarkable dignity and composure, in face of the
+damning array of evidence that was brought against her--the evidence of
+a maid who had witnessed her midnight marriage in Lainston Church; of
+the widow of the parson who officiated at the nuptials; and of Serjeant
+Hawkins, who authenticated the birth of her first child by Augustus
+Hervey.
+
+     "The scene opened on Wednesday with all its pomp," wrote
+     Walpole, who although not present seems to have followed
+     the trial with the keenest interest, "and the
+     doubly-noble prisoner went through her part with
+     universal admiration. Instead of her usual ostentatious
+     folly and clumsy pretensions to cunning, all her conduct
+     was decent, and even seemed natural. Her dress was
+     entirely black and plain; her attendants not too
+     numerous; her dismay at first perfectly unaffected. A few
+     tears balanced cheerfulness enough, and her presence of
+     mind and attention never deserted her. This rational
+     behaviour and the pleadings of her Counsel, who contended
+     for the finality of her Ecclesiastical Court's sentence
+     against a second trial, carried her triumphantly through
+     the first day, and turned the stream much in her favour."
+
+The following day proved a much more severe test to her Grace's
+composure; and no sooner had the Court risen than "she had to be
+blooded, and fell into a great passion of tears." And each succeeding
+day added to the tension and anxieties which she struggled so bravely to
+conceal.
+
+On the third day of the trial Walpole says:
+
+     "The plot thickens, or rather opens. Yesterday the judges
+     were called on for their opinions, and _una voce_
+     dismantled the Ecclesiastical Court. The
+     Attorney-General, Thurlow, then detailed the 'Life and
+     Adventures of Elizabeth Chudleigh, _alias_ Hervey,
+     _alias_ the most high and _puissante_ Princess, the
+     Duchess of Kingston.' Her Grace bore the narration with a
+     front worthy of her exalted rank. Then was produced the
+     first capital witness, the ancient damsel who was present
+     at her first marriage. To this witness her Grace was
+     benign, but had a transitory swoon at the mention of her
+     dear Duke's name; and at intervals has been blooded
+     enough to have supplied her execution if necessary. Two
+     babes were likewise proved to have blessed her first
+     nuptials, one of whom, for aught that appears, may exist
+     and become Earl of Bristol."
+
+Three days later Horace Walpole concludes his narrative of the trial,
+which we are afraid his antipathy to the adventurous Duchess has
+coloured a little too vividly:
+
+     "The wisdom of the land," he writes, "has been exerted
+     for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and
+     yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess
+     to convert herself into a Duchess. After a pretty
+     defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she herself
+     had written and pronounced very well), the sages, in
+     spite of the Attorney-General (who brandished a hot iron)
+     dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the
+     fees, all voting her guilty; but the Duke of Newcastle,
+     her neighbour in the country, softening his vote by
+     adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.' So ends the
+     solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not
+     intend to leave her that title.... I am glad to have done
+     with her."
+
+A few days later, in spite of a writ, _ne exeat regno_, which had been
+issued against her, she was back in France, travelling in state as
+"Madame la Duchesse de Kingston." From Calais she made her magnificent
+progress to Rome, where Pope and Cardinals vied in doing honour to so
+exalted and charming a lady, and entertained her as regally as if she
+had been a Queen. Returning to Calais she installed herself in a
+palatial house where she dispensed a lavish hospitality, and flung her
+gold about with prodigal hands.
+
+But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
+cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
+Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
+balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
+continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
+Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
+entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
+torchlight.
+
+Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
+in Paris, and the chateau of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
+alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
+Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
+by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
+of her jewels to her "dear friend," the Russian Empress; a large diamond
+to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
+necklace and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
+that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
+bore the same title.
+
+But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
+close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
+sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
+She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
+dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. "At your peril, disobey
+me!" she said to her protesting attendants. "I _will_ get up!" She got
+up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
+drained glass after glass of Madeira. "I will lie down on the couch,"
+she then said. "I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
+again."
+
+From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
+felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
+fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
+life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
+pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
+found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
+indulgence of her appetites were "all vanity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER
+
+
+If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
+whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen
+a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from
+Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of
+heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.
+
+There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's
+blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and
+philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother,
+the lovely and frail Louise Renee de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth,
+the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women--the Duchesses of
+Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin--who spent their days in "open
+dalliance" with the "Merrie Monarch," and their nights at the
+basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.
+
+As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast--the
+mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our
+Peerage. One day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing
+cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his
+heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord
+Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful
+Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery;
+a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were
+immediately to be made husband and wife.
+
+At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride
+the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going
+to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of
+"honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and
+within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were
+separated--Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his
+bride to her nursery toys.
+
+Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour
+round the world--a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means
+eager to renew his acquaintance with the "ugly duckling" who was his
+wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a
+vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no
+sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never
+yet had had power to do.
+
+Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. "You must
+indeed be a stranger to London," was the answer, "if you do not know
+the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!" Lady March! Could that
+exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
+married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
+introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
+indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
+his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
+the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
+without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
+the grave.
+
+Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
+a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
+the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
+mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.
+
+One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
+nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
+George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
+pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: "How do
+you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, _n'est-ce pas_?"
+George was so delighted with the child's _naivete_ that he took her up
+in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
+had promised to come and see him.
+
+And how the King and his "little sweetheart," as he called her, enjoyed
+these visits! and the merry romps they had together!
+
+     "On one occasion," says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
+     of much later days), "after a romp with my mother, the
+     King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
+     squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
+     to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
+     that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
+     begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
+     was quite delighted."
+
+But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
+her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
+to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
+years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
+sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
+little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
+years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
+embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
+disgust: "Pooh! she has grown too stupid!"
+
+But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
+and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend--none other
+than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
+little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
+the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
+conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
+her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.
+
+Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
+some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
+Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
+Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
+House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:
+
+     "Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
+     When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
+     on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
+     lovely and so expressive."
+
+And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
+her:
+
+     "Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
+     saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
+     hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
+     sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
+     fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks."
+
+Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
+seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it--an
+indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
+One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
+of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
+Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not summon up courage to declare
+his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
+Coronation, "Ah!" he exclaimed with a sigh, "there will be no Coronation
+until there is a Queen." "But why, sir?" asked Lady Susan in surprise.
+"They want me to have a foreign Queen," George answered, "but I prefer
+an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
+world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?"
+
+A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: "Has your
+friend given you my message?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you think of it?
+Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
+do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
+downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
+"nothing comes of nothing."
+
+Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
+small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
+spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
+already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
+Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
+passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
+shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
+her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That
+will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"
+
+The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the
+young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
+passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
+surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
+to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
+to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
+unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
+and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
+Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.
+
+Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
+to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
+extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
+Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted
+girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears."
+But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
+the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
+such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
+brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.
+
+If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
+George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
+attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
+rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
+rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.
+
+Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal lover for some days
+she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
+the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
+King that she "thought nothing" of his advances, had developed into the
+veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
+strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
+her own defeat.
+
+That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
+Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
+might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
+against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
+despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
+fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
+surrender of his liberty there was no escape.
+
+Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
+quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
+favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
+Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
+was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
+life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
+the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow--to her
+vanity, if not to her heart. It was a "bolt from the blue," for which
+she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.
+
+     "I shall take care," she wrote to her friend, Lady
+     Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, "I shall
+     take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
+     if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
+     cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
+     what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
+     message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
+     not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
+     with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
+     not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
+     believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
+     will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
+     thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
+     shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
+     much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
+     can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
+     his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
+     as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
+     time of it."
+
+A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
+Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
+consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
+of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
+retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
+no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
+compared with his ill-favoured bride, was "as a queenly lily to a
+dandelion."
+
+The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
+Sarah's revenge, and of which her son tells the following story. Among
+the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
+half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
+adherents.
+
+     "Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
+     he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
+     knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
+     and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
+     sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
+     and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
+     know he always loved Pretenders.'"
+
+But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
+of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
+was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
+the score; but to one and all--including, as Walpole records, Lord
+Errol--she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
+fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
+of a mere Baronet--Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
+majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
+Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
+circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.
+
+More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
+baronet-husband.
+
+     "And who the d----," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
+     Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
+     house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near
+     Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
+     L2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
+     would not be happy?"
+
+And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
+silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
+idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
+Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:
+
+     "Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
+     like my own and your description of yours, from which I
+     reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
+     me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
+     single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
+     happiest of beings."
+
+It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
+she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
+flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
+rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
+resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
+He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!
+
+And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
+not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
+handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
+baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
+with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
+into a _liaison_ with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
+termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
+nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.
+
+Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
+intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
+lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
+the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish
+paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
+After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
+to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate--he to travel
+abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
+brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
+(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
+isolation.
+
+The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
+night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
+chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
+that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
+remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
+bright days were still in store for her--a happy and honourable
+wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
+honour.
+
+It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
+brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were
+few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
+Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features."
+When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
+he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
+but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
+he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
+years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
+of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
+not fit to be his wife.
+
+     "He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I _do_ love him;
+     and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
+     that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
+     degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
+     marrying me."
+
+Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
+proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
+day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
+to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
+their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
+sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
+their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
+generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
+was the historian of the Peninsular War.
+
+When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
+Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.
+
+     "How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the
+     gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
+     solace into a woman's darkened heart."
+
+But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
+years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
+gallant boys.
+
+To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
+that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
+even look on the sons she loved.
+
+A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
+life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
+years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
+Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
+As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
+of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
+his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
+overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
+church.
+
+Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
+of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
+out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
+the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a
+dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
+gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
+lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
+eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows,
+though they carried a crown with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM
+
+
+Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
+full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
+daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
+beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
+and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
+Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
+sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
+had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.
+
+Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
+on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
+life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
+could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
+womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
+and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
+Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
+the Earl of Galloway.
+
+As for Susanna, the loveliest of the "three Graces"--"Scotland's
+fairest daughter," to quote a chronicler of the time--she counted her
+high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
+long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
+luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.
+
+It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
+stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest lass and bonniest lad" in
+all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
+wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
+chapter of romance.
+
+For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
+happy.
+
+     "I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
+     "that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
+     to crowd my happiness into."
+
+Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.
+
+One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
+the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
+his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
+Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.
+
+After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
+of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
+continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
+advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.
+
+From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
+Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
+jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
+the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
+leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
+from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
+unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.
+
+Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
+the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
+horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
+roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
+with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
+drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
+to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
+antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
+entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
+dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
+tavern, where he had drunk "not wisely, but too well."
+
+Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
+beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
+best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.
+
+As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
+of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
+That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
+received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
+entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
+Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
+the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.
+
+The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
+beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
+cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
+with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
+them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
+in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
+that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
+and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
+make more lovely still.
+
+Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
+dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
+model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
+passion were by no means dead in her; and to this "eternal feminine" we
+must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
+her story.
+
+Among the Countess's many servants was one George Forbes, a young and
+strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
+late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
+with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
+was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
+liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
+that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
+promoted him to the charge of her stables--a proof of confidence which
+no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
+him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
+his head.
+
+One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
+to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
+love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
+wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested--"But my
+lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
+ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on."
+"You must not say that," the Countess replied. "You are more to me than
+rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
+you have it in your power to bestow."
+
+In the face of such pleading, from one so beautiful and so reverenced,
+what could the poor groom do but consent, fearful though he was of the
+consequences of such an ill-assorted union? And thus strangely and
+romantically it was that, one April day in 1745, the Countess of
+Strathmore, the descendant of dukes and kings, gave her hand at the
+altar to the ex-stable-lad and peasant's son.
+
+What followed this singular union was precisely what was to be expected.
+The Countess was disowned by her noble relatives; her friends with one
+consent gave her the cold shoulder; and, unable to bear any longer the
+constant slights and her complete isolation, she was thankful to escape
+with her low-born husband to the Continent.
+
+Here familiarity with the groom quickly, and naturally, perhaps, bred
+contempt and disillusion. His coarseness offended every susceptibility;
+he was frankly impossible in such an intimate relation; and after she
+had given birth to a daughter in Holland, she arranged a separation, for
+which the groom was, at least, as grateful as herself. The child--the
+very sight of whom, reminding her as she did of the father, she could
+not bear--was placed in a convent at Rouen, where she was tenderly cared
+for by the abbess and nuns. As for the mother, weary and disillusioned,
+she rambled aimlessly and miserably about the Continent until, after
+nine years of unhappiness, death came to her at Paris as a merciful
+friend. Such was the sordid close of a life that had opened as fairly as
+any that has fallen to the lot of woman.
+
+And what of the child who drew from her mother royal and ducal strains,
+and from her father the blood of stablemen and peasants? At the Rouen
+convent she grew up to girlhood, perfectly happy, among the nuns she
+learned to love. The sad and beautiful lady who had come once or twice
+to see her, and who, she was told, was her mother, had become a dim
+memory of early girlhood. Who the great lady was, and who was her
+father, she did not know. This knowledge the nuns, in their wisdom, kept
+from her--if, indeed, they knew themselves.
+
+One day, in 1761, her days of childish happiness came to an abrupt and
+sensational end. A rough seafaring man called at the convent with a
+letter from her father demanding the return of his daughter. The bearer
+was sent by the captain of a merchant-vessel, who had instructions to
+convey the girl from Rouen to Leith; and, after an affecting farewell to
+the abbess and nuns, who had been so kind to her, Susan Janet Emilia
+(for that was the girl's name) started with her strange escort on the
+long journey to a parent whom she had never consciously seen. The
+father, released by the death of the Countess, had married a second wife
+of his own station, and had settled as a livery-stable keeper at Leith,
+where, with his rapidly-growing family, he had now made his home for
+some years.
+
+At last Emilia was handed over to the custody of her groom-father, who
+conducted her to his home, which, as may be imagined, was a pitiful and
+sordid exchange for the peace and happiness of her convent life. From
+the first day the new life was impossible. Emilia was treated by her
+stepmother with coarseness and brutality; she was daily taunted with her
+dependent position, and shown in a hundred ways that her presence was
+unwelcome.
+
+Can one wonder that the proud spirit of the girl rebelled against such
+ignominy? It was better far to trust to the mercy of the world than to
+bear the brutal treatment of her low-born stepmother. And thus it came
+to pass that, early one morning, before the household was awake, Emilia
+slipped stealthily away with a few shillings, all her worldly
+possessions, in her pocket. Walking a few miles along the shore, she
+took the packet-boat, and crossed to the Fife coast, thus placing a
+broad arm of the sea between herself and the house of misery and
+oppression she had left for ever.
+
+For days this descendant of Scotland's proudest nobles tramped aimlessly
+through the country, sleeping in barns or craving the shelter of the
+humblest cottage, and, when her money was exhausted, even begging her
+bread from door to door.
+
+At last human nature reached its limit. Late one night, footsore and
+fainting from exhaustion and hunger, she presented herself at a remote
+farmhouse, and begged piteously for a meal and a night's rest. None but
+the hardest heart could have resisted such a pathetic appeal, and Farmer
+Lauder and his good wife had hearts as large as their bodies. At last
+the waif had fallen among good Samaritans. She was received with open
+arms; and instead of being sent away in the morning, was cordially
+invited to make her home with them.
+
+The rest of Emilia's strange life-story can be told in few words. After
+a few years of peaceful and happy life in the hospitable farmhouse, she
+married the farmer's only son, an honest and worthy young fellow who
+loved her dearly. She became the mother of many children, who in their
+humble life knew nothing of their high-placed cousins, the Dukes and
+Earls of another world than theirs.
+
+When, in process of time, her husband died--many of her children had
+died young, the rest were far from prosperous--Mrs Lauder retired to
+spend her last days in a small cottage at St Ninian's, near Stirling,
+where for a time she lived in the utmost poverty. Then, when her life
+was almost flickering out in destitution, a few of her great relatives
+condescended to acknowledge her existence. The Earls of Galloway and
+Dunmore, the Duke of Hamilton, and Mrs Stewart Mackenzie combined to
+provide her with an annuity of L100; and, thus secure against want, the
+old lady contrived to spin out the thread of her days a few years
+longer. Thus died, at the advanced age of eighty-five, eating the bread
+of charity, the woman who had in her veins the blood of Scotland's
+greatest men and her fairest women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A NOBLE VAGABOND
+
+
+The circle of the British Peerage has included many "vagabonds," some of
+whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any
+one of them all has had the _wanderlust_ in his veins to the same degree
+as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously
+ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago.
+
+It would have been strange if this blue-blooded "rolling-stone" had been
+a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric
+woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who dazzled England by her beauty and
+brilliant intellect, and amused it by her oddities in the days of the
+first two Georges. This grandson of the Duke of Kingston, and
+great-grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich was "his mother's
+boy"--with much of his mother's physical and mental charms, and more
+than her eccentricities, as his story abundantly proves.
+
+As a child of three he accompanied his parents to Constantinople, where
+his father, the Hon. Sydney Montagu, was sent as our Ambassador; and
+there he won a place in history at a very early age as the first English
+child to be inoculated for the small-pox. Probably, too, it was his
+boyish life in Turkey that inoculated him with the passion for all
+things Eastern, that so largely influenced his later life.
+
+His adventures began when his parents returned to London, and the boy
+was sent as a pupil to Westminster. It was not long before he rebelled
+against the discipline and trammels of school-boy life; and one day he
+threw down his Euclid and Caesar and vanished as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed him. Every street, court, and alley was searched in
+vain for the truant; advertisements and handbills offering a reward for
+his recovery were equally futile. Not a trace of the runaway was to be
+found anywhere.
+
+One day, a good twelve months after his family had concluded that the
+lad was dead, or, at least, lost for ever, Mr Foster, a friend of his
+father, chanced to be in Blackwall when he heard a familiar voice crying
+fish. "That is the voice of young Montagu," he exclaimed, and promptly
+despatched his servant to bring the boy to him. The fish-seller
+innocently came back, his basket of plaice and flounders on his head,
+and was at once recognised by Mr Foster as the truant son of Lady Mary.
+
+For a time he denied his identity with the utmost coolness; then, seeing
+that denial was useless, he flung away his basket and took to his heels.
+It was not, however, difficult to trace him; he was tracked to his
+master's shop, where it was found that he had been a model apprentice
+and fish-hawker for a year; and he was induced to return to his parents
+and to school. Thus ignominiously ended Edward's first adventure, the
+precursor of a hundred others.
+
+He had, however, only been back at his books a few months when he
+vanished again--this time as apprentice on a vessel bound to Oporto, the
+captain of which, a Quaker, treated the lad with all kindness and
+consideration. Arrived at Portugal he ran away again, and, tramping into
+the interior, begging food and shelter on the way, he found work in the
+vineyards, where for two years or more he shared the life of the
+peasants. One day, as good or ill luck would have it, he was ordered to
+drive some asses to the nearest seaport, where he was recognised both by
+the English Consul and his old friend, the Quaker; and once more the
+prodigal was induced to return to his father's roof.
+
+For a time he proved a model student, to the surprise and delight of his
+parents; but once more "hope told a flattering tale." For the third time
+he disappeared, and was soon on his way to the Mediterranean as a sailor
+working before the mast, and ideally happy in his vagabond life. This
+time his father's patience was quite exhausted. He refused to trouble
+any more about his prodigal son, declaring that "he had made his bed and
+must lie on it."
+
+Mr Foster, however, the rescuer from the fish-basket, was of another
+mind. He went in chase of the fugitive, ran him to earth, and brought
+him again triumphantly home, submissive but unrepentant. It was quite
+clear that the boy would never settle down to the humdrum life of home
+and school, and, with his father's permission, Mr Foster took the
+restless youth for a long visit to the West Indies, where it seemed that
+at last he was cured of his passion for straying. A few years later we
+find him back in England, a model of stability, a student and a scholar,
+who, in 1747, blossomed into a knight of the shire for the County of
+Huntingdon. The rolling-stone had come to rest at last, and had actually
+developed into a pillar of the State!
+
+But this eminently respectable chapter in Montagu's chequered life was
+destined to be a short one. He soon found himself so uncomfortably deep
+in debt that he vanished again--this time to escape from his creditors.
+He turned up smiling in Paris, where the sedate legislator blossomed
+into the gambler and _roue_, dividing his time between the seductive
+poles of the gaming-table and fair women.
+
+His course of dissipation, however, received a sudden and severe check
+one Sunday morning in the autumn of 1751, when he was rudely disturbed
+by the entry of a _posse_ of officials into his room, armed with a
+warrant for his imprisonment.
+
+     "On Sunday, the 31st of October 1751," Mr Montagu
+     records, "when it was near one in the morning, as I was
+     undressed and going to bed, I heard a person enter my
+     room; and upon turning round and seeing a man I did not
+     know, I asked him calmly _what he wanted_? His answer was
+     that _I must put on my clothes._ I began to expostulate
+     upon the motive of his apparition, when a commissary
+     instantly entered the room with a pretty numerous
+     attendance, and told me with great gravity that he was
+     come, by virtue of a warrant for my imprisonment, to
+     carry me to the Grand Chatelet. I requested him again and
+     again to inform me of the crime laid to my charge; but
+     all his answer was, that _I must follow him_. I begged
+     him to give me leave to write to Lord Albemarle, the
+     English Ambassador, promising to obey the warrant if his
+     Excellency was not pleased to answer for my forthcoming.
+     But the Commissary refused me the use of pen and ink,
+     though he consented that I should send a verbal message
+     to his Excellency, telling me at the same time that he
+     would not wait the return of the messenger, because his
+     orders were to carry me instantly to prison. As
+     resistance under such circumstances must have been
+     unavailable, and might have been blameable, I obeyed the
+     warrant by following the Commissary, after ordering one
+     of my domestics to inform my Lord Albemarle of the
+     treatment I underwent.
+
+     "I was carried to the Chatelet, where the jailors,
+     hardened by their profession, and brutal for their
+     profit, fastened upon me as upon one of those guilty
+     objects whom they lock up to be reserved for public
+     punishment; and though neither my looks nor my behaviour
+     betrayed the least symptom of guilt, yet I was treated as
+     a condemned criminal. I was thrown into prison, and
+     committed to a set of wretches who bore no character of
+     humanity but its form. My residence--to speak in the jail
+     dialect--was in the SECRET, which is no other than the
+     dungeon of the prison, where all the furniture was a
+     wretched mattress and a crazy chair. The weather was
+     cold, and I called for a fire; but I was told I could
+     have none. I was thirsty, and called for some wine and
+     water, or even a draught of water by itself, but was
+     denied it. All the favour I could obtain was a promise to
+     be waited on in the morning; and then was left by myself
+     under a hundred locks and bolts, with a bit of candle,
+     after finding that the words of my jailors were few,
+     their orders peremptory, and their favours unattainable.
+
+     "I continued in this dismal dungeon till the 2nd of
+     November, entirely ignorant of the crime I was accused
+     of; but at nine in the morning of that day, I was carried
+     before a magistrate, where I underwent an examination by
+     which I understood the heads of the charge against me,
+     and which I answered in a manner that ought to have
+     cleared my own innocence."
+
+The story of the charge and trial is a long one; but it can be briefly
+outlined as follows:--It seems that one, Abraham Paya, a Jew, who,
+disguised as "Mr Roberts," was staying with a Miss Rose who was not his
+wedded wife, accused Montagu and two of his friends, Mr Taafe and Lord
+Southwell, of making him drunk as a preliminary to inveigling him into
+play and winning 870 louis d'or from him.
+
+As the Jew, whom his losses had sobered, refused to pay, Montagu and his
+associates had compelled him by violence and threats to give them drafts
+for the sums owing to them. Then, knowing that payment would be refused,
+"Roberts" shook the dust of Paris off his feet, turned his back on lady
+and creditors alike, and ran away to Lyons. Whereupon, so said the
+complainant, Montagu and his fellow-thieves had ransacked his baggage
+(which he had foolishly left behind him), and appropriated all his money
+and jewels, to the value of many thousands of livres.
+
+To quote Mr Montagu again, the latter part of the charge was that Mr
+Taafe
+
+     "smashed all the trunks, portmanteaus and drawers
+     belonging to the complainant, from whence he took out in
+     one bag 400 louis d'or, and out of another, to the value
+     of 300 louis d'or in French and Portuguese silver; from
+     another bag, 1200 livres in crown pieces, a pair of
+     brilliant diamond buckles, for which the complainant paid
+     8020 livres to the Sieur Pierre; his own picture set
+     around with diamonds to the amount of 1200 livres ...
+     laces to the amount of 3000 livres, seven or eight
+     women's robes; two brilliant diamond rings, several gold
+     snuff-boxes, a travelling-chest containing his plate and
+     china, and divers other effects, all of which Mr Taafe
+     (one of Montagu's co-defendants) packed up in one box,
+     and, by the help of his footman, carried in a coach to
+     his own apartment. That afterwards Mr Taafe carried Miss
+     Rose and her sister in another coach to his lodgings,
+     where they remained three days, and then sent them to
+     London, under the care of one of his friends."
+
+Fortunately for Montagu, the verdict of the Court was in his favour;
+and, after such an unpleasant experience, he was glad to return to
+England, where, such an adept at quick-changing was he, that we soon
+find him a full-blown Member of Parliament for Bossinery, lightening his
+legislative labours by writing a learned treatise on the rise and fall
+of ancient Republics. Was there ever such a man? Duke's grandson,
+fish-hawker, common sailor, peasant, _roue_, gambler, Member of
+Parliament, scholar--all _roles_ came equally easily to him; and many
+more just as varied were to follow. It was while thus wearing the halo
+of learning and high respectability that his father died, leaving him a
+substantial income, and a large estate in Yorkshire to his eldest son,
+if he should have one. And now we find him leaving his law-making and
+cultivating letters and science in Italy, further enriched by the guinea
+which was all his mother, Lady Mary, condescended to leave her vagrant
+son. The rest--an enormous property--went to his sister, the Countess of
+Bute.
+
+From Italy he went on a long tour through the East, where he seems to
+have played the _role_ of Lothario very effectually. At Alexandria (to
+give only one of his love adventures) he lost his fickle heart to the
+beautiful wife of the Danish Ambassador, whom, under various pretences,
+he induced to leave the coast clear by getting him to go to Holland. The
+husband thus safely out of the way, Montagu proceeded to dispose of him.
+He showed the lady a letter from Holland giving sad details of his
+sudden death, and consoled the bereaved "widow" so well that she
+consented to reward him with her hand and to accompany him to Syria.
+
+By the time the dead husband had returned to life Montagu was already
+weary of honeymooning, and was thankful to make his escape to Italy,
+free to woo, and, if necessary, to wed again.
+
+We next find this human chameleon at Venice, wearing a beard down to his
+waist, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and drinking water, and
+recounting his adventures to all who cared to hear them. He was an
+Armenian, and played the part to perfection--until he wearied of it, and
+found another to play. At this time he wrote:
+
+     "I have been a labourer in the fields of Switzerland and
+     Holland, and have not disdained the humble profession of
+     postillion and ploughman. I was a _petit maitre_ at
+     Paris, and an abbe at Rome. I put on, at Hamburg, the
+     Lutheran ruff, and with a triple chin and a formal
+     countenance I dealt about me the word of God so as to
+     excite the envy of the clergy. My fate was similar to
+     that of a guinea, which at one time is in the hands of a
+     Queen, and at another is in the fob of a greasy
+     Israelite."
+
+From land to land he wandered, assuming a fresh character in each, and
+thoroughly enjoying them all. During a two years' residence at Venice he
+was visited by the Duke of Hamilton and a Dr Moore, the latter of whom
+gives the following entertaining account of the visit.
+
+     "He met us," Dr Moore writes, "at the stairhead, and led
+     us through some apartments furnished in the Venetian
+     manner, into an inner room quite in a different style.
+     There were no chairs, but he desired us to seat
+     ourselves on a sofa, while he placed himself on a cushion
+     on the floor, with his legs crossed, in the Turkish
+     fashion. A young black slave sate by him; and a venerable
+     old man with a long beard served us with coffee. After
+     this collation, some aromatic gums were brought and burnt
+     in a little silver vessel. Mr Montagu held his nose over
+     the steam for some minutes, and snuffed up the perfume
+     with peculiar satisfaction; he afterwards endeavoured to
+     collect the smoke with his hands, spreading and rubbing
+     it carefully along his beard, which hung in hoary
+     ringlets to his girdle. This manner of perfuming the
+     beard seems more cleanly, and rather an improvement upon
+     that used by the Jews in ancient times.
+
+     "We had a great conversation with this venerable-looking
+     person, who is, to the last degree, acute, communicative,
+     and entertaining, and in whose discourse and manners are
+     blended the vivacity of a Frenchman with the gravity of a
+     Turk. We found him, however, wonderfully prejudiced in
+     favour of the Turkish characters and manners, which he
+     thinks infinitely preferable to the European, or those of
+     any other nation. He describes the Turks in general as a
+     people of great sense and integrity; the most hospitable,
+     generous, and the happiest of mankind. He talks of
+     returning as soon as possible to Egypt, which he paints
+     as a perfect paradise. Though Mr Montagu hardly ever
+     stirs abroad, he returned the Duke's visit, and as we
+     were not provided with cushions, he sate, while he
+     stayed, upon a sofa with his legs under him, as he had
+     done at his own house. This posture, by long habit, has
+     become the most agreeable to him, and he insists upon its
+     being by far the most natural and convenient; but,
+     indeed, he seems to cherish the same opinion with regard
+     to all customs which prevail among the Turks."
+
+It was during this interview that Mr Montagu declared: "I have never
+once been guilty of a small folly in the whole course of my
+life"--probably making the mental reservation that all his follies had
+been great ones. Thus this singular sprig of nobility drifted through
+his kaleidoscopic life, changing his religion as lightly as he changed
+from priest to ploughman, or from debauchee to Armenian storyteller.
+
+Perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever did was the publication of the
+following advertisement, the object of which was evidently to secure the
+large Yorkshire estate devised by his father to any son he might have:
+
+     "MATRIMONY.--A gentleman who hath filled two succeeding
+     seats in Parliament, is near sixty years of age, lives in
+     great splendour and hospitality, and from whom a
+     considerable estate must pass if he dies without issue,
+     hath no objection to marry any lady, provided the party
+     be of genteel birth, polished manners, and about to
+     become a mother. Letters directed to ---- Brecknock,
+     Esq., at Wills's Coffeehouse, facing the Admiralty, will
+     be honoured with due attention, secrecy, and every
+     possible mark of respect."
+
+At this time Montagu was the father of three children--two sons (one a
+black boy of thirteen, who was his favourite companion) and a daughter;
+but they all lacked the sanction of the altar.
+
+A lady answering these delicate requirements was actually found, and
+Montagu would probably have graduated as a respectable husband and
+father of another man's child had not his vagabond career been cut
+tragically short. One day, when he was dining at Padua with Romney, the
+famous artist, a partridge-bone lodged in the old man's throat, and
+refused to budge. He was suffocating; his face grew purple--almost
+black. In terrified haste a priest was summoned to administer the last
+consolations of religion; but the dying man would have none of him. When
+he was asked in what faith he wished to leave the world, he gasped, "A
+good Mussulman, I hope." A few moments later Edward Wortley Montagu, who
+had played more parts on the world's stage than almost any other man who
+ever lived, was a corpse. This grandson of a Duke had begun his life of
+adventure as a fish-hawker, and ended it as "a good Mussulman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS
+
+
+Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and
+third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of
+Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a
+coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow
+allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from
+the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne.
+
+The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man,
+with one foot in the grave, when the "nightingale" of the London
+theatres brought him to his gouty knees; but so resolute was he to give
+her his name that, to make assurance doubly sure, he faced the altar
+twice with her, before starting on his honeymoon journey across the
+Channel.
+
+Pope, who was a friend of the amorous Earl, draws a pathetic picture of
+him in the latter unromantic days of his romance. During a visit to
+Bevis Mount, near Southampton, the poet writes:
+
+     "I found my Lord Peterborough on his couch, where he gave
+     me an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed
+     through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me
+     he had ended his domestic affairs through such
+     difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment
+     of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to
+     the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression
+     (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not
+     only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but
+     since the person who married them was dead, to re-marry
+     her in the church at Bristol, before witnesses. He talks
+     of getting toward Lyons; but undoubtedly he can never
+     travel but to the sea-shore. I pity the poor woman who
+     has to share in all he suffers, and who can, in no one
+     thing, persuade him to spare himself."
+
+Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
+for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
+Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
+his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
+more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
+the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.
+
+Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
+but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
+and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous _Beggar's Opera_ that pointed
+the way to three of them.
+
+Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
+Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
+might--indeed, he could not have failed to--have made the acquaintance
+of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
+destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
+dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
+Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
+favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
+coffee-house.
+
+She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
+with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
+drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
+all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
+take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
+her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
+her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in _The Orphan_. Her
+_debut_ was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
+wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
+Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
+gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
+over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
+laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
+than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.
+
+Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
+_Beaux's Stratagem_ with brilliant success she was offered the part of
+Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
+the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
+doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
+intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
+filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
+painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.
+
+Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
+forth--"The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum." And the
+news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
+tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
+of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
+no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
+the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
+Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.
+
+As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
+opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
+cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
+Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.
+
+Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
+who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
+in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
+child the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her movements charmed
+all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
+and when only sixteen she made a brilliant _debut_ as Polly, recalling
+all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.
+
+But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. "So
+pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
+the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
+that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage." It is little wonder
+that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
+personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
+fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
+brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
+her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.
+
+Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
+London was losing its head over still another "Polly Peachum"--Catherine
+Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
+Stephens, who like her predecessors in the _role_, sang divinely even as
+a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
+fame at a bound, as Mandano in _Artaxerxes_. One triumph succeeded
+another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
+_Beggar's Opera_.
+
+Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
+too much wedded to her art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
+even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
+verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
+became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
+The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
+her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
+a year of their nuptial-day.
+
+Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet--and before--many an actress
+has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
+who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
+the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
+potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
+premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
+Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
+gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
+possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
+girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
+make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
+Bickerstaff's _Love in a Village._
+
+So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
+made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in _She Stoops to
+Conquer_; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
+of theatre-going London; while her refinement, at that time by no means
+common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
+circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
+sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
+his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
+statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
+fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
+Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
+of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
+at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
+persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
+placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
+Grosvenor Square house.
+
+For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
+splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
+George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
+blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
+to-day.
+
+While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
+beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
+Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
+girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
+buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
+of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing
+with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
+Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
+won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
+a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
+London and to a wider sphere of activity.
+
+From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:
+
+     "There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
+     the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
+     genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
+     make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
+     juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
+     subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
+     very long family, to which I have given a decided
+     negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
+     seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
+     is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
+     the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
+     forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
+     companions."
+
+And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
+gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
+discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
+ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
+the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
+firmament of the drama, winning as much popularity off as on the stage,
+before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
+sought it--Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
+distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as "my Lady," and to
+see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
+the second Earl of Listowel.
+
+Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
+another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
+Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
+cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
+at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
+actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
+Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
+flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
+it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
+theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.
+
+Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
+time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
+to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in _The Provoked
+Husband_; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
+been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
+not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
+beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, "combined the stateliness
+of Juno with the gentler and beauty of a Venus," made her a Queen of
+Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
+left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
+blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
+Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
+stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
+record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
+had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
+nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
+enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS]
+
+For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
+with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
+theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
+the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in _The Rivals_, to her farewell
+appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
+career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
+chronicler,
+
+     She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
+     her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
+     fascinations.
+
+That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
+army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
+a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
+money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
+had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
+though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.
+
+Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
+have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
+used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
+into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
+generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
+was too good.
+
+One day--it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale--Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
+came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
+diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
+Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
+its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: "How happy I should be with such
+a splendid piece of jewellery!" "What is it worth?" enquired her
+husband. "I could not possibly part with it for less than L15,000," the
+jeweller replied. "Bring me a pen and ink," was the only remark of the
+doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
+delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.
+
+    Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.
+
+And this devotion--idolatry almost--lasted as long as life itself,
+reaching its climax in his will, in which he left his actress-wife
+every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to L900,000, "for her
+sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
+deduction of a single legacy to any other person."
+
+That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
+of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
+retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
+Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
+Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
+her one June day in 1827.
+
+For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
+her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
+charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
+alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
+home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
+Queens.
+
+     "The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory," Mr
+     Howitt records, "her splendid fetes to Royalty, in some
+     of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
+     bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
+     trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
+     music."
+
+When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
+proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
+she possessed, a fortune now swollen to L1,800,000, to Miss Angela
+Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
+a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
+proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
+vast wealth.
+
+Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
+stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
+Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
+into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A PEASANT COUNTESS
+
+
+In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
+traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
+which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
+the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
+under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
+was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
+of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.
+
+He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
+thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
+twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
+village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
+pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
+storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
+handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the
+weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
+to offer him.
+
+"Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the
+best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
+out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few
+minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
+kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
+overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.
+
+Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
+of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
+travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
+proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
+the man he was thus "entertaining unawares," or all that was to come
+from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
+so entertaining.
+
+Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
+man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
+the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
+his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
+and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
+their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
+famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
+Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
+was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,
+
+     "he had four places of residence--his lodgings at Court,
+     his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
+     his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
+     to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
+     London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
+     without counting those who attended him in public.
+
+     "He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
+     tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
+     always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
+     Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
+     more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
+     royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
+     Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
+     cost between L1,000 and L2,000), the only wonder is that
+     his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
+     leave his son L25,000 in money and valuable effects,
+     besides L4,000 a year in landed estates."
+
+Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
+raised to Earldoms--of Exeter and Salisbury--on the same day.
+
+Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms--that of
+Exeter--and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
+although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
+his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
+the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
+married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon,
+who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
+far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
+liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
+months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.
+
+Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
+a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
+determined that if ever he took another wife she should be "a plain,
+homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
+her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
+Queen.'"
+
+Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
+knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
+"beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
+not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
+could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
+of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
+in vain.
+
+And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
+village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
+his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
+was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
+of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
+of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen summers,
+with a complexion of "cream and roses," with a wealth of brown hair, and
+lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
+good-looking stranger.
+
+No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
+responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
+following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
+showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
+and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
+a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
+spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
+pay well for the hospitality.
+
+The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
+pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
+they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
+were halcyon days for the world-weary man--delightful days of sketching
+in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
+spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
+the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
+Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
+butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
+outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
+heads in glory.
+
+To Sarah he was known as "Mr Jones"; and to her innocent mind it never
+occurred that he could be other than the painter he professed to be.
+The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
+pleasant man who always gave them a cheery "good-day," and gossiped with
+them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
+connected with him, all agreed. "Painter chaps" were notoriously poor,
+and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
+he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
+Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
+doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
+must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
+coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
+relieved of their valuables.
+
+Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
+village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
+house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr
+Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
+than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
+of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
+"beggar-maid," and happiness was at last within his grasp.
+
+When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
+good lady was indignant. "Marry Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What, to a fine
+gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!"
+
+But the farmer for once put his foot down. "Yes," he said, "he shall
+marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
+too, and plenty of money to keep her?" And thus it came to pass that one
+October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
+put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
+a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
+altar by her "highwayman" bridegroom.
+
+For two ideally happy years Mr Jones lived with his humble bride in the
+fine new house which he had built for her, and which he called Burleigh
+Villa. He had lived down his character of highwayman, and was regarded,
+and respected, as the most important man in the village. He was even
+appointed to the honourable offices of churchwarden and overseer; while
+under his tuition his peasant-wife was becoming, in the words of the
+village gossips, "quite the lady."
+
+One day towards the end of December, 1793, after two years of this
+idyllic life, Mr Jones chanced to read in a country paper news which he
+had dreaded, for it meant a revolution in his life, the return to the
+world he had so gladly forsaken. His dream of the simple life, of
+peaceful days, was at an end. His uncle, the old Earl, was dead, and the
+coronet and large estates had devolved on him. Should he refuse to take
+them, and end his days in this idyllic obscurity, or should he claim the
+"baubles," and return to the hollow splendour of a life on which he had
+turned his back?
+
+The struggle between duty and inclination was long and bitter; but in
+the end duty carried the day. He would go to "Burghley House by Stamford
+Town," and fill his place on the roll of the Earls of Exeter. To his
+wife he merely said: "To-morrow we must start on a journey to
+Lincolnshire. Business calls me there, and we will go together," a
+proposal to which she gladly consented, for it meant that she would see
+something of the great outside world with the husband she loved.
+
+At daybreak next morning "Mr Jones" said good-bye to his kind hosts and
+relatives and to the scene of so much peaceful happiness, and, mounting
+his wife behind him on a pillion, started on the journey to distant
+Lincolnshire. Through Cannock Chase, by Lichfield and Leicester, they
+rode, finding hospitality at many a great house on the way, rather to
+the dismay of Sarah, who would have preferred the accommodation of some
+modest inn, and who marvelled not a little that her husband, the obscure
+artist, should be known to and welcomed by such great folk. But was he
+not her hero, one of "Nature's gentlemen," and as such the equal of any
+man in the land?
+
+At last, after days of happy journeying through the cold December days,
+they came within view of a stately mansion placed in a lordly park, at
+sight of which Sarah exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, "Oh, what a
+beautiful house!" "Yes," answered her husband, reining in his horse to
+enjoy the view; "it is a lovely place. How would you like, my dear
+Sally, to be its mistress?" Sally broke into a merry peal of laughter.
+"Only fancy _me_," she said, "mistress of such a noble house! It's too
+funny for words. But how I should love it if we were only rich enough to
+live in it!" "I am so glad you like it, darling," answered her husband,
+as he turned in the saddle and placed an arm around her waist; "for it
+is yours. I am the Earl of Exeter, its owner, and you--well, you are my
+Countess--and my Queen."
+
+   "'Now welcome, Lady!' exclaimed the Earl--
+    'This Castle is thine, and these dark woods all.'
+    She believed him wild, but his words were truth,
+    For Ellen is Lady of Rosenthal."
+
+He did not, like the hero of Moore's ballad, "blow his horn with a
+lordly air"; but with his Countess he presented himself at the door of
+Burleigh to receive the homage and welcome due to its lord.
+
+   "Many a gallant gay domestic
+    Bow before him at the door;
+    And they speak in gentle murmur
+    When they answer to his call,
+    While he treads with footsteps firmer
+    Leading on from hall to hall.
+    And while now she wanders blindly,
+    Nor the meaning can divine,
+    Proudly turns he round and kindly,
+    'All of that is mine and thine.'"
+
+Thus did Sarah Hoggins, the peasant-girl, blossom into a Countess,
+chatelaine of three lordly pleasure-houses, and Lady Bountiful to an
+army of dependents. The news of the romantic story flashed through the
+county, indeed through the whole of England; and great lords and ladies
+by the score flocked to Burleigh to welcome and pay homage to its
+heroine.
+
+For a few too brief years Countess Sarah was happy in her new and
+splendid environment, though it is said she often sighed for the dear
+dead days when her husband was a landscape painter, and she his humble
+bride in their village home. The modest primrose did not bear well the
+transplanting to the lordly hot-house. Her cheeks began to lose their
+roses. She bore to her husband three children; and then, "like a lily
+drooping, she bowed down her head and died," tenderly and lovingly
+nursed to the last breath by the husband whose heart, it is said, died
+with her.
+
+Of her two sons, the elder succeeded to his father's Earldom, and was
+promoted to a Marquisate. The younger, Lord Thomas Cecil, married a
+daughter of the fourth Duke of Richmond--thus mingling the peasant blood
+of Hoggins with the Royal strain of the "Merrie Monarch,"--and survived
+until the year 1873. Her daughter had for husband the Right Honourable
+Henry Manvers Pierrepoint, and became grandmother to the present Duke of
+Wellington, who thus has for great-grandmother Sarah Hoggins, the rustic
+beauty who milked cows and was wooed in the Shropshire orchard by "Mr
+Jones, the highwayman," when George the Third was King.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN
+
+
+When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was
+already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to
+kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke
+contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere
+squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than
+Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry
+VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with
+ill-gotten gold, and paid for his enterprise with his head when the
+eighth Henry set himself to the paying off of old scores. His father,
+the knight, was that John Dudley, King Henry's trusted friend and
+executor of his will, Admiral and Earl Marshal of England, whose
+splendid gifts and boundless ambition won a dukedom for him, and made
+him for a time more powerful than his King.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER]
+
+Such was the parentage of Robert Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's
+fifth son, who inherited, with his grandfather's scheming brain and
+plausible tongue, the ambition and love of splendour which made his
+father the most brilliant subject of two kings. And this great, if
+dangerous heritage was not long in manifesting itself in the young
+lordling, who was destined to add to his family's story a chapter more
+romantic and dazzling than that of which his father was the hero.
+
+As a boy in the schoolroom he was quick to show gifts of mind almost
+phenomenal in one so young. Latin and Italian, mathematics and abstruse
+sciences came as easily to this scion of the Dudleys as reading and
+arithmetic to less-dowered boys. And with this precocity of mind he
+developed physical graces and skill no less remarkable until, by the
+time he was well in his 'teens, few grown men could ride a horse, couch
+a lance, or speed an arrow with such skill as he.
+
+At the Royal Court, where his ducal father was autocrat, the handsome
+boy of all the accomplishments found immediate favour and rapid
+promotion. He was dubbed a knight when most youths of his years were
+still wrestling with their Latin Grammar; he was appointed for life
+Master of the Buckhounds; and was chosen one of the six gilded youths
+who ministered to the King in the Privy Chamber. And in love he was as
+precocious as at the Royal Court and in mental and manly
+accomplishments, for at eighteen we find him standing at the altar in
+the King's Palace at Sheen, near Richmond, with his youthful Sovereign
+as best man.
+
+Whether it was really a love-match or not is open to doubt, perhaps;
+for Robert Dudley seems to have had little voice in the choice of his
+bride. For his elder brother, Guildford, the Duke chose a wife of
+exalted rank, none other than the Lady Jane Grey, grand-daughter of Louis
+XII.'s Queen and Henry VIII.'s sister. But for his boy, Robert, a plain
+knight's daughter seems to have been good enough in his eyes; and she
+was Amy, child of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, a lady whose fate was
+to be as full of pathos and tragedy as that of his brother Guildford's
+wife.
+
+For a time, however, Fortune seemed to smile on this union of the Duke's
+son and the Knight's daughter, who was as fair as she was to be
+unfortunate, and who was not without a goodly dower of Norfolk lands, on
+which her youthful husband settled for a few years of peaceful life. He
+soon became a man of mark in the county of his adoption, taking the lead
+in local affairs, administering his estates with skill, and finally
+blossoming into a Member of Parliament to represent his neighbours at
+Westminster. But the call of Court life was always in his ears; and many
+a long spell he stole from his wife and his rural duties to spend among
+the gaieties of Whitehall or the splendours of Henri II.'s French
+_entourage_.
+
+With the death of the boy-king, Edward VI., a change tragic and
+unexpected came in the young knight's life. His ambitious father coveted
+a crown for his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane Grey, whom he had induced
+Edward, on his death-bed, to nominate as his successor; and
+Northumberland, thus armed with Royal authority and spurred by his
+insatiable ambition, sought by force of arms to give effect to his
+scheme almost before the breath had left the late Sovereign's body. How
+his daring project failed is well-known history--how the Princess Mary
+on her way southward to her throne eluded Robert Dudley, who was sent to
+intercept her; how she equally outwitted Northumberland and his army,
+and made her triumphant entry into London as Queen; and how her
+vengeance fell on those who had sought to snatch the crown from her.
+
+From the Duke and Lady Jane to Robert Dudley, all the traitors who had
+conspired to do this dastardly deed were sent to cool their misguided
+ardour in the Tower, from which Northumberland, Jane and her husband
+were led to the headsman's block; while Robert Dudley was among those
+who were left to languish in durance, and to while away the tedious
+hours of captivity by carving their emblems and names on the walls of
+their cells, where they may be seen to this day, or to stroll
+disconsolately on the Tower leads by way of melancholy exercise.
+
+Robert, it is said, found many of these hours of duress far from
+unpleasant; for among the prisoners in the Tower was none other than the
+Princess Elizabeth, sister to the Queen (and her successor on the
+throne); and we are told, on what authority does not appear, that there
+were many sweet and stolen meetings between the fair young Princess and
+the captive knight, when bribed warders turned a blind eye on their
+dallying. And rumour even goes so far as to speak of secret nuptials,
+the fruits of which were, in late years, to bear such high names as my
+Lord of Essex and Francis Bacon.
+
+"Fairy tales," no doubt; but, stripped of such ornamental embellishment,
+there can be little doubt that it was within the Tower's grim walls that
+Dudley first learnt to love the lady who was to be his Queen, and in
+whose life he was destined to play such a romantic part, when she should
+wear her crown, and he should be her avowed lover and aspirant to her
+hand.
+
+A year of such pleasantly-qualified captivity, and Robert Dudley was a
+free man again, sent to purge his treason, by a Queen, indulgent to his
+youth and it may be to his good looks, by wielding a sword in the war
+then raging between Spain and France; and here he acquitted himself so
+valiantly for Mary's Spanish allies that, on his return in 1558, covered
+with glory, the ban on the Dudleys was removed; and Robert and his
+brothers and sisters were restored to all the rank and rights their
+father's treason had forfeited.
+
+A few months later Queen Mary died; and when Elizabeth ascended the
+throne, Dudley's sun burst into splendour. The romance which had been
+cradled amidst the fearful joys of prison-meetings, was now to flourish
+under vastly-changed conditions. That the new Queen had lost her heart
+to the handsome and accomplished cavalier, whose prowess in war had set
+the seal on the favour won by his graces of person and mind and his
+ingratiating charm, there can be small doubt; and as little that Dudley,
+forgetful of the wife left to pine in solitude in her Norfolk home,
+returned the devotion of the lady, now his Sovereign, who had made his
+Tower prison a palace of delight.
+
+Nor did Elizabeth make any concealment of her passion. She was a Queen;
+and none should question her right to smile on any man, be he subject or
+king. Before she had been a year on the Throne, Dudley was proudly
+wearing the coveted Garter; was a Privy Councillor and Master of Her
+Majesty's horse. She gave him fat lands and monasteries to add to the
+large possessions with which her brother Edward had endowed his
+favourite; and wherever she went on her Royal progresses, Robert Dudley
+rode gallantly at her right hand, a King in all but name. And no Queen
+ever had more splendid escort.
+
+He was, indeed, a man after her own heart, the _beau ideal_ of a
+cavalier; a lover, like herself, of pomp and splendour, a past-master of
+the arts of pageantry and pleasure, and the owner of a tongue as skilled
+in the language of adroit flattery as in the use of honeyed words. Such
+was Robert Dudley who loved his Queen; and such the Queen who returned
+undisguised admiration for flattery, and love for love.
+
+That the greatest Kings and Princes of Europe sought the young Queen's
+hand; that ambassadors tumbled over each other in their eagerness to
+press on her this splendid alliance and that, mattered nothing to her.
+Her hand was her own as much as her Crown--she would dispose of it as
+she wished, and none should say her nay. To the fears and anger of her
+people at the prospect of her alliance with a subject she was as
+indifferent as to the jealousies of Dudley's Court rivals. She could
+afford to smile at them all--and she did.
+
+And, while Dudley was thus basking in the smiles of his Sovereign, the
+Lady Amy was eating her heart out in loneliness and a futile jealousy in
+Norfolk. Her husband, it is true, paid her a duty visit now and then,
+and kept her purse well supplied for dresses she had not the heart to
+wear. She knew she had lost his love, if, indeed, she had ever had it;
+and she spent her days, as was known too late, in tears and prayers for
+deliverance from a burden she was too weary to bear longer.
+
+One day, in September 1560, an ominous rumour began to take voice.
+Dudley's wife had been poisoned--by her husband, it was said with bated
+breath. The Queen herself heard, and repeated the report to the Spanish
+Ambassador; varying it on the following day by the statement that "Lord
+Robert's wife had broken her neck. It appears that she fell down a
+staircase." And this amended version proved to be tragically true. While
+Dudley was dallying with his Queen amid the splendours of the Court, his
+devoted wife was found, with her neck broken, lying at the foot of a
+staircase in the house of a Norfolk neighbour, whose guest she was.
+
+How had this tragedy happened? and had Dudley any hand in it? were the
+questions that passed fear-fully from mouth to mouth, from end to end
+of England. The story, as told at the inquest, throws little light on
+what must always remain more or less a mystery.
+
+This story was as simple as it was tragic. It seems that Amy Robsart
+(for by her maiden name she will always live in memory and in pity) rose
+early on Sunday morning, the 8th of September, the day of her death, and
+suggested that the entire household at Cumnor Place, at which she was
+staying, should leave her alone and spend the day at a neighbouring fair
+at Abingdon. "As for me," she said, "I shall be quite happy alone. I
+have no taste for pleasure; but I always like to know that others are
+enjoying themselves, even if I cannot." Eagerly responsive to such a
+welcome suggestion the entire household repaired to the fair, except the
+hostess (Mrs Owen) and a lady guest; and with them as companions Amy
+Robsart spent a quiet and peaceful day. During the evening she rose
+suddenly from the card-table, at which the three ladies were playing,
+and left the room; and nothing more was seen of her until the servants
+returning from the fair found her dead body at the stair-foot.
+
+Was it suicide or a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either
+conclusion, and gave as their verdict "accidental death." That Amy
+Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret
+to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release
+death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting
+this plausible theory, turned to thoughts of murder, and branded Dudley
+as slayer of his wife. It was even commonly whispered that he had bribed
+one of his minions, Anthony Foster, to hurl her down the stairs to her
+death.
+
+Whatever may be the truth, none could prove it then; and who shall
+succeed now? It is more generous and certainly more probable to suppose
+that Amy Robsart by her own act--wilful, at the dictate of a brain
+disordered by grief, or accidental--removed the barrier to her husband's
+passion for his Queen. Certain it is that Dudley affected, if he did not
+actually feel, deep sorrow at his wife's death, and that he spared no
+pains to solve the mystery that surrounded it.
+
+His grief, however, seems to have been short-lived; for before the
+unhappy Amy had been many months in her grave we find him more ardent
+than ever in his devotion to Elizabeth, whose hand he was now free to
+claim. But the Queen, who was nothing if not an arrant coquette, was in
+no mood to be caught even by the man she loved. She drove him to
+distraction by her caprices. One moment she would "rap him on the
+knuckles," only to smile her sweetest on him the next. One day she would
+flaunt in his face a patent of peerage, as evidence of her affection;
+the next she would cut the parchment to pieces under his nose, laughing
+the while. She roused him to frenzies of jealousy by dallying with one
+Royal offer of marriage after another--now it was Philip, the Spanish
+King, now His Majesty of Sweden--canvassing their respective merits and
+charms in his presence, and flaring into angry retorts when he ventured
+to ridicule his august rivals.
+
+She carried her tortures even to the extent of seeming to encourage a
+match between her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots; and, to make him a
+worthy suitor for a Royal hand, granted him the peerage she had so long
+dangled before him. Robert Dudley as Baron Denbigh and Earl of Leicester
+was no unfit husband for her "Royal sister"; certainly a much more
+possible personage than "Sir Robert" could have been. But she never
+intended thus to lose her most acceptable admirer, and was
+relieved--though she affected to be angry--when news came that Mary had
+chosen Darnley for her husband. Thus was Leicester's loss Elizabeth's
+gain; and his reward was that he took still a higher place in her
+favour.
+
+If he was not now King Consort in name, he was, at least, in place and
+power. When the Queen fancied she was dying of small-pox she announced
+her wish that he should be appointed Protector of the Realm at a
+princely salary; and, when she recovered, he was empowered to act as her
+deputy--to receive ambassadors, to interview ministers, and to sit in
+her seat at the deliberations of her council. To such an eminence had
+the favour of a Queen raised the grandson of the "country squire."
+
+No wonder it was commonly rumoured either that she was actually Dudley's
+wife or that her relations with him were open to grave suspicion. "I am
+spoken of," she once bitterly said to the Spanish Ambassador, "as if I
+were an immodest woman. I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him
+because of his excellent disposition and his many merits. But I am
+young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered. God knows,
+they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world knows
+it also. I do not live in a corner; a thousand eyes see all I do, and
+calumny will not fasten on me for ever."
+
+But neither Elizabeth nor Dudley (or Leicester, as we must now call him)
+allowed these rumours and suspicions to affect even their familiarities,
+which were proclaimed to all on many a public occasion; as when the Earl
+once, during a heated game of tennis, snatched the Queen's handkerchief
+from her hand and proceeded to wipe his perspiring forehead with it.
+
+To Elizabeth's passion for pomp and pageantry Leicester was
+indispensable. It was he who arranged to the smallest detail her
+gorgeous progresses and receptions, culminating in that historic visit
+to Kenilworth in 1575, every hour of which was crowded with
+cunningly-devised entertainments--from the splendid pageantry of her
+welcome, through banquets and masquerades, to hunting and
+bear-baiting--all on a scale of lavish prodigality such as even that
+most gorgeous of Queens had never known.
+
+Thus for thirty long years Leicester held his paramount place in the
+affections of his Sovereign--a pre-eminence which was never seriously
+endangered even when he seemed most disloyal, and transferred to other
+women attentions of which she claimed a monopoly. When he flirted
+outrageously with my Lady Hereford, one of the loveliest women at Court,
+she responded by coquetting openly with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord
+Ormonde, or Sir Thomas Heneage; and only laughed at the jealousy she
+aroused. "If a man may flirt," she would mockingly say, "why not a
+woman, especially when that woman is a Queen?" And, of course, to this
+question there was no other answer for my lord than to "kiss and be
+friends," and to promise to be more discreet in the future.
+
+But the Earl was ever weak in the presence of beauty; and in spite of
+all his vows could not long be true even to his Queen. He lost his heart
+to the lovely wife of Lord Sheffield; and when her husband died
+conveniently and mysteriously (it was said that Leicester, with his
+doctor's help, removed him by a dose of poison) it was not long before
+he wedded her in secret, only just in time to make her child, whose
+name, "Robert Dudley," made no concealment of his parentage, legitimate.
+Before the child was many months old, however, the father was caught in
+the toils of another charmer, my Lady Essex, and after deserting his
+wife and, it is said, unsuccessfully trying to poison her, he made Lady
+Essex his Countess, in defiance of that secret wedding with Sheffield's
+widow.
+
+When news of this double treachery, with the ugly suspicions that
+attended it, reached the Queen's ears, her rage knew no bounds. She
+vowed that she would send her faithless lover to the Tower, that his
+head should pay forfeit for his false heart; and it was only when her
+anger had had time to cool that more moderate counsels prevailed, and
+she was content to banish him to a virtual prison at Greenwich.
+
+It was not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her "sweet
+Robin" was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to
+resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies
+seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty
+and his love-making had ever done.
+
+These days of silken ease were, however, soon to be changed. When, in
+1585, Elizabeth wished to send her soldiers to help Holland in the
+struggle with Spain, her choice fell on Leicester to take command of the
+expedition, though his only experience of war had been more than a
+quarter of a century earlier, when young Dudley had left the Tower and
+his fellow Princess-captive's side to give his sword its baptism of
+blood in Picardy. At Flushing and Leyden, Utrecht and Rotterdam, the
+great English Earl and friend of England's Queen was received with the
+rapturous homage due to a Sovereign deliverer rather than to a subject.
+All Holland abandoned herself to a delirium of joy and festivity, and
+before he had been many weeks in the Netherlands a heroic statue rose at
+Rotterdam in his honour; and he was invited with one clamorous and
+insistent voice to take his place as governor and dictator of the land
+he had come to save.
+
+Such a splendid lure was too potent for Leicester's ambition to resist.
+Without troubling to consult his Sovereign at home he accepted the
+"throne" that was offered to him; and it was only after ten days had
+elapsed that he deigned to despatch a messenger to Elizabeth with news
+of his promotion. Meanwhile, and long before his envoy, who was delayed
+by storms on his journey, could reach the English Court, Elizabeth had
+heard news of her favourite's presumption, and her Royal anger blazed
+into flame at his insolence in daring to accept such honours without
+consulting her pleasure.
+
+She promptly despatched Sir Thomas Heneage, his whilom rival, to the
+Netherlands armed with a scathing letter in which the Queen poured out
+the vials of her wrath on Leicester's head.
+
+     "How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to have been
+     used," she wrote, "you shall by the bearer understand. We
+     could never have imagined, had we not seen it fall out in
+     experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+     extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of
+     this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken
+     our commandment in a cause that so greatly toucheth us in
+     honour ... and therefore, our express pleasure and
+     commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart,
+     you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance, obey
+     and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you
+     to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will
+     answer the contrary at your uttermost peril."
+
+One can imagine Leicester's feelings on reading such words of Royal
+anger and reproach from the woman who had always shown such indulgence
+to him. His impulse was to resign his governorship forthwith, and to
+hasten back to London to beg forgiveness on his knees; but before he
+could give effect to this decision he had learned that Burghley had
+interceded for him with the Queen to such effect that, supported by a
+petition from the States-General, he was to be allowed to retain his
+office with Elizabeth's reluctant consent.
+
+A few months of rule, however, were sufficient to disillusionise the
+Dutchmen. Leicester proved as incapable to govern a country, as to lead
+an army. His arrogance, his outspoken contempt for his subjects, his
+incompetence and his capricious temper, so thoroughly disgusted the
+nation that had welcomed him with open arms, that he was asked to resign
+his office as unanimously as he had been invited to accept it; and in
+November of 1587, the Earl returned ignominiously to England, eager to
+repair his damaged credit by at least making peace with his Queen.
+
+To his delight he was received with as much cordiality as if he had done
+naught at all to earn his Lady's displeasure. Elizabeth had undoubtedly
+missed her favourite, her right-hand man. She had in fact become so
+accustomed to him that she could not be long happy unless he was at her
+side; and it was by her side that he rode and shared the acclamations
+with which her soldiers greeted her when she paid that historic visit to
+the camp at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada.
+
+But Leicester's adventurous life was now drifting to its close. His
+health had for some time given him cause for alarm, and in August 1588,
+he left his Kenilworth home to seek relief by taking baths and drinking
+healing waters; and from Rycott he wrote the last of his many letters to
+the Queen.
+
+     "I most humbly beseech your Majesty," he wrote, "to
+     pardon your poor old servant to be thus bold in sending
+     to know how my gracious Lady doth and what ease of her
+     late pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this
+     world I do pray for is for her to have good health and
+     long life. For my own poor case I continue still your
+     medicine, and find it amend much better than with any
+     other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find
+     perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my
+     wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation,
+     I humbly kiss your foot. From your old lodging at Rycott
+     this Thursday morning ready to take on my journey. By
+     your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant,--
+     R. LEYCESTER."
+
+But the Earl was not destined to reach the baths. His course was run. He
+got as far on his journey as Coventry; and there, on the 4th of
+September, he drew his last breath. Some said that his end was hastened
+by a dose of poison administered by his Countess, eager to pursue
+unchecked her intrigue with Christopher Blount; others that she
+accidentally gave him a draught from a bottle of poison which he had
+designed for her. But neither suspicion seems to have any evidence to
+support it.
+
+Thus perished, little past the prime of life, a man who more than any
+other of his day drained the cup of pride and pleasure, to find its
+dregs exceeding bitter to the taste.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+TWO IRISH BEAUTIES
+
+
+In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high
+excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of
+Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every
+man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant,
+to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the
+pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,
+
+     "They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital
+     like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all
+     other constellations, as if the pall of night had been
+     drawn over them."
+
+They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a
+ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County
+Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering,
+happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in
+life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at
+the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a
+modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their
+mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.
+
+To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the
+first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned
+statement of fact. The young "bloods" of the capital were their slaves
+to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every
+gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied
+with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it
+is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she
+hugged each in turn, declared that she "had never seen anything half so
+sweet"; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to
+the majesty of their beauty.
+
+It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when
+they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's
+birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they
+danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace
+and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted
+on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a
+sight.
+
+     "With Betty as with Maria," says Mr Frankfort Moore, "the
+     art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her
+     languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous
+     movements of her feet and lithe body, and the curves
+     made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held
+     everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the
+     coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her
+     movements--all the graces and charms inwoven that make up
+     the poem of the minuet--became visible by the art of that
+     exquisite girl, until all other dancers became
+     common-place by comparison."
+
+Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters
+were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests
+they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried
+away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot,
+appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected
+their rescue.
+
+But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs
+Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in
+their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl--certainly not an
+Irish squire or impoverished lord--was a fitting match for her
+daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with
+their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across
+the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.
+
+But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike
+in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly
+brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a
+pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes
+and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less
+radiant than her dashing sister.
+
+     "Each was," to quote another description, "divinely tall,
+     with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity
+     enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head.
+     Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with
+     their long, slender tapering fingers."
+
+All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in
+the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping
+lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory
+pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a
+gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.
+
+Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took
+London by storm, and who "made more noise than any of their predecessors
+since the days of Helen," in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was
+immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were
+the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house.
+Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision,
+and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one
+accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.
+
+Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad "they were beset by a
+curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters
+fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another
+occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from
+the mob." When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found
+themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand spectators, struggling
+to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the "hem of their
+garments."
+
+When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was
+at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at
+bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited
+Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were "lionising"
+the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the
+apartment known as the "Beauty Room," with the significant remark,
+"_These_ are the beauties, gentlemen."
+
+With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all
+the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were
+at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a
+coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted
+her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured
+wooer.
+
+Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, "a grave
+young lord" of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled
+himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria
+gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown
+into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:--
+
+     "On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to
+     Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite
+     beauty and of those accomplishments which will add Grace
+     and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the
+     ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat
+     at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials."
+
+Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was
+beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by
+the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's
+Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour
+which was readily granted to "the most beautiful woman in England,"
+Thus, on one occasion, we are told,
+
+     "from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange
+     procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone
+     to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front
+     marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped
+     the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband
+     and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke,
+     while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!"
+
+One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of
+discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age,
+was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. "Are
+you not sorry," His Majesty enquired, "that there are to be no more
+masquerades?" "Indeed, no," was the answer. "I am quite weary of them
+and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really
+anxious to see, and that is a _coronation_!" This unflattering wish she
+was not destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish
+beauty by a fortnight.
+
+Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She
+spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and
+embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in
+adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which
+the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a
+wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching fete.
+The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots
+of the size of a shilling. "And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr
+Selwyn?" she archly asked. "Why," he replied, "you will look like change
+for a guinea."
+
+[Illustration: MARIA, COUNTESS OF COVENTRY]
+
+Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating
+period of her vanity.
+
+     "Yesterday after chapel," she writes, "the Duchess
+     brought home Lady Coventry to feast me--and a feast she
+     was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome,
+     notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month;
+     she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence
+     that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made
+     for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it
+     trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced
+     handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine
+     mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that
+     just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in
+     the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended;
+     frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied
+     with pink and green ribbon--a head-dress that would have
+     charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and
+     prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at
+     the corners, but fine for all that."
+
+Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by
+Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was
+splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom
+long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride
+consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of
+pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was
+doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and,
+with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last
+dregs.
+
+She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its
+decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave
+smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable
+end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the
+murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,
+
+     "The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and
+     most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement
+     of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what
+     surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but
+     one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been
+     ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She
+     was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of
+     eyes' with her former flame, Lord Bolingbroke, an
+     unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to
+     make her the victim of his passion."
+
+Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.
+
+     "Her levities," says a chronicler of the time, "were very
+     publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to
+     her which were greatly believed. However, they were never
+     brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped
+     with only a little private scandal, which generally falls
+     to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is
+     envied by the rest of her sex."
+
+During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in
+her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.
+
+     "Until the last few days," says Mr Horace Bleackley, "the
+     pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her
+     hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of
+     her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was
+     unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had
+     vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for
+     the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn,
+     permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken
+     cheeks."
+
+Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly
+realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on
+October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last
+homage to her in Pirton churchyard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger
+sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic
+conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the
+annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man
+who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had
+heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.
+The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very
+unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had
+drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he
+should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical
+wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful
+excesses.
+
+Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable
+rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade
+that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this
+jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of
+being introduced he was, Walpole says,
+
+     "making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my
+     Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at
+     pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank
+     nor his own cards, which were of L300 each. He soon lost
+     a thousand."
+
+Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom
+she was to marry--a man who, even in the thraldom of a violent love,
+could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed
+was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our
+entertaining gossip again,
+
+     "two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while
+     her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found
+     himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The
+     doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or
+     ring--the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At
+     last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain,
+     at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.
+     The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty
+     has had its effect."
+
+If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should
+have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had
+achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen
+had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter
+would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was
+"debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person," he was her very
+slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her
+happy.
+
+Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have
+borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed,
+have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated
+farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her
+new _role_. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her
+curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,
+
+     "the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the
+     drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at
+     her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her
+     chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre
+     when it is known that she will be there."
+
+A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride
+to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal
+bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire
+route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds
+struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story
+had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When
+they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, "seven hundred people," we
+are told, "sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the
+Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning."
+
+Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours
+that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed
+strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small
+cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen
+could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.
+
+     "The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world
+     is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning
+     sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the
+     Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before
+     their company, sit together at the upper end of their own
+     table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under
+     the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old
+     chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody,
+     either above or below that rank, to dine with them at
+     all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find
+     guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect
+     to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence--the
+     insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily,
+     is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of
+     life."
+
+Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when,
+with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the
+"dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and
+obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the
+house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her
+budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating
+triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely
+treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a
+glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they
+could win a smile from the "darlint Duchess" who had brought so much
+glory to old Ireland.
+
+Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one
+foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger;
+but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of
+life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds
+three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of
+Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the
+fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but
+he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the
+only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John
+Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of
+Argyll; and she gave her hand to "handsome Jack" within twelve months of
+weeping over the grave of her first husband.
+
+     "It was a match," Walpole says, "that would not disgrace
+     Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in
+     some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most
+     pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they
+     could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English
+     weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life,
+     when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their
+     subjects and their sheep."
+
+It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her
+second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.
+Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her
+next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel
+Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of
+stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time
+her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.
+
+     "As she is not quite so charming as she was," says
+     Walpole, "I do not know whether it is not better to
+     change her title than to retain that which puts one in
+     mind of her beauty."
+
+But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social
+prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte;
+and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess
+Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband,
+George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of
+the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs
+of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon
+which the frightened young Princess remarked, "My dear Duchess, you may
+laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me." Her
+life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of
+roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the
+beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she
+contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually
+written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of
+its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though _I_
+wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."
+
+Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in
+Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the
+Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the
+drawing-room and announced his name,
+
+     "the Duchess," he says, "who was sitting with her
+     daughter and some other ladies, took not the least
+     notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus
+     coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the
+     world, have always entertained a very high admiration,
+     had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the
+     Duke."
+
+During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health,
+she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost
+deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make
+to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a
+Methodist." In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell
+had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the
+famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no
+doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of
+hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when
+Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know
+nothing of Mr Boswell."
+
+The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord
+Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life
+of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty
+years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life
+behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.
+
+To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction
+of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four
+others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of
+Argyll.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS
+
+
+A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate
+from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle
+and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided
+families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it
+generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled
+the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided
+into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
+Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
+ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
+he was nothing of the sort.
+
+Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"
+Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the
+gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
+was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so
+much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the
+cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years
+the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
+and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
+pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
+remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
+throne.
+
+Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
+Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
+foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
+Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who
+combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
+vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
+rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
+was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
+Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
+estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
+one day inherit.
+
+It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
+had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
+evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
+of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
+Aberdeen and Panrnure, _cum multis aliis._ However this may be, we know
+that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to
+the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit lassie." The favoured suitor
+was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
+man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean
+understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her
+ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The Duchess of Buccleuch
+was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady
+Jean Douglas, "a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she
+saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her"; and, no doubt, the
+fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for
+the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart
+was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.
+
+The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in
+Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court--a letter in which the
+Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was
+a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it
+that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her
+humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance,
+which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony
+that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love,
+however tempting.
+
+During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean
+appears to have lived alone at Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where
+she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts
+and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish
+hospitality--paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of
+Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his
+eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in
+her. That the Duke, who is described as "a person of the most wretched
+intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, passionate, spiteful and
+unforgiving," was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of
+which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.
+Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he
+ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants,
+especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon
+
+     "the poor Duke," to quote Woodrow, "who for many years
+     had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who
+     persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out
+     in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and
+     stabbed him as he was sleeping."
+
+It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who
+was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but
+although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad
+delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a
+warrant to "confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate
+and take possession of it," he was generous enough to make her a
+liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children,
+"they would heir his estate."
+
+Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady
+Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy
+enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still
+unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his
+insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the
+"villain of the play," makes his appearance on the stage.
+
+Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to
+repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although
+then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed
+later, to "captivate my heart at the first sight of her." She was,
+moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress,
+with the vast Douglas estates as good as assured to her. But to the
+handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other
+suitors; and the "Colonel," who had never won any army rank higher than
+that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where
+for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the
+gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that
+opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who
+cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him "one of the
+worst of men--a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain"--and his
+career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing
+description.
+
+Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the
+test--and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,
+
+     "very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean
+     telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she
+     came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would
+     acknowledge it publicly if I chose. _Enfin_, I was
+     allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three
+     months after she honoured me with her hand."
+
+Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing
+some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at
+least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her
+hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors--a man broken
+in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and
+defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he
+would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is
+manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous
+union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel
+furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career
+of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to
+withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although
+nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, "appearing," we are told, "at least
+fifteen years younger than she really was"; and thus might well have
+looked for a eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but
+add to her financial embarrassment. There remained the prospect of her
+brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she
+had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom
+the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in
+favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however
+small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.
+
+Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one
+August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper
+lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a
+retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of
+female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the
+belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.
+
+From Rheims, to which town the wedding party journeyed, Lady Jean wrote
+to her man of business, Mr Haldane:--
+
+     "It is mighty certain that my anticipations were never in
+     the marrying way; and had I not at last been absolutely
+     certain that my brother was resolved never to marry, I
+     never should have once thought of doing it; but since
+     this was his determined, unalterable resolution, I judged
+     it fit to overcome a natural disinclination and
+     backwardness, and to put myself in the way of doing
+     something for a family not the worst in Scotland; and,
+     therefore, gave my hand to Mr Stewart, the consequence of
+     which has proved more happy than I could well have
+     expected."
+
+Such was the unenthusiastic letter Lady Jean wrote on her honeymoon,
+assigning as her motive for the marriage a wish "to do something for her
+family," which could scarcely be other than to provide heirs to the
+Douglas lands--an ambition which to the most sanguine lady of her age
+must have seemed sufficiently doubtful of realisation.
+
+Then began a wandering life for the grotesque pair. Rheims, Utrecht,
+Geneva, Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, and many another Continental town appear
+in turn on their erratic itinerary, the Colonel travelling as Lady
+Jean's _maitre d'hotel_, and never avowed by her as her husband; and at
+every place of halting my lady finds fresh victims for her clever tongue
+and ingratiating charm of manner, who, in return for her smiles and
+flatteries, keep her purse supplied. Now it is young Lord Blantyre who
+succumbs to her wiles, and follows her from place to place like a
+shadow, drawing large sums from his mother to "lend to my Lady Jean, who
+is at a loss by not receiving letters which were to bring her
+remittances." Now it is Mr Hay, Mr Dalrymple, or some other susceptible
+admirer who obliges her by a temporary loan, and is amply rewarded by
+learning from her lips that he is "the man alive I would choose to be
+most obliged by." Thus, by a system of adroit flatteries, Lady Jean
+keeps the family exchequer so well replenished that she is able to take
+about with her a retinue consisting of two maids and a man-cook, in
+addition to the indispensable Mrs Hewit; and to ride in her carriage,
+while her husband stakes his golden louis on the green cloth and
+drinks costly wines.
+
+Even such an astute man of the world as Lord Crawford she makes her
+devoted slave, ready at any moment to place his purse and services at
+her disposal, to the extent of breaking the news of her marriage to the
+Duke, her brother, and begging for his approval and favour; a task which
+must have gone considerably against the grain with the proud Scotsman.
+
+     "I can assure your Grace," his lordship writes, "she does
+     great honour to the family wherever she appears, and is
+     respected and beloved by all that have the honour of her
+     acquaintance. She certainly merits all the affectionate
+     marks of an only brother to an only sister."
+
+This appeal, eloquent as it was, only seemed to fan the anger of the
+Duke, who, as he read it, declared to the Parish minister who was
+present: "Why, the woman is mad.... I once thought, if there was a
+virtuous woman in the world, my sister Jeanie was one; but now I am
+going to say a thing that I should not say of my own sister--I believe
+she is no better than ...; and that I believe there is not a virtuous
+woman in the world."
+
+At the very time--so inconsistent was this singular woman--that Lord
+Crawford, at her request, was breaking the news of her marriage to her
+brother, she was repudiating it indignantly to every person she met. To
+Lady Wigton, she declared with tears that it was an "infamous story
+raised by Miss Molly Kerr, her cousin, in order to prejudice her brother
+against her, and that it had been so effectual that he had stopped her
+pension"; and she begged Lady Wigton "when she went to England to
+contradict it."
+
+But this nomadic, hand-to-mouth life could not go on indefinitely. The
+supply of dupes began to show signs of failing, and in her extremity she
+wrote urgent letters to friends in England and Scotland for supplies;
+she even borrowed from a poor Scottish minister almost the last penny he
+had. A crisis was rapidly approaching which there was no way of
+escaping--_unless_ the birth of a child might soften her brother's
+heart, and, perchance, re-open the vista of a great inheritance in the
+years to come. Such speculations must have occurred to Lady Jean at this
+critical stage of her fortunes; but whether what quickly followed was a
+coincidence, or, as so many asserted, a fraudulent plot to give effect
+to her ambition, it would need a much cleverer and more confident man
+than I to say. At any rate, from this failure of her purse and of her
+hopes of propitiating the Duke began all those mysterious suggestions
+and circumstances, of which so much was made in the trial of future
+years, and which heralded the birth of the desired heir--or "to make
+assurance doubly sure," in Lady Jean's case--heirs.
+
+As the expected event drew near it became important to go to Paris in
+order to have the advantage of the best medical assistance, especially
+since Lady Jean was assured that the doctors of Rheims, where she was
+then living, were "as ignorant as brutes." And so to the French capital
+she journeyed with her retinue, through three sultry July days, in a
+public diligence devoid of springs. How trying such a journey must have
+been to a lady in her condition is evidenced by the fact that, during
+the three days, she spent forty-one hours on the road, reaching Paris on
+the 4th of July. Just six days later her ladyship, to quote a letter
+written by Mrs Hewit, "produced two lovely boys," one of whom was so
+weak and puny that the doctor "begged it might be sent to the country as
+soon as possible."
+
+So far the story seems clear and plausible, assuming that a lady, in
+such a delicate state of health, could bear the fatigues of so long and
+trying a journey as that from Rheims to Paris. But from this stage the
+mystery, which it took so many wise heads to penetrate in future years,
+begins to thicken. Although the children were said to have been born on
+the 10th of July it was not until eleven days later that Mrs Hewit
+imparted the news to the two maids who had been left behind at Rheims,
+in the letter from which I have quoted. Further, although the Colonel
+wrote to six different people on the 10th not one of his letters
+contains any reference to such an interesting event, which should, one
+would think, have excluded all other topics from a father's pen.
+
+Moreover, although the Colonel and his wife were, as the house-books
+proved, staying on the 10th of July at the hotel of a M. Godefroi,
+neither the landlord nor his wife had any knowledge that a birth had
+taken place, or was even expected; and it was beyond question that the
+lady left the house on the 13th, three days after the alleged event,
+without exciting any suspicion as to what had so mysteriously taken
+place.
+
+On the 13th, the Colonel and his lady, accompanied by Mrs Hewit,
+declared that they went for a few days to the house of a Madame la
+Brune, a nurse--but no child, M. and Mme. Godefroi swore, accompanied
+them; and on the 18th of July, eight days after the accouchement, they
+made their appearance at Michele's Hotel (still without a solitary
+infant to show), where Madame was already so far recovered that she
+spent the days in jaunting about Paris and making trips to Versailles.
+
+At Michele's the story they told was that the infants were so delicate
+that they had been sent into the country to nurse; and yet none had seen
+them go. But before the parents had been a day in their new quarters the
+Colonel, after hours of absence, appeared with a child--a puny infant,
+but still unmistakably genuine. Thus one of the twins was accounted for.
+The other, they declared, was still more delicate and must be left in
+the country.
+
+It was quite certain that the children had not been born either at
+Godefroi's or Michele's Hotel. As for the intermediate place of lodging,
+the most diligent later enquiries failed to discover either Madame la
+Brune or the house in which she was supposed to live in the Faubourg St
+Germain. Moreover, was it a coincidence that on the very day on which
+the Colonel at Michele's with one of the alleged children, it was
+proved that a "foreign gentleman," exactly answering his description,
+had purchased, for three gold louis, a fortnight-old baby from its
+peasant-parents, called Mignon, in a Paris slum?
+
+To add further to the confusion, both Colonel Stewart and Mrs Hewit, in
+later years, declared in the most positive manner, first that the
+children had been born at Michele's, and secondly at Madame la Brune's,
+in defiance of the facts that on the 10th of July, the alleged date of
+birth, the mother was beyond any doubt staying at Godefroi's hotel, that
+no such person as Madame la Brune apparently existed, and that the only
+visible child at Michele's was a fortnight old.
+
+On the 7th of August Lady Jean wrote to inform her brother, the Duke,
+that she had been blessed with "two boys," one of which she begged his
+permission to call by his name--a letter which only had the effect of
+rousing His Grace's "high passion and displeasure," with a threat to
+stop her annuity. For sixteen months the second and more delicate infant
+was left with his country nurse, the mother never once taking the
+trouble to visit it; and then the Colonel and his wife made a mysterious
+journey to Paris, returning with another child, who, they alleged, was
+the weakling of the twins. Was it again a coincidence that, at the very
+time when the second child made his appearance, another infant was
+purchased from its parents in Paris by a "strange monsieur" who, if not
+the Colonel, was at least his double? And was it not strange that this
+late arrival should appear to be several months older than his more
+robust brother, as the purchased child was?
+
+At last, provided with two children, and having exhausted their credit
+on the Continent, Lady Jean and her husband turned their faces homeward,
+prepared to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Arrived in London they
+set to work to win as many influential friends and supporters as
+possible; and this Lady Jean, with her plausible tongue, succeeded in
+doing. Ladies Shaw and Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Lindores,
+Solicitor-General Murray (later, Lord Mansfield), and many another
+high-placed personage vowed that they believed her story and pledged
+their support. Mr Pelham proved such a good friend to her that he
+procured from the King a pension of L300 a year, which she sorely
+needed; for, at the time, her husband was a prisoner for debt "within
+the Rules" of the King's Bench.
+
+Even Lady Jean's enemies could not resist a tribute of admiration for
+the courage with which, during this time, she fought her uphill fight
+against poverty and opposition. Her affection for her children and her
+loyalty to her good-for-nothing husband were touching in the extreme;
+and, if not quite sincere, were most cleverly simulated.
+
+To all her appeals the Duke still remained obdurate, vowing he would
+have nothing to do either with his sister or the two "nunnery children"
+which she wanted to impose on him. In spite of her Royal pension Lady
+Jean only succeeded in getting deeper and deeper involved in debt,
+until it became clear that some decisive step must be taken to repair
+her fortunes. Then it was that, at last, she screwed up her courage to
+pay the dreaded visit to her brother, in the hope that the sight of her
+children and the pathos of her personal pleading might soften his heart.
+
+One January day in 1753, one of the Duke's servants says,
+
+     "she looked in at the little gate as I was passing
+     through the court. She called and I went to her, when she
+     told me she was come to wait on the Duke with her
+     children. I proposed to open the gate and carry in her
+     Ladyship; but she said she would not go in till I
+     acquainted his Grace."
+
+The Duke, however, after consulting with his minion Stockbrigg, who
+still ruled the castle and its lord alike, sent word that he refused to
+see his sister; and the broken-hearted woman walked sadly away. To a
+letter in which she begged "to speak but a few moments to your Grace,
+and if I don't, to your own conviction, clear up my injured innocence,
+inflict what punishment you please upon me," he returned no answer.
+
+Trouble now began to fall thickly on Lady Jean. Her delicate child,
+Sholto, died after a brief illness. She was distracted with grief, and
+cried out in her deep distress: "O Sholto! Sholto! my son Sholto! if I
+could but have died for you!" This last blow of fate seems to have
+completely crushed her. A few months later, she gave up her gallant and
+hopeless struggle, but only with her life. Calling her remaining son to
+her bedside she said, with streaming eyes: "May God bless you, my dear
+son; and, above all, make you a worthy and honest man; for riches, I
+despise them. Take a sword, and you may one day become as great a hero
+as some of your ancestors." Then, but a few moments before drawing her
+last breath, she said to those around her: "As one who is soon to appear
+in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
+the two children were born of my body." Thus passed "beyond these
+voices" a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
+sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.
+
+Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
+her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
+motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
+protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
+man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
+his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," a lady of strong character who
+had long vowed that "she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry";
+and in Duchess "Peggy" Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
+gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
+many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the "brat" to perdition
+one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
+to her side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
+that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
+Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:
+
+     "DEAR JACK,--I have not had time till now to acquaint you
+     of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
+     brother Archie his whole estate."
+
+Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
+stilled in death.
+
+The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
+history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
+justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
+rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
+the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
+Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
+Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
+latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
+set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
+twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
+on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
+Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
+detective skill; and it was not until 1768 that the Scottish Court of
+Session gave its verdict, by the Lord-President's casting-vote (seven
+judges voting for and seven against) against Lady Jean's son.
+
+     "The judges," we are told, "took up no less than eight
+     days in delivering their opinions upon the cause; and at
+     last, by the President's casting-vote, they pronounced
+     solemn judgment in favour of the plaintiffs."
+
+Meanwhile (four years earlier) Sir John Stewart had followed his wife to
+the grave, declaring, just before his death:
+
+     "I do solemnly swear before God, as stepping into
+     Eternity, that Lady Jean Douglas, my lawful spouse, did
+     in the year 1748, bring into the world two sons,
+     Archibald and Sholto; and I firmly believe the children
+     were mine, as I am sure they were hers. Of the two sons,
+     Archibald is the only one in life now."
+
+But Archibald Douglas was not long to remain out of his estates. On
+appeal to the House of Lords, the decree of the Scottish Court was
+reversed, and the victory of Lady Jean's son was final and complete.
+
+Of his later career it remains only to say that he entered Parliament
+and was created a Peer; and that he conducted himself in his exalted
+position with a dignity worthy of the parentage he had established. But,
+although he became the father of eight sons, four of whom succeeded him
+in the title, no grandson came to inherit his honours and estates; and
+to-day the Douglas lands, for which Lady Jean schemed and fought and
+laid down her life, have the Earl of Home for lord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS
+
+
+For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of
+antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to
+lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their
+haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their
+family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and
+ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to
+be distinguished as "Black Schulenburgs" and "White Schulenburgs," as
+our own Douglases were "black" and "red."
+
+But not one of all the glittering array of its dignitaries raised the
+family name to such an eminence--a bad eminence--as one of its plainest
+daughters, Ehrengard Melusina von der Schulenburg (to give her full,
+imposing name), who lived not only to wear the coronet of a Duchess of
+England, but to be "as much a Queen as ever there was in England."
+
+Fraeulein Ehrengard and her brother, who, as Count Mathias von der
+Schulenburg, was to win fame as the finest general in Europe of his day,
+were cradled and reared at the ancestral castle of Emden, in Saxony.
+The Schulenburg women were never famed for beauty; but Ehrengard was, by
+common consent, the "ugly duckling" of the family--abnormally tall,
+angular, awkward, and plain-featured, one of the last girls in Germany
+equipped for conquest in the field of love.
+
+When she reached her sixteenth birthday, Ehrengard's parents were glad
+to pack her off to the Court of Herrenhausen, where the family influence
+procured for her the post of maid-of-honour to the Electress Sophia of
+Hanover. At any rate she was provided for--an important matter, for the
+Schulenburgs were as poor as they were proud--and she was too
+unattractive to get into mischief. But it is the unexpected that often
+happens; and no sooner had the Elector's son and heir, George, set eyes
+on the ungainly maid-of-honour than he promptly fell head over ears in
+love with her, to the amazement of the entire Court, and to the disgust
+of his mother, and of his newly-made bride, Sophia Dorothea of Zell. To
+George--an awkward, sullen young man of loutish manners and loose
+morals--the gaunt girl, with her plain, sallow face, was a vision of
+beauty. She appealed in some curious way to the animal in him; and
+before she had been many weeks at Herrenhausen she was his avowed
+mistress--one of many.
+
+"Just look at that mawkin," the Electress Sophia once exclaimed to Lady
+Suffolk, who was a guest at the Hanoverian Court, "and think of her
+being my son's mistress!" But to any other than his mother, George's
+taste in women had long ceased to cause surprise. The ugly and gross
+appealed to a taste which such beauty and refinement as his young wife
+possessed left untouched. He had markedly demonstrated this perverseness
+of fancy already by showering his favours on the Baroness von
+Kielmansegg--who was reputed to be his natural sister, by the way--a
+lady so ugly that, as a child, Horace Walpole shrieked at sight of her.
+
+She had, he recalls,
+
+     "two fierce black eyes, large and rolling, beneath two
+     lofty arched eyesbrows; two acres of cheeks spread with
+     crimson; an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not
+     distingushed from the lower part of her body, and no part
+     of it restrained by stays. No wonder," he adds, "that a
+     child dreaded such an ogress!"
+
+Such were the two chief favourites of this unnatural heir to the throne
+of Hanover, who, by a curious turn of Fortune's wheel, was to wear the
+English crown as the first of the Georges. In the company of these
+ogresses and of a brace of Turkish attendants, George loved to pass his
+time in beer-guzzling and debauchery, while his beautiful and insulted
+wife sought solace in that ill-starred intrigue with Koenigsmarck, which
+was to lead to his tragic death and her own thirty years' imprisonment
+in the Schloss Ahlden, where she, who ought to have been England's
+Queen, ate her heart out in loneliness and sorrow.
+
+To George his wife's intrigue was a welcome excuse for getting rid of
+her--a licence for unfettered indulgence in his low tastes; and the
+tragedy of her eclipse but added zest and emphasis to his unfettered
+enjoyment of life. In the hands of Von der Schulenburg the weak-minded,
+self-indulgent Prince was as clay in the hands of the potter. She
+moulded him as she willed, for she was as crafty and diplomatic as she
+was ill-favoured. Madame Kielmansegg was relegated to the shade, while
+she stood in the full limelight. She bore two daughters to her Royal
+lover--daughters who were called her "nieces," although the fiction
+deceived nobody--and as the years passed, each adding, if possible, to
+her unattractiveness, her hold on the Prince became still stronger.
+
+Thirty years passed thus at the Herrenhausen Court, when the death of
+Queen Anne made "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Hanover,
+rightful King of Great Britain, France and Ireland." The sluggish
+sensual life of the Hanoverian Court was at an end. George was summoned
+to a great throne, and no King ever accepted a crown with such
+reluctance and ill-grace. He would, and he would not. For three weeks
+the English envoys tried every artifice to induce him to accept his new
+and exalted _role_--and finally they succeeded.
+
+But even then he had not counted on the "fair" Ehrengard. She refused
+point-blank to go with him to that "odious England," where chopping off
+heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was quite happy in Hanover,
+and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace
+gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to
+the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert
+them. And thus George left her, to start on his unwelcome pilgrimage to
+England.
+
+Madame von Kielmansegg, however, was of another mind. If her great rival
+would not go, she would; and after giving the Elector a day's start, she
+raced after him, caught him up, and, to her delight, was welcomed with
+open arms. The moment Von der Schulenburg heard of the trick "that
+Kielmansegg woman" had played on her, she, too, packed her trunks, and,
+taking her "nieces" with her, also set out in hot pursuit of her Royal
+lover and tool, and overtook him just as he was on the point of
+embarking for England.
+
+George was now happy and reconciled to his fate, for his retinue was
+complete. And what a retinue! When the King landed at Greenwich with his
+grotesque assortment of Ministers, his hideous Turks, his two
+mistresses--one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat--and
+his "nieces," the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted
+the "menagerie" with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed
+Schulenburg the "Maypole," and Kielmansegg the "Elephant," and pursued
+the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults.
+
+"Goot peoples, vy you abuse us?" asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt
+head and shoulders through the carriage window. "Ve only gom for all
+your goots." "And for all our chattels, too, ---- you!" came the
+stinging retort from a wag in the crowd.
+
+But Schulenburg soon realised that she could afford to smile and shrug
+her scraggy shoulders at the insolence of those "horrid Engleesh." She
+found herself in a land of Goshen, where there were many rich plums to
+be gathered by far-reaching and unscrupulous hands such as hers. If she
+could not love the enemy, she could at least plunder them; and this she
+set to work to do with a good will, while the plastic George looked on
+and smiled encouragement. There were pensions, appointments,
+patents--boons of all kinds to be trafficked in; and who had a greater
+right to act as intermediary than herself, the King's _chere amie_ and
+right hand?
+
+She sold everything that was saleable. As Walpole says, "She would have
+sold the King's honour at a shilling advance to the best bidder." From
+Bolingbroke's family she took L20,000 in three sums--one for a Peerage,
+another for a pardon, and the third for a fat post in the Customs. Gold
+poured in a ceaseless and glittering stream into her coffers. She
+refused no bribe--if it was big enough--and was ready to sell anything,
+from a Dukedom to a Bishopric, if her price was forthcoming. She made
+George procure her a pension of L7,500 a year (ten times as much as had
+long contented her well in Hanover); and when valuable posts fell vacant
+she induced him to leave them vacant and to give her the revenues.
+
+Not content with filling her capacious pockets, she sighed for
+coronets--and got them in showers. Four Irish Peerages, from Baroness of
+Dundalk to Duchess of Munster, were flung into her lap. And yet she was
+not happy. She must have English coronets, and the best of them. So
+George made her Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and
+Duchess of Kendal. And, to crown her ambition for such baubles, he
+induced the pliant German Emperor to make her a Princess--of Eberstein.
+Thus, with coffers overflowing with ill-gotten gold, her towering head
+graced with a dazzling variety of coronets, this grim idol of a King,
+who at sixty was as much her slave as in the twenties, was the proudest
+woman in England, patronising our own Duchesses, and snubbing Peeresses
+of less degree. She might be a "maypole"--hated and unattractive--but at
+least she towered high above all the fairest and most blue-blooded
+beauties of her "Consort's" Court.
+
+When the South Sea Bubble rose to dazzle all eyes with its iridescent
+splendours, it was she more than any other who blew it. She was the
+witch behind the scenes of the South Sea and many another bubble
+Company, whether its object was to "carry on a thing that will turn to
+the advantage of the concerned," "the breeding and providing for natural
+children," or "for planting mulberries in Chelsea Park to breed
+silk-worms."
+
+Every day of this wild, insane gamble, which wrecked thousands of homes,
+and filled hundreds of suicides' graves, brought its stream of gold to
+her exchequer; and when the bubbles burst in havoc and ruin she smiled
+and counted her gains, turning a deaf ear to the storm of execration
+that raged against her outside the palace walls. She knew that she had
+played her cards so skilfully that all the popular rage was impotent to
+harm her. Only one of her many puppets--Knight, the Treasurer of the
+South Sea Company--could be the means of doing her harm. If he were
+arrested and told all he knew, impeachment would probably follow, with a
+sentence of imprisonment and banishment. But the crafty German was much
+too old a bird to be caught in that way. She packed Knight off to
+Antwerp; and, through the influence of her friend, the German Empress,
+the States of Brabant refused to give him up to his fate.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was now at the zenith of her power and splendour.
+While Sophia Dorothea, the true Queen of England, was pining away in
+solitude in distant Ahlden, the German "Maypole" was Queen in all but
+name, ruling alike her senile paramour and the nation with a tactful, if
+iron hand. It is said that she was actually the morganatic wife of
+George, that the ceremony had been performed by no less a dignitary than
+the Archbishop of York; but, whether this was so or not, it is certain
+that this "old and forbidding skeleton of a giantess" was more England's
+Queen than any other Consort of the Georges.
+
+She was present at every consultation between the King and his
+Ministers--indeed the conferences were invariably held in her own
+apartments, every day from five till eight. She understood and humoured
+every whim of her Royal partner with infinite tactfulness, to the extent
+even of encouraging his amours with young and attractive women, while
+she herself, to emphasise her platonic relations with him, affected an
+extravagant piety, attending as many as seven Lutheran services every
+Sunday. The only rival she had ever feared--and hated--Madame
+Kielmansegg, had long passed out of power, and as Countess of Darlington
+was too much absorbed in pandering to her mountain of flesh, and filling
+her pockets, to spare a regret for the Royal lover she had lost.
+
+When George, on hearing of the death of his unhappy wife, Sophia
+Dorothea, set out on his last journey to Hanover, his only companion was
+the Duchess of Kendal, the woman to whose grim fascinations he had been
+loyal for more than forty years; and it was she who closed his eyes in
+the Palace of Osnabrueck, in which he had drawn his first breath
+sixty-seven years earlier.
+
+A French fortune-teller had warned him that "he would not survive his
+wife a year"; and, as he neared Osnabrueck, the home of his brother, the
+Prince Bishop, his fatal illness overtook him.
+
+     "When he arrived at Ippenburen, he was quite lethargic;
+     his hand fell down as if lifeless, and his tongue hung
+     out of his mouth. He gave, however, signs enough of life
+     by continually crying out, as well as he could
+     articulate, 'Osnabrueck!' 'Osnabrueck!'"
+
+As night fell the sweating horses galloped into Osnabrueck; an hour
+later George died in his brother's arms, less than twelve months after
+his wife had drawn her last breath in her fortress-prison of Ahlden.
+
+The Duchess of Kendal was disconsolate.
+
+     "She beat her breasts and tore her hair, and, separating
+     herself from the English ladies in her train, took the
+     road to Brunswick, where she remained in close seclusion
+     about three months."
+
+Returning to England, to the only solace left to her--her
+money-bags--she spent the last seventeen years of her life alternating
+between her villas at Twickenham and Isleworth. George had promised her
+that if she survived him, and if it were possible, he would revisit her
+from the spirit world.
+
+     "When," to quote Walpole again, "one day a large raven
+     flew into one of the windows of her villa at Isleworth,
+     she was persuaded that it was the soul of the departed
+     monarch, and received and treated it with all the respect
+     and tenderness of duty, till the Royal bird or she took
+     their last flight."
+
+Thus, shorn of all her powers and splendour, in obscurity, and hoarding
+her ill-gotten gold, died the most remarkable woman who has ever figured
+in the British Peerage. Her vast fortune was divided between her two
+"nieces," one of whom, created by her father, George, Countess of
+Walsingham, became the wife of that polished courtier and heartless man
+of the world, Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES
+
+
+Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of
+our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of
+volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of
+the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance
+in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often
+reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees
+flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying
+from view the humble roots from which they derive their lordly growth.
+
+Although Cobden's assertion that "the British aristocracy was cradled
+behind city counters" errs on the side of exaggeration, there is no
+doubt that in the veins of scores of the proudest English peers runs the
+blood of ancestors who served customers in City shops.
+
+When, a couple of centuries ago, John Baring, son of the Bremen Lutheran
+parson, Dr Franz Baring, opened his small cloth manufactory on the
+outskirts of Exeter, his most extravagant ambition was to build up a
+business which he could hand over to his sons, and to provide a few
+comforts for his old age; if any one had told him that he was laying the
+foundations of four families which should hold their heads proudly among
+the highest in the land he would no doubt have laughed aloud.
+
+Yet John Baring lived to see his only daughter wedded to John Dunning,
+who made a Baroness of her. Of his four sons, Francis was created a
+Baronet by William Pitt, and found a wife in the cousin and co-heir of
+his Grace of Canterbury. The second son of this union, Alexander, was
+raised to the Peerage as Baron Ashburton, won a millionaire bride in the
+daughter of Senator Bingham, of Philadelphia, and, from the immense
+scale of his financial operations, was ranked by the Duc de Richelieu as
+"one of the six great powers of Europe"--England, France, Russia,
+Austria, and Prussia being the other five. Sir Francis's eldest
+grandson, after serving in the exalted offices of Chancellor of the
+Exchequer and First Lord of the Admiralty, was created Baron Northbrook,
+a peerage which his son raised to an earldom; a second grandson
+qualified for a coronet as Baron Revelstoke; and a third is known to-day
+as Earl Cromer, the maker of modern Egypt, with half an alphabet of high
+dignities after his name.
+
+At least three dukes (Northumberland, Leeds, and Bedford) count among
+their forefathers many a humble tradesman. Glancing down the pedigree of
+his Grace of Northumberland, we find among his direct ancestors such
+names as these, William le Smythesonne, of Thornton Watlous, husbandman;
+William Smitheson, of Newsham, husbandman; Ralph Smithson, tenant
+farmer; and Anthony Smithson, yeoman. It was this Anthony whose son,
+Hugh, left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and
+William Robinson, London haberdashers, and thus to take the first step
+of that successful career which made him a Baronet and a man of wealth.
+From Hugh, the London 'prentice sprang in the fourth generation, that
+other Hugh who won the hand of Lady Elizabeth Seymour, and with it the
+vast estates and historic name of Percy.
+
+Some years before Hugh Smithson, the farmer's son, set foot in London
+streets, Edward Osborne left the modest family roof at Ashford, in Kent,
+to serve his apprenticeship to, and sit at the board of, William Hewitt,
+a merchant of Philpot Lane, who shortly after moved his belongings to a
+more fashionable home on London Bridge. One day it chanced that while
+his only daughter, the fair "Mistress Anne," was hanging her favourite
+bird outside the parlour window she lost her balance and fell into the
+river, then racing in high tide under the arches of the bridge.
+Fortunately for Mistress Anne the young apprentice saw the accident;
+quick as thought he threw off his shoes and surcoat, and, plunging into
+the swollen waters, caught the maiden by her hair as she was being swept
+away, and with difficulty dragged her to a passing barge, on which both
+found safety.
+
+There was only one proper sequence to this romantic incident; Mistress
+Anne lost her heart to her gallant rescuer, the grateful parents smiled
+on his wooing, and one fine August morning, not many months later, the
+wedding-bells of St Magnus Church were spreading far and wide the news
+that young Osborne had found a bride in one of the fairest and richest
+heiresses of London town. In due time Osborne became, as his
+father-in-law had been before him, Lord Mayor of London; the son of this
+romantic alliance was knighted for prowess in battle; Edward Osborne's
+grandson was made a Baronet; and his great-grandson, Sir Thomas, added
+to the family dignities by becoming in turn, Baron, Viscount, Earl and
+Marquis, and, finally, Duke of Leeds. Thus only two generations
+separated the 'prentice lad of Philpot Lane from his descendant of the
+strawberry-leaves, the first of a long and still unbroken line of
+English dukes, whose blood has mingled with that of many noble families.
+
+The noble house of Ripon has its origin in Yorkshire tradesmen who
+carried on business in York, some of whom were Lord Mayors of that city
+two or three centuries ago. These early Robinsons added to their fortune
+and enriched their blood by alliances with some of the oldest families
+in the north of England--such as the Metcalfes of Nappa and the
+Redmaynes of Fulford--and slowly but surely laid the foundation of one
+of the wealthiest and most distinguished of great English houses. For
+four generations the head of the family was a Cabinet Minister, while
+one of them was Prime Minister of England.
+
+The Marquises of Bath derive descent from one John o' th' Inne, who
+was, probably, a worthy publican of Church Stretton, and who was
+descended in the seventh generation from William de Bottefeld, an
+under-forester of Shropshire in the thirteenth century; while, through
+his mother, the late Marquis of Salisbury derived a strain of 'prentice
+blood from Sir Christopher Gascoigne, the first Lord Mayor of London to
+live in the Mansion House.
+
+Until a few years ago there might be seen in the main street of the
+village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
+better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
+It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
+husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
+far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
+and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
+way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as "My lord," in his
+character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
+boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
+Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
+Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
+kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
+Appletrewick.
+
+The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
+his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
+mercer, and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
+we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
+whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.
+
+The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
+names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
+a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
+was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
+centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
+ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
+Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
+daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.
+
+The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
+poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
+a fortune as a London jeweller.
+
+In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
+citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
+himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
+tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
+accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
+anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
+they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
+George III. departed for once from his rule never to raise a man of
+business to the Peerage, by converting Robert Smith into Baron
+Carrington. His successor abandoned the patronymic Smith for his
+title-name; and the present-day representative of John Smith, the
+Nottingham draper is Charles Robert Wynn Carrington, first Earl
+Carrington, P.C., G.C.M.G., and joint Hereditary Lord Chamberlain of
+England.
+
+When William Capel left the humble paternal roof at Stoke Nayland, in
+Suffolk, to see what fortune and a brave heart could do for him in
+London, it certainly never occurred to him that his name would be handed
+down through the centuries by a line of Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
+Fortune had indeed strange experiences in store for the Suffolk youth;
+for, while she made a Knight and Lord Mayor of him, she consigned him on
+a life sentence to the Tower for resisting the extortions of the
+mercenary Henry VII. Sir William's son won his knightly spurs on French
+battlefields, wedded a daughter of the ancient house of Roos of Belvoir,
+and became the ancester of the Barons Capel, Viscounts Malden, and Earls
+of Essex.
+
+The Earls of Radnor owe their rank and wealth to the enterprise which
+led young Laurence des Bouveries from his native Flanders to a
+commercial life at Canterbury in the days of Queen Bess. From this
+humble Flemish apprentice sprang a line of Turkey merchants, each of
+whom in turn added his contribution to the family dignities and riches,
+until Sir Jacob, the third Baronet, blossomed into a double-barrelled
+peer as Lord Longford and Viscount Folkestone. Not the least, by any
+means, of the descendants of Laurence des Bouveries was Canon Pusey,
+the great theologian, who was grandson of the first Lord Folkestone.
+
+Lord Harewood springs from a stock of merchants who accumulated great
+wealth in the eighteenth century; and Lord Jersey owes much of his
+riches to Francis Child, the industrious apprentice who, in Stuart days,
+married the daughter of his master, William Wheeler, the goldsmith, who
+lived one door west of Temple Bar.
+
+Other peers who count London apprentices among their ancestors are Lord
+Aveland and Viscount Downe, both descendants of Gilbert Heathcote, whose
+commercial success was crowned by the Lord Mayoralty in 1711; the
+Marquis of Bath, a descendant of Lord Mayor Heyward, whose sixteen
+children are all portrayed in his monument in St Alphege Church, London
+Wall; and also of Richard Gresham, mercer, who waxed rich from the
+spoils of the monasteries, and whose son was founder of the Royal
+Exchange. The Earl of Eldon owes his existence to that runaway exploit
+which linked the lives of John Scott, the Newcastle tradesman's son, and
+Miss Surtees, the banker's daughter.
+
+If George III. during his lengthy reign only raised one business man to
+the Peerage, later years have provided a very liberal crop of coroneted
+men of commerce. To mention but a few of them, banking has been
+honoured--and the Peerage also--by the baronies granted to Lords
+Aldenham and Avebury; Lords Hindlip, Burton, Iveagh, and Ardilaun owe
+their wealth and rank to successful brewing; Baron Overtoun was
+proprietor of large chemical works; Lord Allerton's riches have been
+drawn from his tan-pits; Lord Armstrong's millions come from the
+far-famed Elswick engine-works at Newcastle; and Lord Masham's from his
+mills at Manningham. The Viscounty of Hambleden has sprung from a modest
+news-shop in the Strand; the Barony of Burnham was cradled in a
+newspaper office; and Lords Mount-Stephen and Strathcona were shepherd
+boys seventy years or more ago, before they found their way through
+commerce to the Roll of Peers.
+
+Although these lowly origins are as firmly established as Holy Writ, and
+are in most cases as well known to the noble families who trace rank and
+riches from them as to the expert in genealogy, they are often as
+carefully excluded from the family tree as the poor and undesirable
+relation from the doors of their palaces. Not content with a lineage
+extending over long centuries, and with a score of strains of undoubted
+blue blood, many of our greatest nobles and oldest gentle families
+strain after an ancestry which is not theirs, and throw overboard some
+obscure forefather to find room for a mythical Norman marauder, who in
+many cases exists nowhere but in the place of honour on their own
+pedigrees.
+
+"What are pedigrees worth?" asks Professor Freeman. "I turn over a
+'Peerage' or other book of genealogy, and I find that, when a pedigree
+professes to be traced back to the times of which I know most in detail,
+it is all but invariably false. As a rule it is not only false, but
+impossible. The historical circumstances, when any are introduced, are
+for the most part not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
+which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood."
+
+This scathing criticism refers to pedigrees which profess to be based on
+existing records; what shall we say, then, of those family trees which
+have their ambitious roots in the dark centuries which no ray of
+genealogical light can possibly pierce? Take, for instance, that amazing
+pedigree of the Lyte family of Lytes Cary, at the head of which is
+"Leitus (one of the five captains of Beotia that went to Troye)," whose
+ancestors came to England first with Brute, "the most noble founder of
+the Britons." (It is only fair to say that the present representative of
+this really ancient family, Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte, an expert genealogist,
+turns his back resolutely on the Beotian captain, and even on Brute
+himself, and generally lops his family tree in a merciless but most
+salutary fashion.)
+
+The College of Arms, among many amazing pedigrees, treasures one of a
+family "whose present representative is sixty-seventh in descent in an
+unbroken male line from Belinus the Great (Beli Mawr), King of Britain,"
+which actually exhibits the arms of Beli, who, poor man, died long
+centuries before heraldry was even cradled.
+
+Of families who derive descent from Charlemagne the name is legion; but
+even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity
+compared with others which have at their head no other progenitor than
+Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum
+roll, twenty-one feet long, of pedigrees, some of which "are traced back
+to 'Adam, Son of God,' without any conscious sense of the incongruous";
+and these records, we must remember, are in the hand of "a man
+thoroughly trustworthy as to the matters of his own time." There is in
+the College of Arms a similar family tree which commences boldly with
+Adam and the Garden of Eden; and an authority on Welsh pedigrees
+declares,
+
+     "A Welshman whose family was in any position in the
+     sixteenth century can, as a rule, without much trouble
+     find a pedigree thence to Adam; an Englishman who is
+     unable to do the same has a natural tendency to regard
+     all Welsh pedigrees with distrust, not to say contempt."
+
+Mr Horace Round gives some startling examples of flagrant dishonesty,
+where forgery is only one of the implements used. Take, for example,
+that shameful story of the "Shipway frauds," which is thus referred to
+by a clergyman of the parish.
+
+     "In the fall of 1896, by an elaborate system of impudent
+     frauds, an unscrupulous attempt was made to claim these
+     monuments for one who was an entire stranger to the
+     parish. An agent from London was employed in a search for
+     a pedigree. He, by fraudulent means, concocted a very
+     plausible story. Genealogies were manufactured, tombs
+     were desecrated, registers were falsified, wills were
+     forged--in a word, various outrages were committed, with
+     many sacred things in this parish and elsewhere. These
+     two figures, as part of the pedigree, were deposited in a
+     niche in the chantry; on either side were huge brass
+     tablets on which were engraven various untruthful and
+     unfounded statements."
+
+In another case Hughenden Church was desecrated to gratify the vanity of
+a family of Wellesbourne, anxious to trace their descent from the
+Montforts.
+
+     "They caused a monumental effigy of an imaginary ancestor
+     to be carved in the style of the thirteenth century
+     ...they adapted the plate-armour effigy to their purpose
+     by cutting similar arms on the skirts, and they had three
+     rude effigies fabricated by way of filling up the gaps
+     between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries."
+
+To give but two more out of many cases of similar imposture, the
+Deardens, many years ago, actually had a family chapel constructed in
+Rochdale Church with sham effigies, slabs, and brasses to the memory of
+wholly fictitious ancestors; while in two Scottish churches altar-tombs
+were placed to the memory of successive apocryphal lairds of Coulthart.
+Such are the lengths to which a craze for ancestry has carried some
+unprincipled persons; and there is no doubt that the arts of the forger
+are still enlisted in the service of people who crave long descent and
+do not scruple as to the methods by which they attain it.
+
+Happily, however, the mania for ancestors does not often take such
+extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather
+amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and
+obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or
+at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons
+(a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the
+baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in
+Aquitaine as long ago as the eighth century." The first Cooper was not,
+as the unlearned might imagine, a modest if respectable tradesman of
+that name--no, he was a member of the great house of De Columbers, one
+of whom was "Le Cupere, being probably Cup-bearer to the King"; Pindar,
+the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
+the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are "probably descended from
+William, a Norman of distinction"; while at least one family of Brownes
+springs lineally from "Turulph, a companion of Rollo," founder of the
+Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
+that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from _Smeeth_, "a level
+plain"; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
+certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.
+
+Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:
+
+     "a particle which has been all but unknown in England
+     since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
+     has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
+     character which the French nation have chosen to assign
+     to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
+     restorations in the modern Gothic manner."
+
+It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
+surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
+De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.
+
+This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
+the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
+it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
+accepted with a quite childlike credence:
+
+     "This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
+     train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
+     flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
+     from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
+     Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
+     patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
+     the famous Dane...."
+
+And again:
+
+     "The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (_sic_) of
+     Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins."
+
+This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
+attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
+actually named "Hugh Lupus" at the baptismal font, while his younger
+brother was labelled Richard "de Aquila"; and yet it is an indisputable
+fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
+Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
+who has no more traceable connection with Rollo than with the Man in
+the Moon.
+
+The Ducal House of Fife, we are told, "derives from Fyfe Macduff, a
+chief of great wealth and power, who lived about the year 834, and
+afforded to Kenneth II., King of Scotland, strong aid against his
+enemies, the Picts." The present Duke, however, has the good sense to
+disclaim any hereditary connection with the old Earls of Fife, and to
+place at the top of his family tree one Adam Duff, who laid the
+foundation of the family prosperity in the seventeenth century. The
+Spencers, it is claimed, spring lineally from the old baronial
+Despencers, "being a branche issueing from the ancient family and
+chieffe of the Spencers, of which sometymes were the Earles of
+Winchester and Glocester, and Barons of Glamorgan and Morgannocke."
+This, no doubt, is a very distinguished origin; but, alas! the earliest
+provable ancestors of this "noble" family were respectable and
+well-to-do Warwickshire graziers, and the first authentic title on the
+true pedigree is the knighthood conferred on John Spencer in 1519, less
+than four centuries ago. Similarly the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, are
+said to be derived from one Hugh de Russell, or Rossel (who took that
+name from his estate in Normandy), one of the Conqueror's attendant
+barons on his invasion of England. Here, again, facts fail lamentably to
+support the descent claimed, since the earliest known progenitor of this
+"great house" was that Henry Russell who was sent to Parliament to
+represent Weymouth in the fifteenth century, and whose great-grandson
+blossomed into the first Earl of Bedford. (It may, perhaps, be well to
+state that, although the pedigrees here criticised are those that have
+been or are widely accepted, they are not necessarily approved by the
+families whose descent they profess to give.)
+
+Another Norman ancestor who must go overboard is the alleged founder of
+the "noble" house of Bolingbroke--that "William de St John who came to
+England with the Conqueror as grand master of the artillery and
+supervisor of the wagons and carriages," since it can be positively
+shewn that the St John family first set foot in England a good many
+years after William I. was safely underground; and with this mythical
+William must also go that equally nebulous progenitor of the Fortescue
+family, "who" according to the venerable and almost uniform tradition,
+"landed in England with his master in the year 1066, and, protecting him
+with his shield from the blows of an assailant, was graciously dubbed
+'Fortescu,' the man of the stout shield." The Stourtons, so the
+"Peerages" say, were "of considerable rank before the Conquest, and
+dictated their own terms to the Conqueror"; but, as Canon Jackson, the
+learned antiquary, truly points out, "of this there is no evidence. The
+name is found, apparently for the first time, among Wiltshire
+landowners, in the reign of Edward I., when a Nicholas Stourton held one
+knight's fee under the Lovells of Castle Cary."
+
+The Duke of Norfolk has a family tree of very stately growth, and can
+well afford to repudiate a good many of the ancestors provided for him
+by "Peerage" editors. Certainly, if he ever read the following statement
+he must have smiled aloud:
+
+     "The Duke's proudest boast is that his name of Howard is
+     merely that of an ancestor, Hereward the Wake, whose
+     representative, Sir Hereward Wake, is still in
+     Northamptonshire."
+
+As a matter of fact, his Grace's earliest known ancestor was Sir William
+Howard, "who was a grown man and on the bench in 1293, whose real
+pedigree is very obscure"; and who, no doubt, would have laughed as
+heartily as his descendant of to-day at his imaginary derivation from
+the Conqueror's stubborn foe of the fens, Hereward the Wake.
+
+In the Fitzwilliam pedigree we encounter another nebulous knight of the
+Conqueror. "The Fitzwilliams," we are informed, "date so far back that
+their record is lost, but Sir William, a knight of the Conqueror's day,
+married the daughter of Sir John Elmley," and so on; and further, that
+at Milton Hall, Peterborough, one may actually look on an antique scarf
+which "was presented to a direct ancestor of the Fitzwilliams by William
+the Conqueror." The most skilled of our genealogists have sought in vain
+for an authentic trace of this gallant knight of Conquest days; and
+Professor Freeman does not hesitate to dismiss the story of his
+existence as "pure fable." But if Sir William of Normandy must fall from
+the family tree, his place is most creditably taken by Godric, a Saxon
+Thane, who, as a forefather, is at least as respectable as any Norman
+warrior in William's train.
+
+The house of Fitzgerald is credited with an ancestor, one Dominus Otho,
+"who is supposed to have been of the family of the Gherardini of
+Florence. This noble passed over into Normandy, and thence, in 1057,
+into England, where he became so great a favourite with Edward the
+Confessor that he excited the jealousy of the Saxon Thanes." Dominus
+Otho must too pass, with many another treasured ancestor, into the
+crowded genealogical land of the rejected; for the real founder of the
+Fitzgerald house was Walter, son of "Other," whose name is first met
+with in Domesday Book in 1086. The Otho story is shown to be "absolute
+fiction."
+
+In view of such examples of misplaced ingenuity exhibited by the makers
+of pedigrees for our noble families, one can almost read without a smile
+that
+
+     "there were Heneages at Hainton in the time of King Edwy;
+     they doubtless took part in the revolt which brought
+     Edgar to the throne, and it is not impossible that some
+     of them were in the train of Wulfhere, King of Mercia;"
+
+or that
+
+     "Lord Alington comes of a family of ancient lineage, one
+     of his ancestors being Sir Hildebrand de Alington, who
+     was marshal to William the Conqueror at the battle of
+     Hastings,"
+
+though we may know full well that the Sturt pedigree really begins in
+the seventeenth century, and that the earliest known Heneage lived and
+died some three centuries before.
+
+But "noble" families have no monopoly of misguided genealogy. "The
+immense majority of the pedigrees of the landed gentry," says a
+well-known officer of arms, "cannot, I fear, be characterised as
+otherwise than utterly worthless. The errors of the 'peerage' are as
+nothing to the fables which we encounter everywhere;" and the same may
+be said of many another collection of pedigrees which is a treasured
+possession in countless British homes.
+
+Some even justly famous men have not been proof against this insidious
+form of vanity and pretence. Edmund Spenser was ungenerous enough to
+"dismiss his known ancestry of small Lancashire gentry and plant himself
+modestly in the shadow of the newly discovered shield of arms of the
+noble house of Spencer, 'of which I meanest boast myself to be.'" And
+Lord Tennyson, whose ultimate ascertainable forefather was an eighteenth
+century Lincolnshire apothecary, was provided with a slightly
+differenced cadet's version of the arms of Archbishop Tenison, with whom
+he had no connection whatever.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Aberdeen, Earl of, 299
+  Affleck, Lady, 66
+  ----, Misses, 66
+  Alava, General, 44
+  Albemarle, Lord, 235
+  Aldenham, Lord, 333
+  Alexander, Emperor, 49
+  Alington, Lord, 343
+  ----, Sir Hildebrand, 343
+  Allerton, Lord, 334
+  Almack's, 45-49
+  Andrews, Mr, 71-73
+  Anglesey, Earl of, 165
+  Anne, of Austria, 2
+  ----, Princess, 113
+  ----, Queen, 331
+  Ardilaun, Lord, 333
+  Argyll, Duke of, 295
+  Arlington, Lady, 184
+  ----, Lord, 6, 182, 183
+  Armstrong, Lord, 334
+  Arran, Lord, 76
+  Ashburton, Lord, 327
+  Atholl, Duke of, 299
+  Avebury, Lord, 333
+  Aveland, Lord, 333
+  Aylesbury, Lady, 154
+
+  Bacon, Francis, 270
+  Barillon, 193
+  Baring, Alexander, 327
+  ----, Francis, Sir, 327
+  ----, Franz (Dr), 326
+  ----, John, 326-327
+  Barnard, Dr, 64
+  Bath, Marquess of, 330, 333
+  Beaconsfield, Lord, 159, 160
+  Beauchamp, Earl, 338
+  Beaufort, Duc de, 178, 179, 191
+  Becher, Sir William W., 251
+  Bedford, Duchess of, 46
+  ----, Dukes of, 340
+  Bentinck, Lord George, 156-164
+  Berkeley, Annie May, 162, 163
+  ----, Earl of, 162
+  Bilton, Miss Belle, 255
+  Bingham, Senator, 327
+  Blantyre, Lord, 1, 20, 305
+  Blessington, Countess of, 97, 100-109
+  ----, Earl of, 99-105
+  Blount, Christopher, 281
+  Boleyn, Godfrey, 330
+  Bolingbroke, Lord, 290, 321
+  Bolton, Duke of, 246
+  ----, Duchess of, 246
+  ----, Mary Catherine, 246, 247
+  Boothby, Brook, 46
+  Boswell, 296, 297, 298
+  Bottefeld, William de, 330
+  Bouveries, Laurence des, 332, 333
+  Bracegirdle, Mrs, 166-173
+  Bridges, Sir Thomas, 85
+  Bridgewater, Duke of, 295
+  Bristol, Earl of, 199, 204
+  Broke, Lord, 331
+  Brougham, Lord, 107
+  Browne, family, 338
+  Brunton, Louisa, 251, 252
+  Buccleuch, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 299
+  Buckingham, Duke of, 4-6, 36, 37, 80-85, 112, 181, 182
+  Buller, Lady Harriet, 48
+  Bunbury, Sir Thomas, 216-218
+  Burke, Sir Bernard, 62-63
+  Burleigh, Lord, 257, 258
+  Burney, Dr Charles, 22
+  Burnham, Barony, 334
+  Burrell, Mrs Drummond, 46
+  Burton, Lord, 333
+  Bute, Countess of, 238
+  Byron, Lord, 42-43, 45, 48, 102
+
+  Cadogan, Earl of, 208
+  Campbell, Colonel John, 295
+  Canning, 42
+  ----, Mrs, 35
+  Capel, William, 332
+  Cardigan, Earl of, 74
+  Carhampton, Earl of, 89
+  Carlingford, Lord, 7
+  Carnegie, James, 223-225
+  Caroline, Princess, 45
+  Carrington, Lords, 332
+  Castlemaine, Lady, 8-12, 14, 18, 115, 116, 184, 192
+  Castlereagh, Lady, 42
+  Catherine, Empress, 205
+  ----, Queen, 3, 10-12, 16
+  ----, the Great, 75
+  Cecil, Henry, (Earl of Exeter), 256-265
+  ----, Lord Thomas, 265
+  Chaffinch, Barbara (Countess of Jersey), 37
+  Charles I., 1
+  Charles II., 1-20, 75-84, 110, 112, 115, 116, 177-194, 207
+  Charlotte, Queen, 202, 214, 296
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 116, 291, 325
+  Child, Anne, 37-41
+  ----, Francis, 37
+  ----, Robert, 37-41
+  Christina, Queen of Sweden, 74
+  Chudleigh, Colonel, 195, 196
+  ----, Elizabeth, 195-206
+  Churchill, Arabella, 115
+  ----, John, 114-126
+  ----, Winston, 114, 120
+  Clarendon, Chancellor, 17
+  Cobden, 326
+  Cochrane, Lady Susanna, 222-227
+  Compton, Lady, 142-147
+  ----, Lord, 139-147
+  Congreve, 166
+  Conolly, Lady Louisa, 209
+  Coombe, William, 63
+  Cooper family, 338
+  Coutts, Thomas, 252-255
+  Coventry, Countess of, 287-290
+  ----, Earl of, 286
+  Cowper, Lady, 46
+  Cradock, Mr, 52
+  Craven, Earl of, 252, 330
+  ----, William, 330
+  Crawford, Lord, 306
+  Creevey, 43
+  Cromer, Earl, 327
+  Crosby, Sir John, 137
+  Cumberland, Duchess of, 91-95
+  ----, Duke of, 87-95, 286
+
+  Dalkeith, Earl of, 300
+  Dalrymple, Mr, 305
+  D'Arblay, Madame, 22
+  Darlington, Countess of, 324
+  Darnley, Lord, 275
+  Dashwood, Sir Samuel, 331
+  D'Aubigny, Duchesse, 184-194
+  Dearden family, 337
+  De Bathe, 338
+  De Beauchamp, 339
+  De Freville, 339
+  Delany, Mrs, 288
+  De Moleyns, 339
+  Denbigh, Earls of, 330
+  Derby, Earl of, 249
+  De Reti, Cardinal, 2
+  De Rodes, 339
+  De Trafford, 338
+  De Vere, 339
+  Devonshire, Duke of, 166
+  De Winton, 339
+  Dibdin, Charles, 22
+  Digby, Francis, 9
+  Dillon, Colonel, 77
+  Disraeli, 106, 159, 160
+  Doran, Dr, 166
+  D'Orsay, Count, 101-109
+  Dorset, Duke of, 166
+  Douglas, Archibald, 298-315
+  ----, Duke of, 299, 301, 302, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312
+  ----, James, Marquess of, 299
+  ----, Jean (Lady), 298-315
+  ----, Sholto, 312
+  Downe, Viscount, 333
+  Dryden, 182
+  Dudley, Earls of, 331
+  ----, Edmond, 266
+  ----, Guildford, 268, 269
+  ----, Robert (Earl of Leicester), 266-281
+  Duff, Adam, 340
+  Dundalk, Baroness of, 322
+  Dundonald, Earl of, 222
+
+  Eberstein, Princess von, 322
+  Edward VI., 268
+  Eglinton, Lady, 311
+  Eldon, Earl of, 333
+  Elizabeth, Queen, 137, 139, 142-144, 258, 269-281, 331
+  Errington, Mr Sheriff, 59
+  Errol, Lord, 216
+  Essex, Countess of, 277
+  ----, Earl of, 60, 248, 270, 332
+  Esterhazy, Princess, 46
+  ----, Prince Paul, 49
+  Evelyn, 84, 177, 193
+  Exeter, Earl of, 264
+
+  Fane, Lady Sarah Sophia, 37, 41
+  Farmer, Captain, 97-100
+  Farren, Elizabeth, 248, 249
+  Fenton, Lavinia, 245-246
+  Ferrers, Earl of, 51-61, 289
+  Feversham, Countess of, 322
+  Fielding, Sir Godfrey, 330
+  Fife, Dukes of, 340
+  Fitzgerald, Henry Gerald, 128-133
+  ---- family, 343
+  Fitzwilliam family, 342-343
+  Folkestone, Viscount, 332-333
+  Foote, 201
+  Forbes, George, 220-228
+  ----, Susan Janet, 227-230
+  Forneron, 189
+  Fortescue, Mr, 64-65, 68-69
+  ---- family, 341
+  Fox, Charles James, 62, 249
+  Frederick, The Great, 198
+  Freeman, Professor, 334, 342
+
+  Gainsborough, 3
+  Galloway, Earl of, 222
+  Gardiner, Lady Harriet, 104
+  Gascoigne, Sir Christopher, 330
+  George I., 317-325
+  ---- II., 209, 210, 287, 293
+  ---- III., 22, 87, 91-93, 210-221, 296
+  ---- IV., 45, 94
+  Gilchrist, Miss Constance, 255
+  Glastonbury, Baroness of, 322
+  Gloucester, Duchess of, 93
+  ----, Duke of (Richard), 137
+  Godefroi, M., 308-310
+  Godric, 343
+  Gordon, Lord William, 217-218
+  Graeme, Colonel, 214
+  Gramont, 10, 75
+  Granville, Lady, 43, 49
+  Gresham, Sir Richard, 333
+  Greville, William, 331
+  Grey, Lady Jane, 268, 269
+  Gronow, Captain, 46, 47, 48, 253
+  Grosvenor, Countess, 87-89
+  ---- family, 339, 340
+  Guise, Comte de, 2
+  ----, Duchesse de, 188
+  Gunning, Elizabeth, 282-297
+  ----, John, 282
+  ----, Maria, 282-297
+  ----, Mrs, 284
+  Gwynn, Nell, 186, 187, 192
+
+  Haldane, Mr, 304
+  Halhed, 26
+  Hambleden, Viscounty of, 334
+  Hamilton, Betty (Lady), 297
+  ----, Colonel, 174, 175
+  ----, Count, 4, 6, 10, 14
+  ----, Duke of, 173-176, 196, 197, 239, 249, 291-294, 299, 314
+  ----, George, 7, 8
+  ----, Susanna (Lady), 222
+  Hanmer, Mrs, 197
+  Harewood, Lord, 333
+  Harrington, Earl of, 282
+  ----, Lady, 46
+  Hastings, Marquess of, 148-156
+  Hatton, Sir Christopher, 277
+  Hay, Mr, 305
+  Heathcote, Gilbert, 333
+  Heneage family, 343
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 277-279
+  Henri IV., 191
+  Henrietta Maria, Queen, 2
+  Hereford, Lady, 277
+  Hereward, the Wake, 342
+  Hervey, Hon. Augustus, 197-199
+  ----, Lord, 93
+  Hewit, Mrs, 304, 308-310
+  Hewitt, Anne, 328, 329
+  ----, William, 328, 329
+  Heyward, Lord Mayor, 333
+  Hill, Captain Richard, 167-173
+  Hillsborough, Lord, 68
+  Hindlip, Lord, 333
+  Hoggins, Sarah (Countess of Exeter), 259-265
+  Holland, Lady, 210
+  ----, Lord, 211
+  Home, Earl of, 315
+  Hopetoun, Earl of, 299
+  Horton, Christopher, 89
+  ----, Mrs, 89-91
+  Howard, Bernard, 81
+  ----, Captain Thomas, 76-78
+  ----, Sir William, 342
+
+  Ibbetson, Captain, 37
+  Irnham, Lord, 81
+  Iveagh, Lord, 333
+
+  Jackson, Canon, 341
+  Jennings, Frances, 111, 112
+  ----, John (Sir), 111, 112
+  ----, Sarah, 110-126
+  ----, Squire, 110, 111
+  Jermyn, Henry, 9, 76-78, 112
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 107
+  Jersey, Earl of, 37, 41, 50, 333
+  ----, Countess of (Sarah), 41-50
+  Johnson, Dr, 25, 62, 296-298
+  ----, Mr John, 54-57
+
+  Kemble, John, 250
+  Kendal, Duchess of, 322-325
+  Kent, John, 157
+  Ker, Captain, 301
+  Kerr, Captain, 158
+  Kielmansegg, Baroness von, 318-320, 324
+  Kildare, Lady, 210
+  Killigrew, Harry, 78-81, 83
+  ----, Tom, 79
+  King, Colonel, 130-133
+  ----, Sir John, 127
+  ----, Mary (Hon.), 127-135
+  Kingsborough, Lady, 128, 130
+  ----, Viscount, 127, 129, 132, 133
+  Kingston, Earl of, 134
+  ----, Duchess of, 200-206
+  ----, Duke of, 199, 231
+  Koenigsmarck, 318
+
+  La Brune, Madame, 309, 310
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 104
+  Lauder, Farmer, 229
+  ----, Mrs, 230
+  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 99, 106
+  Leeds, Duke of, 329
+  Leicester, Earl of, 275-281
+  ----, Countess of, 281
+  Lennox, Lady Sarah, 207-230
+  Lieven, Princess of, 46
+  Lindores, Lord, 311
+  Linley, Elizabeth Ann, 21-35
+  ----, Mary, 28, 35
+  ----, Thomas, 21, 22, 24, 28
+  Long, Mr, 24, 31
+  Louis XIV., 2, 19, 79, 179-194
+  ----, Napoleon (Prince), 107
+  Lovelace, Lord, 166
+  Luttrell, Anne, 89-95
+  ----, Colonel, 89
+  ----, Elizabeth, 95
+  Lyndhurst, Lord, 106
+  Lyon of Brigton, 223, 224
+  Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, 335
+  ---- family, 335
+  Lyttelton, Thomas, Lord, 62-73
+
+  Macartney, Major-General, 174-175
+  Madden, Dr, 109
+  Mancini, Hortense de, 189
+  Mann, Sir Horace, 201
+  Mansfield, Lord, 311
+  Manvers, Lord, 160
+  March, Lord, 46, 208, 209
+  Marsante, Comte de, 96
+  Mary, Queen, 269, 270
+  ----, ---- of Scots, 275
+  Masham, Lord, 334
+  Matthews, Major, 26-30
+  Mazarin, Duchesse de, 192, 193
+  Meath, Bishop of, 22
+  Mellon, Harriet, 252-254
+  Meredith, Sir William, 52
+  Merrill, Mr, 197
+  Messalina, 74
+  Metcalfes, of Nappa, 329
+  Michele, 309, 310
+  Mohun, Charles Lord, 165-176
+  ----, Sir William de, 165
+  Monaldeschi, Count, 74
+  Monmouth, Duke of, 116, 191
+  ----, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Montagu, Edward Wortley, 231-242
+  ----, Lady Mary Wortley, 231, 238
+  Montford, Jack, 167-173
+  Montgomery, Mr, 48
+  ----, Miss, 48
+  Moore, Dr, 239
+  ----, Thomas, 101
+  More, Hannah, 202
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 137
+  Morland, Duchess of, 193
+  Mornington, Lady, 47
+  Mount Stephen, Lord, 334
+  Munster, Duchess of, 322
+  Murray, Captain, 97, 98
+
+  Napier, Hon. George, 218-220
+  Napier, Lord, 219
+  Neave, Sir Digby, 66
+  Newbattle, Lord, 212
+  Newcastle, Duke of, 204
+  Ney, Marshal, 104
+  Norfolk, Duke of, 342
+  Northbrook, Lord, 327
+  Northumberland, Duke of, 266, 268, 269, 327
+
+  O'Neill, Eliza, 249-251
+  Orleans, Duchess of, 179-181
+  Ormond, Duke of, 76
+  Ormonde, Lord, 277
+  Osborne, Edward, 328, 329
+  ----, Sir Thomas, 329
+  Osnabrueck, Bishop of, 324
+  "Other," 343
+  Otho, Dominus, 343
+  Overtoun, Lord, 334
+
+  Page, Mr, 170, 171
+  ----, Mrs, 168
+  Paget, Lady Florence, 151
+  Panmure, Earl of, 299
+  Parker family, 338
+  Payne, George, 159
+  Peach, Joseph, 64
+  Pelham, Mr, 311
+  Pepys, 5, 8, 12, 17, 18, 78, 80, 192
+  Peterborough, Earl of, 243, 244
+  Pierce, Mr, 12, 18
+  Pierrepoint, Hon. H.M., 265
+  Pindar, 338
+  Pope, 243
+  Portland, Duke of, 157, 163, 164
+  Portsmouth, Duchess of, 184-194, 207
+  Power, Edmund, 96-99
+  ----, Marguerite, 96-109
+  Pulteney, Mr, 196
+  Pusey, Canon, 333
+
+  Queensbury, Duchess of, 300
+  ----, Duke of, 311,
+  Querouaille, Louise de, 19, 177-194
+
+  Radnor, Earls of, 332-333
+  Radzivill, Prince, 205
+  Raikes, Mr T., 49
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 137
+  Rawlins, Colonel Giles, 77
+  Redmaynes (of Fulford), 329
+  Revelstoke, Baron, 327
+  Reynolds, 23
+  Richelieu, Duc de, 327
+  Richmond, Duchess of, 17-20
+  ----, Duke of, 13-18, 208, 218, 265
+  Ripon, Marquesses of, 329
+  Robinson, Anastasia, 243, 244
+  Robinsons, 328, 329
+  Robsart, Amy, 268-274
+  Rogers, Samuel, 45
+  Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 339
+  Rotier, Phillipe, 12
+  Round, Mr Horace, 336
+  Rowe, 166
+  Russell, Lord John, 44
+  ---- family, 340, 341
+  Ruvigny, 19
+  Ryder, Lady Susanna, 48
+
+  St Albans, Duke of, 254
+  St Aldegonde, Count, 48, 49
+  St Evremond, 182
+  St John family, 341
+  St Simon, 190
+  Salisbury, Marquess of, 330
+  Sandwich, Earl of, 231
+  Sault, Comte de, 179
+  Schulenburg, Ehrengard von der, 316-325
+  ----, Mathias (Count), 316
+  Scott, John, 333
+  Sedley, Catherine, 120-121
+  ----, Sir Charles, 120
+  Sefton, Lady, 46
+  Selkirk, Earl of, 314
+  Selwyn, George, 216, 288
+  Sentinelli, Count, 74
+  Seymour, Lady Elizabeth, 328
+  Shaw, Lady, 311
+  Sheffield, Lord, 277
+  Sheridan, Charles, 25
+  ----, Mrs (E. Linley), 31-35
+  ----, Richard Brinsley, 25-35
+  ----, Thomas (Dr), 25
+  ----, Thomas, 25, 283, 284
+  Shipway frauds, 336
+  Shirley, Lady Barbara, 51
+  ---- Laurence, (Earl of Ferrers), 51-61
+  Shrewsbury, Anna Maria, Countess of, 74-86
+  ----, Earl of, 75, 81, 82, 84, 86
+  Smith, Albert, 107
+  ----, General, 90
+  ----, John, 331
+  ----, Robert, 333
+  ---- family, 338
+  Smithson, Hugh, 328
+  Smythesonne, Smitheson, etc., 327, 328, 338
+  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 317
+  ---- Dorothea of Zell, 317, 323, 324
+  Southwell, Lord, 236
+  Spencer, Elizabeth, 139-147
+  ----, Sir John, 136-144, 340
+  ---- family, 340
+  Spenser, Edmund, 344
+  Standish, Charles, 48
+  Stanley, Lord, 297
+  Stephens, Catherine, 247-248
+  Stewart, Andrew, 314
+  ---- Colonel John, 302-315
+  Stourton, family, 341
+  Stow, 136
+  Strangways, Lady Susan, 211, 212, 215, 216
+  Strathcona, Lord, 334
+  Strathmore, Earl of, 223-224
+  Stuart, La belle, 1-20
+  ----, Lady Louisa, 300
+  ----, Madame, 2
+  ----, Walter, 2, 3
+  Sturt pedigree, 343, 344
+  Suffolk, Lady, 317
+  Surtees, Miss, 333
+
+  Taafe, Mr, 236, 237
+  Talbot, Sir John, 81
+  ----, Richard, 112
+  Tenison, Archbishop, 344
+  Tennyson, Lord, 344
+  Thackeray, 108
+  Thormanby, 157
+  Thurlow, 204
+  ----, Edward, Lord, 247
+  Tripp, Baron, 49
+  Turenne, Marshal, 116
+  Tyrconnel, Duchess of, 112
+
+  Vaillant, Sheriff, 59
+  Vendome, Philippe de, 191, 192
+  Vernon, Miss, 259
+  Villiers, Adela, Lady, 37
+  ----, Barbara, 1, 115
+  ----, Clementina, 50
+  ----, Sir George, 36
+  ----, George, Earl of, 37, 41
+
+  Wake, Sir Hereward, 342
+  Wales, Prince of (Henry Frederick), 95
+  Walpole, Horace, 23, 51, 89, 190, 201-204, 211, 289, 291, 295, 318, 321, 325
+  Walsingham, Countess of, 325
+  Warburton, General, 63
+  Ward, Mr Plumer, 72
+  ----, William, 331
+  Warwick, Earl of, 331
+  Wellesbourne family, 337
+  Wellington, Duke of, 42, 47, 48, 49, 107, 265
+  Wentworth, Lord, 138
+  Westmorland, Earl of, 38-40, 216
+  Wigton, Lady, 306, 307
+  Wilberforce, William, 106
+  Wilkes, John, 23
+  William III., 86
+  Willis, Mr, 47
+  Wilton, Earl of, 249
+  Wood, Major, 130, 131
+  Woodrow, 301
+
+  York, Duke of (James), 112, 115, 185, 193
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Love Romances of the Aristocracy, by Thornton Hall
+
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