N
7635
C68
1852
c.l
ROBARTS
Presented to the
LIBRARIES of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
Hugh Anson-Cartwright
o
J. HATTER. .
THE
COURT ALBUM:
OP
THE FEMALE ARISTOCRACY
ENGRAVED BY THE BEST ARTISTS,
FROM
DRAWINGS BY JOHN H A Y T E R.
LONDON:
DAVID BOGUE, 86, FLEET STREET.
MDCCCLII.
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
CONTENTS.
THE LADY ST. JOHN MILDMAY.
THE MARCHIONESS OF STAFFORD.
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE.
MISS EMILY DAWSON.
THE LADY MANNERS.
MISS GEORGIANA BUCKLEY.
MISS LETHBRIDGE.
THE LADY OCTAVIA GROSVENOR.
MISS MARY CORNEWALL.
MISS KATE SNEYD.
MISS LOUISA LENOX PRENDERGAST.
LADY ST. JOHN MILDMAY.
LADY ST. JOHN MILDMAY is the second daughter of the Right Honourable
Charles Shaw Lefevre, of Heckfield Place, in the county of Hants, M.P. for
South Hants, and Speaker of the House of Commons, and of Emma Louisa,
the youngest daughter of Samuel Whitbread, Esq., by the Lady Elizabeth,
his wife, sister to the present Earl Grey. The family of the Lefevres is of
Norman extraction, and came over from the neighbourhood of Rouen into
England at the date of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when Louis
XIV. lost so many thousands of his best and most industrious subjects,
and made not a single convert by that harsh and cruel proceeding. The
family of the Shaws, which is of high antiquity in the north of England,
became connected with the Lefevres by the marriage of Mr. Charles Shaw,
of Reading, Esq., barrister-at-law, son of George Shaw, Esq., by Maria
Green, his wife, with Helena, the only daughter and heiress of John
Lefevre, Esq., of Hampshire. He assumed, in consequence, the arms and
name of Lefevre. Their son, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, sat for the first time in
Parliament for Newton in 1796, and subsequently represented Reading.
Her ladyship's husband is Sir Henry Bouverie Paulet St. John
Mildmay, of Moulsham, in the county of Essex, being the eldest son, by the
first marriage, of Sir Henry Carew Mildmay. " The ancient and honourable
family of the Mildmays," says Morant, the historian of Essex, " derive
themselves from Hugo Mildme, who lived in 1147, in the thirteenth year of
King Stephen." They now represent the Earldoms of Fitzwalter and of
1
LADY ST. JOHN MILDMAY.
Sussex, through the Lady Frances Ratcliff, daughter of the third Lord
Fitzwalter, and second Earl of Sussex, son of the Earl of Sussex, the great
royal matchmaker of his day, who negotiated the marriage of Philip of Spain
with Queen Mary, and was only prevented by the coyness and coquetry of
Queen Elizabeth from wedding her, in the first instance, to the Archduke of
Austria, and in the second to the Duke of Anjou. Morant tells us that in
the reign of Henry VIII. there was a Sir William Mildmay, who married
Margaret, the daughter of Sir George Hervey, constable of the Tower, and
had by her four sons. "From these four sons the family of Mildmay
spread itself into numerous other branches, insomuch that about the end
of King James the First's reign, these nine families (which he enumerates)
were possessed of very large and considerable estates in Essex." The
honours and estates of Mildmay, nevertheless, in 1788 came by will through
Jane Mildmay, then Lady St. John, grand-niece of Carew Hervey Mildmay,
Esq., of Marks, in the county of Essex, the fourth descendant of the
second of these four sons, — into the ancient family of St. John, wrhose
lineage dates from a Sir William de St. John, the quartermaster-general,
or " supervisor of the waggon train," of William the Conqueror's invading
army, who assumed the name of Mildmay by injunction of testator. Of this
great heiress, the present Baronet is the grandson.
On the maternal side, Miss Lefevre can boast an unalloyed descent of
the most genuine and the purest nobility. To mention the name of Grey, is
to call up before us all that is illustrious in humanity. In such a line, it
would be, indeed, invidious to select names — all have an equal excellence,
and all would furnish an equally good example ; for it seems to have been
the especial study of this illustrious race, in both branches, male and
female, to carry into effect the sentiment of Gibbon, the historian, that
" Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a superior order in
the state, education and example should always, and will often, produce
LADY ST. JOHN MILDMAY.
among them a dignity of sentiment and a propriety of conduct, when
guarded from dishonour by their own and the public esteem."
Very fine portraits, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of both the maternal
grandfathers of Lady St. John Mildmay — Earl Grey, and Samuel Whitbread,
Esq. (father of the eminent statesman of that name) — are to be seen at
Southilo, Bedfordshire, the seat of William Henry Whitbread, Esq. Her
ladyship's great grandfather wras the intimate friend of Howard, the philan-
thropist, and was distinguished for his piety, integrity, and the munificence
of his charities. He has one daughter still surviving, to represent in their
maturity the virtues now budding in her posterity — the venerable Lady
Grey, the mother of Sir George Grey, one of her Majesty's Secretaries of
State.
m
m
THE MARCHIONESS OF STAFFORD.
THE groves of Cliefden, so oft and so sweetly sung by the poets, seldom
witnessed a more happy morning than that which united the richest heiress of
the north, the lovely daughter of John Hay Mackenzie, Esq., of Tarbet and
Cromartie (N. B.), to George Granville William, Marquess of Stafford, eldest
son of George Granville Leveson Gower, second Duke of Sutherland, one of
the wealthiest members of the peerage of Great Britain. But it was not
merely the great wealth that was united, or the beauty and high birth that
were combined in this union, — it was not merely the ancient lineage and
large landed possessions, but the acknowledged talents, the genius, and the
high intellect on both sides, that made this marriage a matter of singular
interest among the aristocracy of the kingdom. In a reflective survey of the
men who have added heraldic honours to their families, and been ennobled
in the younger branches, it cannot escape observation, that, in almost every
case, the mothers were the daughters either of men distinguished for their
superiority, or of mothers descended from those whose mental energy and
superiority have been publicly acknowledged ; and the formation of character,
as is well known, depends, to a great extent, on the early culture always be-
stowed by the mothers and elder women of a family on the scions of their race.
When, therefore, to the hereditary genius of the Gowers, the Levesons, and
the Granvilles, it was known would be added not merely the charms, but the
high mental cultivation of Miss Hay Mackenzie, a still further advance, it
was justly reasoned, might be anticipated, and a still more glorious future
be regarded as in prospect for a family which, to all appearances, has already
reached the highest eminence in the State. This marriage was known to
be the dearest wish, lying close to the heart of Mr. Hay Mackenzie, who
hoped to see revived, in some future branch of the issue of so noble a union,
the attainted honours of his Earldom of Cromartie. He lived to see this
last wish gratified ; but the Halls of Tarbet were soon in darkness for the
1
THE MARCHIONESS OF STAFFORD.
loss of their owner ; yet might it be said that the blaze, which shortly after
illumined " Cliefden's proud alcove," seemed as if some spark had fallen
from the torch of Hymen, and lighted up a beacon-fire to celebrate that
happy wedding.
The father of the Marchioness, John Play Mackenzie, Esq., of Tarbet and
Cromartie, was one of the largest landed proprietors in Scotland, being the
lineal descendant and representative of the Earls of Cromartie, the last of
whom, imprisoned in the Tower, and tried and convicted as a traitor for
the share he had taken in the last rising of the Pretender, narrowly escaped
with his head, but was finally pardoned, and died in an obscure lodging in
Poland-street, Oxford- street, leaving his son, a wandering soldier, fighting
for honour through the north of Europe, and finally achieving it and
retrieving his estates at a small penalty, but not his family honours.
The story of this eldest and only son of the Cromarties is not an
uninteresting record of the struggle of a noble spirit to raise by his single
arm the fallen honour of his house, and prove himself as worthy to be the
first and founder of a family of nobles, as he was to be the last noble of
his race. John Lord Macleod, born 1727, engaged in the rebellion of 1745,
and was taken, with his father, and carried to London. A true bill was
found against him, at St. Margaret's Hill, 23rd August, 1746; he pleaded
guilty on the 20th December following, when he thus addressed the Court :
" My lords, I stand indicted for one of the most heinous of all crimes, that
of rebellion and treason against the best of kings, and my only rightful lord
and sovereign. Would to God, my lords, I could plead not guilty to the
charge. But as I cannot, I beg leave to assure your lordships, my heart
never was consenting to the unnatural and wicked part I then acted.
Remember, my lords, my youth; and that I am in that state of life when
an unhappy father's example is almost a law. But my heart is full— from
the deep sense I have of his miseries and my own ; and I shall only add,
that as I must and do plead guilty to the charge, if, on your lordships' kind
representation of my case, his Majesty shall think fit, in his great goodness,
to extend his compassion to me, what of future life or fortune I may ever
have shall be entirely devoted to the service of his Majesty, on whose
mercy I now absolutely throw myself." A pardon passed the 'Great Seal
THE MARCHIONESS OF STAFFORD.
in his favour, 26th January, 1748. He went into the service of the king
of Sweden, by whom he was created Count Cromarty, and made Com-
mandant of the Tower and Sword, with which honour he was invested by
King George III. in 1778, in compliance with the request of his Swedish
Majesty. He returned to Britain, 1777, raised two battalions of High-
landers, was constituted Colonel of the 71st Foot, accompanied them to the
East Indies, and greatly signalized himself. In 1782, he returned home as
Major-General, had the family estates restored to him by Act of Parliament
in 1784 — by payment of 10,000/. of debts affecting the property — but not
the honours; and dying without issue at Edinburgh, in 1789, was buried
in the Canongate Churchyard, by the side of his mother Isabella Gordon,
Countess of Cromarty.
The Lady Isabel, his sister, who succeeded to the family estate of
Cromarty in 1796, was the wife of George Lord Elibank; and by the
marriage of her daughter, the Honourable Maria Murray, to Edward Hay.
of Newhall, afterwards Edward Hay Mackenzie, of Cromarty, brother of
George seventh Marquis of Tweeddale, conveyed the estates into that family,
which, thenceforward, assumed the surname of Mackenzie.
The tradition of the origin of the family of Hay is curious. " In the
reign of Kenneth III., A.D. 980, the Danes, who had invaded Scotland, having
prevailed at the battle of Luncarty, near Perth, were pursuing the flying
Scots from the field, when a countryman and his two sons appeared in a
narrow pass, through which the vanquished were hurrying, and impeded for
a moment their flight. ' What !' said the rustic, ' had you rather be
slaughtered by your merciless foes, than die honourably in the field ? Come !
rally ! rally !' And he led them on, brandishing the yoke of his plough, and
crying out that help was at hand. The Danes, believing that a fresh army
was falling upon them, fled in confusion, and the Scots thus recovered the
laurel which they had lost, and freed their country from servitude. The
battle being over, the old man, afterwards known by the name of Hay, was
brought to the king, who, assembling a parliament at Scone, gave to the
said Hay and his sons, as a just reward for their valour, so much land on
the river Fay, in the district of Gowrie, as a falcon from a man's hand flew
over till it settled ; which being six miles in length, was afterwards called
3
THE MARCHIONESS OF STAFFORD.
Errol. This falcon and the plough yoke, the Earls of Errol still preserve
in their arms. This brave old man, then, was the founder of the families of
Errol and Tweeddale, with whom the Marchioness of Stafford is connected on
the paternal side.
Sir Roderick Mackenzie, the common ancestor of the Mackenzie family,
received the honour of knighthood from James VI. as a recompence for the
part he took in civilizing the northern part of Scotland.
John, another member of the family, was created a Baronet by Charles I.
In 1702, the dignities of Lord Macleod and Castlehaven, and Viscount of
Tarbet, conferred on the second baronet by James II., were aggrandized to
the Earldom of Cromartie by Queen Anne. The baronetcy now revived, and
at present held by Sir James Sutherland Mackenzie, is a curious illus-
tration of the old family connexion between the Sutherlands and the
Mackenzies of Tarbet, of which the marriage of Miss Hay Mackenzie with
the Marquis of Stafford might be considered a revival ; for Alexander of
Ardlock, in Sutherland, through whom the baronetcy was revived, he being
the second son of the first baronet (whose blood had become attainted), was
the grandfather of Alexander, of Ardlock, who married Margaret, daughter
of Robert Sutherland, Esq., of Langwell, co. Caithness, the twelfth in descent
from William de Sutherland, fifth Earl of Sutherland, and the Princess
Margaret Bruce, sister and heir of David II.
Mr. John Hay Mackenzie, the father of the Marchioness, died in 1849,
a short time after his daughter's marriage. He was the only son and heir
of Eden Hay Mackenzie, uncle of the present Marquis of Tweeddale, by the
Hon. Maria Murray Mackenzie, eldest daughter and co-heiress of George,
sixth Lord Elibank, by the Lady Isabella Mackenzie, eldest daughter and
co-heiress of George, third Earl of Cromartie. Mr. Hay Mackenzie married
April 23rd, 1828, Anne, third daughter of Sir James Gibson Craig, Bart.,
and his only issue was Anne, the subject of this memoir.
Into the history of the family of Sutherland it is unnecessary to enter ;
wherever genius, high birth, the arts, or the greater powers of the State have
been spoken of, there will the names of Granville, Leveson Gower, and
Sutherland be found written on the hearts of men.
4
'••
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
SOME years since, a celebrated artist, when composing a picture of Edith
Plantagenet entreating Richard Coeur de Lion to spare the life of Sir
Kenneth, is said to have consulted from all sources the coins, effigies, illumi-
nations, and other documents of the period, for the contours and features
of the Plantagenets, and was surprised when, having finished his work, he
was assured that he had made an admirable likeness, in carriage and feature,
of a young lady who was descended, through her father, from Owen Tudor
and Katherine, the widow of Henry V., and was allied, on her mother's side,
to the Chandos race. The same perfection of form, noble features, small
(high-bred) hands and feet, and majestic carriage, were as distinct in her as
in the most distinguished of her princely ancestors, and her mind would
have graced either a throne or a cottage.
Some such a care in the collection of individual excellences of the
ancestresses of many a race of high nobility might have produced just such
a picture as we have now before us in the portrait of Miss Eliza Seymour,
a lady of whom it might be justly said that she who combines the Seymours,
the Herveys, and the Waldegraves, has greatness of soul, wit, beauty, and
nobility — the amplest of all female fortunes — by hereditary descent her own.
Miss Eliza Seymour is the daughter of Frederick Charles William Sey-
mour, fifth son of the Lord Hugh Seymour, himself the fifth son of Erancis,
second Baron, and first Marquis of Hertford. Her mother is the Lady
Augusta Hervey, eldest daughter of the Marquis of Bristol. She is the grand-
1
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
daughter, on her mother's side, of the Lady Elizabeth Albinia, second
daughter of Clotworthy, first Lord Templetown, and on her father's, of the
Lady Anne Horatia, third daughter of James, second Earl of Waldegrave.
The very name of Seymour is redolent of romance — and in point of
romantic interest, nothing can exceed the story of the unfortunate couple
persecuted by Queen Elizabeth, — Lord Edward Seymour, created by that
queen in the first year of her reign, Baron Beauchamp and Lord Hertford,
and the Lady Catherine, sister of Lady Jane Grey. Nowhere is this tale
more touchingly told than where, from the nature of the work, it might be
least expected — Hallam's Constitutional History.
Henry VIII. had settled the succession in remainder to the house of
Suffolk, descendants of his second sister Mary, to whom he postponed the
elder line of Scotland. Mary left two daughters, Frances and Eleanor—
the former became wife of Grey, Marquis of Dorset, created Duke of Suffolk
by Edward, and had three daughters, the Lady Jane, Catherine, and Mary.
Eleanor Brandon, by her union with the Earl of Cumberland, had a
daughter, who married the Earl of Derby. At the beginning of Elizabeth's
reign, or rather after the death of the Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Catherine
Grey was by statute law the presumptive heiress of the crown. The queen,
as we have seen, as some recompence for the judicial murder of his father by
the Protector, in 1552, had raised the eldest son of his second marriage to
high honours, in the first year of her reign ; but this favour did not long
continue, for when —
" The Lady Catherine Grey proving with child, by a private marriage, as they both alleged,
with the Earl of Hertford, the queen, always envious of the happiness of lovers, and jealous
of all who could entertain any hopes of the succession, threw them both into the Tower in 1563.
By connivance of their keeper, the lady bore a second child during this imprisonment. Upon
this Elizabeth caused an inquiry to be instituted before a commission of privy councillors and
civilians; wherein, the parties being unable to adduce proof of their marriage, Archbishop Parker
pronounced that their cohabitation was illegal, and that they should be censured. He was to be
pitied if the law obliged him to utter so harsh a sentence, or to be blamed if it did not. Even
2
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
had the marriage never been solemnized, it was impossible to doubt the existence of a contract,
which both were still desirous to perform. But there is reason to believe that there had been
an actual marriage, though so hasty and clandestine that they had not taken precaution to
secure evidence of it. The injured lady sank under this hardship and indignity; but the legiti-
macy of her children was acknowledged by general consent, and, in a distant age, by a legislative
declaration.
" The parties alleged themselves to have been married clandestinely, in the Earl of Hert-
ford's house, by a minister whom they had never before seen, and of whose name they were
ignorant, in the presence only of a sister of the earl, then deceased. This furtive and hasty
ceremony was necessary to protect them from the queen's indignation. ' Their ignorance of the
clergyman who performed the ceremony,' says Mr. Hallam, who carefully examined the pro-
ceedings now in the British Museum, Harl. MSS. 6286, 'is not perhaps very extraordinary; he
seems to have been one of those vagabond ecclesiastics who, till the Marriage Act of 1752, Avere
always ready to do that service for a fee.' * * *
" Catherine, after her release from the Tower, after four years' confinement, was placed in
the custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, but still suffering the queen's displeasure, and
separated from her husband. Several interesting letters from her and her uncle to Cecil are
among the Lansdowne MSS., vol. vi. They cannot be read without indignation at Elizabeth's
unfeeling severity. Sorrow killed this poor young woman the next year, who was never per-
mitted to see her husband again. The Earl of Hertford underwent a long imprisonment, and
continued in obscurity during Elizabeth's reign, but had some public employments under her
successor. He was twice afterwards married, and lived to a very advanced age, not dying till
1621, near sixty years after his ill-starred and ambitious love, and having lived to see his grand-
son elope with another royal maiden ;" as if the 15,000^. fine inflicted on himself by the Star
Chamber had been no warning to his posterity. " It is worth while to read the epitaph on his
monument in the south-east aisle of Salisbury Cathedral — an affecting testimony to the purity
and faithfulness of an attachment rendered still more sacred by misfortune and time."
Of the two children, the first, Edward, died young, the second, Edward,
Lord Beauchamp, gallantly vindicated his father's honour and his mother's
truth, and, as we learn from Dugdale, succeeded in discovering and pro-
ducing in court the priest who had married them. He wrung from the
unwilling justice of his sovereign the letters patent of Earl of Hertford,
which he bequeathed to his son, Sir William Seymour, who continued
the hereditary romance and the ambition of the House of Seymour, to
wed with royal blood, by attempting to marry the Lady Arabella Stuart,
without the consent of James I. He was obliged to flee the kingdom,
while the lady was imprisoned in the Tower, where she pined a lovelorn
3
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
prisoner, until released by death in 1615. The Lord Seymour returned
in the reign of Charles I., and fought a gallant fight for royalty during
the civil wars. He lived to marry, a second time, the Lady Frances
Devereux, daughter of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, and died — his last
days gilded by a restoration to his family honours — as Duke of Somerset, by
the reversal of the attainder, on the restoration of Charles II., which honours
finally, as if in due course of hereditary justice — a circumstance much to be
remarked in the history of ancient families,— have returned into the first
branch of the Seymours, whence they originally sprung.
Of the Bristol family, what more can be said than that all the world of
wit and fashion, from almost time immemorial, have re-echoed the strong
expression of Johnson — " If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him," — or that
lively sentiment of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who, by way of expressing
the originality of character peculiar to that family, said that she divided the
world into three classes, " men, women, and Herveys." The rough nature
of Dr. Johnson found reason for his gratitude to Thomas and Henry
Hervey. The younger brothers of the celebrated Lord Hervey were friends
of the great lexicographer, and — as Mr. John "Wilson Croker tells us, in his
preface to ' Lord Hervey's Memoirs,' — " in a small way, — when small things
were great to him, — were his benefactors." In this their kind patronage of
literary merit they but followed the example of their predecessors, John
and William, the sons of Sir William Hervey by his first marriage with
Susan, daughter of Sir Robert Jermyn, of Rushbrook, in the county of
Suffolk. By-the-bye, a curious family tradition is told of this Sir William's
second marriage —
"It is said," observes Gage, in his 'History of Suffolk,' "that Sir George Trenchard, Sir
John Gage, and Sir William Hervey, each solicited Lady Penelope Gage, daughter of the Countess
Rivers, of Hengrave, in Suffolk, in marriage at the same time, and that to make peace between
the rivals, she threatened the first aggressor with her perpetual displeasure, humorously telling
them, that ' if they would wait, she would have them all in their turns,'— a promise which was
actually performed."
4
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
This Sir William had two sons, John and William ; the latter of whose
virtues and rare endowments survive in the celebrated Elegy, written by
Cowley, on his early death ; while Grainger, who speaks in his Biography
of "the great worth and accomplishments" of John Hervey, tells us, that
to him Cowley owed his advancement.
He was my friend, the truest friend on earth,
A strong and mighty influence joined our birth;
Nor did we envy the most sounding name,
By friendship given of old to fame.
None but his brethren, he, and sisters knew
Whom the kind youth preferred to me,
And e'en in that we did agree,
For much above myself I loved them too.
Say, for you saw us, ye Immortal Lights !
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledsean stars, so fam'd for love,
Wondered at us from above.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Art, Eloquence, and Poetry,
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
Large was his soul, as large a soul as e'er
Submitted to inform a body here,
High as the place 'twas, shortly, in Heaven to have,
But low and humble as his grave;
So high, that all the virtues there did come
As to the chiefest seat,
Conspicuous and great,
So low that for me, too, it made a room.
" This," says Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Eochester, in the " Life of Cowley,"
prefixed to his edition of the poet's works, " brought him into the acquaint-
ance of Mr. John Hervey, the brother of his deceased friend, from whom
he received many offices of kindness, through the whole course of his life,
5
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
but principally this, that by this means he came into the service of my Lord
St. Albans."
On the Restoration, John Hervey — the friend and patron of Cowley —
was returned to parliament, and became treasurer to the Queen. " He
was" says Burnet, " one whom the king loved personally ; and yet, upon a
great occasion, he voted against that which the king desired. So the king
chid him for it. The next day, another important question falling in,
he voted as the king would have him. So the king took notice of it at
night, and said, ' You were not against me to-day.' He answered, ' No,
sir, I was against my conscience to-day.' This was so gravely delivered,
that the king seemed pleased ; and it was much talked of."
His nephew, John, Baron Hervey of Ickworth and first Earl of
Bristol, brings us with the Herveys to the time of Marlborough; and if
court stories be true, his attention to a royal lady was less fatal, and more
graciously rewarded, than in the instance of the unfortunate Seymours.
But the Bristol family motto, " Je n'oublieray jamais," reminds us that
the title was due to the friendly offices of the Duke of Marlborough, as
Lord Bristol tells us, in a letter, 9th July, 1704; in which he assures his
grace that this motto bears a special reference to his perpetual gratitude.
The Duchess Sarah, in her " Account of her Conduct," distinctly states
that she " never was concerned in making any peer but my lord Hervey,
the present Earl of Bristol. I had made a promise to Sir Thomas Felton,*
—Mrs. Hervey's father, — when the Queen came first to her crown, that
if her Majesty should ever make any new lords, I would use my interest
that Mr. Hervey should be one; and accordingly, though I was retired
into the country under the most sensible afiliction for the death of my only
son, &c."
The Lady Mary Hervey, whose praises have been sung by Pope, was
* His mother was a niece of James Earl of Suffolk.
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
the daughter of General Nicholas Lepel, lord proprietor of Sark. This lady
so celebrated for her wit and beauty, was one of the maids of honour to
Caroline, Princess of Wales, and a principal ornament of her court. The
muses of Pope, Gay, Churchill, and Voltaire, have all sung her praise ; and
Chesterfield gives her character in these words :
" Lady Hervey has been bred all her life in courts ; of which she has acquired all the easy
good breeding and politeness, without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman
should have, and more than any woman need have; for she understands Latin perfectly well,
though she wisely conceals it No woman ever had more than she has — Ce ton de
la parfaitement bonne compagnie, des manieres engageantes, et le je ne scais quoi que plait."
Lady Louisa Stuart, who connects by her personal reminiscences, the
past with the present, — says, in her " Introductory Anecdotes :"
" Lord Hervey 's avowed enemies — Pope for one — went out of their way to compliment and
eulogize her. However, their praises were not unmerited : by the attentions she retained in age
she must have been singularly captivating when young, gay, and handsome; and never was
there so perfect a model of the finely polished, highly bred, genuine woman of fashion. Her
manners had a foreign tinge, which some called affected, but they were gentle, easy, dignified,
and altogether exquisitely pleasing."
Pope's spite against Lord John Hervey, her husband, — which every
reader of the Satires so well remembers, — was occasioned solely by jealousy;
for Pope, — as Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Miss Bellenden, the com-
panion of the fair Lepel, have told us, — could love, despite his illness and
his ugliness; and what is worse, could not bear to be laughed at, as he
fancied himself to be, when all his lady friends were married off, one after
another, to handsome rivals. He liked not to find himself, as Aaron Hill
described him —
" Tuneful Alexis on the Thames' fair side,
The ladies' ' plaything,' and the Muses' pride !"
Great was his mortification when the discovery of their marriage was
made, and the town rang with the celebrated ballad to the tune of Molly
Mogg, with which those wicked wits, Pulteney and Lord Chesterfield,
hoaxed Lady Hervey :
7
MISS ELIZA SEYMOUR.
" For Venus had never seen bedded
So perfect a beau and a belle,
As when Hervey the handsome was wedded
To the beautiful Molly Lepel."
Posterity has done Lord John Hervey justice; and even Walpole, in his
" Royal and Noble Authors," acknowledges his great merit. That they
were a happy couple is matter of history ; and that to the many graces,
virtues, and beauties that adorned Lady Mary, she added the more solid
merits of woman, — as a daughter, a wife, and a mother, — is testified by her
father-in-law, Lord Bristol. That her virtues, as her loveliness, were
hereditary, we can instance from Churchill, who thus speaks of her
daughter Caroline :
" That face, that form, that dignity, that ease,
Those powers of pleasing, with the will to please,
By which Lepel, when in her youthful days,
Even from the currish Pope extorted praise,
We see transmitted in her daughter shine,
And view a new Lepel in Caroline !"
JOHN HAYTER
THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE.
THE beautiful subject of this memoir, CHARLOTTE MARIA, Countess of
Strathmore, is the eldest daughter of William Keppel Barrington, Viscount
Barrington, of Ardglass, County Down, and Baron Barrington, of Newcastle,
County Dublin, in the peerage of Ireland, who married the Hon. Jane
Elizabeth Liddell, fourth daughter of Thomas Lord Ravensworth, and never
were the ancestral graces and the traditionary loveliness of that ancient
house more fully and more faithfully represented than in the noble lady, in
the attempt to trace whose lineaments with truthful perfectness the art of
portraiture, even in its highest elevation, must find itself defeated.
The family of her ladyship's father is of old Norman descent; but the
main founder of its modern greatness was John Shute, Esq., son of Ben-
jamin Shute, Esq., who was bred up to the legal profession, and seems, if
we may judge from contemporary estimation, to have been universally
respected and beloved as the Wilberforce and Romilly of his time.
Dean Swift, in writing to Archbishop King, in a letter dated June 30,
1708, speaks of him as follows: — "One Mr. Shute is named for secretary
to Lord Wharton ; he is a young man, but reckoned the shrewdest head in
England, and the person in whom the presbyterians chiefly confide ; and if
money be necessary towards the good work in Ireland," (the Repeal of the
Sacramental Test alluded to in another part of the Dean's letter), " it is
reckoned he can command as far as 100,000/. from the body of dissenters
here. As to his principles, he is truly a moderate man, frequenting the
church and the meeting indifferently."
The motto of the Barrington family is " Honesta quam Splendida"
1
THE COUNTESS OF STEATHMOKE.
("How glorious is Honesty !") : it should rather have been, " Detur Digniori,"
(" Let it be given to the most worthy") ; since this Mr. John Shute received
by will from a certain John Wildman, Esq., of Becket, in Berkshire, a large
landed estate there situated, (formerly the inheritance of Martin the
Eegicide,) although Mr. Shute was not allied, and was almost unknown
personally to that gentleman; who formally declared in his will that his
only reason for making Mr. Shute his heir was, that he regarded him as the
most excellent man within the circle of his acquaintance, and did therefore
adopt him, as the most worthy, to be his heir, after the manner of the
Romans ! Nor was this all — for in the course of a few years Francis Bar-
ririgton, Esq., of Tofts, in the county of Essex, who had married Mr. John
Shute's cousin, Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Samuel Shute, Sheriff of London,
died without issue, having executed a similar settlement of his property
in favour of the same Mr. John Shute. It was in pursuance of this last
devise, that Mr. Shute adopted the arms and surname of " Barrington,"
which were granted to him by act of parliament. He was afterwards raised
to the peerage. His lordship married Anne, daughter and co-heiress of Sir
William Daines, by whom he had a large family, of whom one son was the
gallant Samuel Barrington, Admiral of the White — whose flag now adorns
the village church of Becket ; another, Daines Barrington, a king's counsel
and justice of Chester, and another, the Right Rev. Dr. Shute Barrington,
Bishop of Durham.
On the paternal side, therefore, the Countess of Strathinore is related
to the Anstruthers of Hindlesham Hall, Suffolk, the Earl of Dartmouth,
the Earl of Chichester, the Earl of Albemarle, the Thornycrofts of Thorny-
croft Hall, Cheshire, the Lovells, the Clarges, and the Gilberts.
On the maternal side, through the Liddells and the Ravensworths, her
ladyship is connected with the family of Lord George Seymour, the Wellesleys,
the Lane Foxes, the Marquis of Normanby, the family of Sir Hedworth
2
THE COUNTESS OF STKATHMORE.
Williamson, Bart., the Yillierses, the Earl of Hardwick, and Lord Bloom-
field. In the earlier portions of the genealogy of this ancient family of the
Liddells her ladyship comes in relation with the Sir Thomas Lee who
married Bridget Lee, of Woodward, Maid of Honour to the Queen of
Bohemia, — and through him with the daughter of Sir Harry Vane, of Kaby
Castle, whose son married the daughter of the gallant Colonel Sir John
Bright, who beat up the quarters of Lord Newcastle and the royalist
forces at Wakefield, and governed Sheffield for the Parliament, who
could afford to affront Cromwell, when he aimed at sovereignty, and who,
retiring from the field, aided, in after years, in restoring the monarchy as
the best guarantee for the peace and prosperity of the country.
Her ladyship's husband, Thomas George Lyon Bowes, Viscount Lyon
and Baron Glamis, Tannadyce, Seidlaw, and Stradichtie, in the peerage of
Scotland, Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn, is the representative of a long
line of the great feudal chiefs of Scotland, although the founder of the family
is said to have been a certain Leoni, or Lyon, who came over from France,
and found great favour in the eyes of King Edgar, from whom he ob-
tained considerable grants of land in Perthshire. The first Sir John
Lyon on record married the Lady Jane Stuart, youngest daughter of King
Robert II. ; the second Sir John wedded the Lady Elizabeth Graham,
daughter of the Earl of Strathern; the third, Patrick, was one of the
hostages sent to England by the Scotch as security for the ransom of their
king, James I., — and as to the sixth Lord, he saw his lady burnt before
his eyes on the Castle Hill at Edinburgh, on an accusation of attempting
the life of James V. by witchcraft, — and then was dashed to pieces on the
rocks while attempting to escape from the Castle. Their son was respited
from execution, and lived to hear that his accusers had confessed the whole
story to be a fabrication, and then came out of prison restored to all his
honours and estate.
3
THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE.
But all the romance of the family of Strathmore is not confined to the
male branches, — there is a sad story of an heiress, Eleanor Bowes, who mar-
ried John, the ninth Earl.
This Miss Eleanor Mary Bowes, the heiress of Gibside, was the repre-
sentative of the second marriage of her ancestor, Sir George Bowes, " the
surest Pyllore the Queen's Majestic had in these (the northern) Partes" at
the time of the rising of the North. On the outbreak of this " Rebellion of
the Five Wounds," which involved in ruin the great houses of Percy and
Nevill, Sir George Bowes, of Streatham, the main prop of Elizabeth's govern-
ment in Durham, threw himself into Barnard Castle, as a royal fortress ; and,
after a gallant defence of eleven days against the forces of the rebel Earls,
which afforded time to the Lords Warwick and Sussex to advance and sup-
press the rising, surrendered on honourable terms. In an ancient ballad, the
siege is thus commemorated : —
Then Sir George Bowes, he straightway rose,
After them some spoyle to make;
These noble erles turned back againe,
And aye they vowed that knight to take.
That Baron he to his castle fled;
To Barnard Castle then fled he;
The uttermost walls were eathe to win,
The erles have won them presentlie.
The uttermost walls were lime and brick;
But though they won them soon anone,
Long ere they won the innermost walles,
For they were cut in brick and stone.
Immediately after the suppression of the insurrection, Barnard Castle
was leased for twenty-one years to Sir George Bowes, in requital of his
faithful and important services.
Miss Eleanor Bowes, the weak descendant of this stout Sir George,
was the heiress of Gibside, and the proprietress, in consequence, of some
THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE.
of the largest collieries in the county of Durham. Old Mr. Scott, the
father of Lord Eldon, was the fitter, or manager of the labour depart-
ment of these collieries ; and it is singular that to the romantic silliness of
this lady the legal world is indebted for the appearance of those shining
luminaries of the law — Lords Eldon and Stowell. John, ninth Earl of
Strathmore, married this wealthy young lady in 1767, and left her a sprightly
widow in 1776, with five children. The Countess of Strathmore was a lady
of much imagination and vivacity of temper, but of weak and wavering mind.
Her wealth and her beauty soon brought suitors around her, and amongst
others appeared, most prominently, an impudent Irish adventurer, a lieute-
nant in a marching regiment, one Andrew Stoney. His incessant attentions
and professions excited the lady's imagination ; and when, on some libellous
verses appearing against her in the " Morning Post" (which, by-the-bye,
were written by himself), he publicly challenged and fought (by private
arrangement between themselves) the editor, Dudley Bate, and then appeared
with a few scratches (known to have been inflicted by himself) before her
ladyship, — she surrendered at discretion. The sham duel was fought on
the 13th of January, 1777, and the marriage took place at St. James's
Church on the 17th.
" On this occasion," says Mr. Surtees, in his Memoirs of Lords Eldon
and Stowell, " Lady Strathmore is said to have evinced, by the composition
of the following lines, that the Muses had not been ungrateful for the cul-
tivation which she had bestowed upon them. Alas ! that their aid should
have been invoked in such a cause !
Unmoved, Maria saw the splendid suite
Of rival captives sighing at her feet,
Till in her cause his sword young Stoney drew,
And to revenge the gallant wooer flew :
Bravest among the brave ! and first to prove,
By death or conquest, who best knew to love !
THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE.
But pale and faint the wounded lover lies,
While more than pity fills Maria's eyes.
In her soft breast, where passion long had strove,
Resistless sorrow fixed the reign of love.
" Dear youth," she cries, " we meet, no more to part;
Then take thy honours due — my bleeding heart."
The beggar was now on horseback, — Mr. Andrew Stoney assumed
the surname and arms of Bowes, took possession of Streatlam Castle, and
lived a roaring life both in Durham and London. The younger Scotts acted
as his agents in law and election matters, and were thus brought forward in
life. The Countess, who had paid £12,000 immediately after her mar-
riage, to compromise an action for breach of promise, brought by Mr.
Grey, whom she had jilted, now found that, in the words of Franklin,
she had "paid too dear for her whistle." Stoney, elevated by her love,
and supported in his assumed rank by the wealth of his confiding wife, treated
her with ridicule and insult, laughed at her vanities, jeered her whims, and
finally resorted to such brutality, — though she minded his neglect more
than all — that she contrived to escape from the durance in which he held
her, and threw herself upon the protection of the Court of King's Bench.
The Lord Chief Justice appointed a constable to protect her, but Stoney
bribed this man, and again carried off the Countess, who was finally rescued
from him by a strong party just as he had thrown her across his horse,
and was galloping off. She was fortunate enough, finally, to obtain a
divorce; and the ruffian died in penury.
MISS EMILY DAWSON.
Miss EMILY DAWSON (whose sister, late Maid of Honour to Her Majesty,
married the Hon. William Parnell, eldest brother and heir presumptive to
John Yesey Parnell, second Baron Congleton, of the County of Chester) is
the second daughter of the Honourable Lionel Charles, fourth son of John,
second Viscount and first Earl of Portarlington, Queen's County, and of the
Lady Elizabeth Dawson, third daughter of George Frederic, seventh Earl
of Westmeath, and sister, by the half-blood, of the present Marquis of West-
meath, — and grand-daughter of Charles, first Marquis of Drogheda,
On her paternal side, the female blood, brought into relationship with
Miss Emily Dawson, is that of the Hertfords and Seymours, the Ponsonbys
and the Besboroughs, the Falmouths, the Coles, Baronets of Newland, the
Robartes of Radnor, the Spencers of Wormleigh, the Wriothesleys and the
Southamptons, the Loftuses and the Elys, the Colleys of Castle Colley,
County Meath, — the noble family of the Dawsons of Dawsons' Court,
and the Carlows, the Dawson-Damers, the Luttrells and the Carhamptons,
and, — by the Portarlingtons, — the Lowthers and the Lonsdales, the Apple-
girths of Scotland, the Prestons of Ardvallagh, the Darners of Dorset, and
the Earl of Bute.
On the maternal side, Miss Emily Dawson claims a relationship with
the Whites of Pickfordstown, County Kildare, the Stapletons, the Counts
Molza of Modena, the Nugents of Dysart, the Bullers and the Ormondes,
the Riverstons, and the Earls of Kildare— the Morrises and the Droghedas,
MISS EMILY DAWSON.
the Mountcashels and the Trenches, the Lord Southwell, and the Marquis
of Drogheda.
The ancient family of the Darners of Came, in the county of Dor-
chester, whence were derived the Darners, Earls of Dorchester, have been
infused, as it were, and taken up into the family of the Dawsons and
Portarlingtons by the marriage, in 1737, of Mary, the eldest daughter of
Joseph Darner, Esq., of Came, father of the first Earl of Dorchester, with
William Henry Dawson, the first Baron Dawson, and Viscount Carlow, the
great grandfather of the fair subject of our present memoir. The pro-
perty of the Darners ultimately passed into the Dawson family, on the death
of Lady Caroline Darner, in 1829 — and the uncles of Miss Emily Dawson
have added that name to their own. Nor could a better portrait be drawn
of the female descendants of this union of old families, than by reverting to
that sketched some years since, of the Hon. Mrs. Anne Dainer, daughter of
General Conway, the beloved friend of Horace Walpole, who, having under-
taken the young lady's education, did all that lay in the power of friendship,
cultivated taste, and polished society, to render the young lady as complete
in every classical perfection of the mind as nature had made her in person.
" In a short time she was regarded with eyes of admiration by persons of
all ages, rank, and situations. Mothers proposed her as a model to their
daughters ; and daughters, not knowing how to envy Avhat engaged their
love, tried to copy her plan of life, her looks, her manners, nay, even her
dress."
THE LADY MANNERS.
THE LADY MANNERS is the wife of John Thomas Manners Sutton, Baron
Manners, of Foston, Lincolnshire, who, in the year 1842, succeeded
his father, the Right Hon. Thomas Manners Sutton, late Lord Chan-
cellor of Ireland, and also Baron Manners, of Foston. It may be re-
marked, amongst the most singular coincidences of the period, that one
individual, John third Duke of Rutland, should number among his
children, as his first son, the world-famous Marquis of Granby, from whom
proceeded that Lord Robert Manners, whose gallant but untimely fall Avhile
commanding the RESOLUTION, 74 guns, in that ever-memorable action of
Sir George Rodney's in the West Indies, on the 12th of April, 1782, drew
down a nation's sympathetic tears, — and, secondly, Lord George Manners
Sutton, of whose sons one has been Archbishop of Canterbury, one, Speaker
of the House of Commons, one, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and two of them
created peers of the realm— the Viscount Canterbury, and the Baron
Manners, of Foston. Into further details of this illustrious family it is
unnecessary to enter : from that Robert de Manners who first walled Ethale
and dealt for peace on behalf of King Edward III. with David Bruce and
his adherents, to the Thomas thirteenth Lord Ros, Knight of the Garter
and first Earl of Rutland, and down to the last and present duke, the
Rutlands and the Manners have always filled the most honourable offices in
the State, while they have cast upon these a new lustre by their talents,
rather than ennobled them by their rank.
Her Ladyship is the third daughter of Captain William Bateman Dash-
wood, R.N., and is related, on the paternal side, by the female branches,
THE LADY MANNERS.
to the Lisles, of Crux Easton, Wilts, and Moyles Court, Hants, whose
ancestor, the great Sir John Lisle, was one of the first twelve Knights of
the Garter and Lord High Admiral of England, and a valiant crusader;—
he lies buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where his arms may be seen
emblazoned, and where many a tale is even yet told to his honour, — also to
the Lady Lisle, who suffered death, at the cruel instance of Judge Jefferies,
in the Monmouth Rebellion, for giving food and shelter to two starving
dissenting ministers, who had escaped from the defeat of the rebel army at
Sedo-emoor; also to the Phillips's, Baronets of Garendoii; the Marches, of
Witterley Park, Cambridgeshire ; the Dashwoods, of Wells, Lincolnshire ;
the Earls of Malmsbury, the Earls of Effingham, the Earls of Lauderdale,
and numerous other noble families.
Captain Dash wood entered the navy, August 1799, at the age of nine
years, served under Rear-Admiral Graves, in the DEFIANCE 74, at the
battle of Copenhagen, when eleven years of age, and was appointed mid-
shipman at thirteen in the IRIS, under the late Lord Gambier. His many
gallant services are recorded in the Gazettes from 1807 to 1811, when he
lost his right arm in the hard-fought action in which the ACTIVE captured
LE POMONE. From this date to 1816 he distinguished himself on many
occasions, and was present at the bombardment of Algiers, on the night
previous to which one of his chivalrous achievements is thus recorded by
Lord Exmouth in his dispatches.
" Captain Dashwood had with difficulty succeeded in bringing away, disguised in midship-
man's uniform, the wife and daughter of the consul, leaving a boat to bring off their infant child
coming down in a basket with the surgeon, who thought he had composed it, but it unhappily
cried in the gateway, and, in consequence, the surgeon, three midshipmen — in all eighteen
persons, were seized and confined as slaves in the usual dungeons. The child was sent off next
morning by the Dey, and, as a solitary instance of his humanity, it ought to be recorded."
Captain Dashwood accepted the retirement in 1840, and receives a
pension of 200?., in consideration of his wound. He married, 17th April,
1820, Louisa Henrietta, only daughter of Frederick Bode, Esq.
JOHN. HOTTER
MISS GEORGIANA BUCKLEY.
THE late Lord Barrington was once asked by a German prince, " Pray, my
lord, of what rank is an esquire in England?" His lordship replied, " Sir,
I cannot exactly tell you, as you have no equivalent for it in Germany ; but
an English esquire is considerably above a German baron, and something
below a German prince." If ever this were true of any English private
family, it is eminently so of that family, the virtues and the traditionary
beauty of the female branch of which, are represented in the subject of
the portrait now before us. Miss Georgiana Buckley is the eldest daughter
of the Rev. Henry William Buckley, the third son of Edward Percy
Buckley, Esq., of Woolcombe Hall, Dorset, and Minesteed Lodge, Hants,
Lieut. -Colonel of the South- west Hants Militia, who filled for thirty years
the office of first equerry, and afterwards groom of the bed-chamber to
George III., and who was not only one of those men whom kings delight to
honour, but to whom they pay the even higher compliment of always
keeping them about their persons. Colonel Buckley died at the good old
age of eighty-one, and was succeeded by the present representative of the
family, Lieut. -Col. Edward Pery Buckley, of the Coldstream Guards,
formerly page of honour to George III., and now an equerry to her Majesty.
The first Colonel Buckley married, in 1782, the Lady Georgiana West,
daughter of John, second Earl De la Warr, of Angus, a lady of the bed-
chamber to the Princesses, daughters of George III. : through her grand-
mother, therefore, Miss Buckley is descended from many of the most distin-
guished families in the kingdom.
On the maternal side, Miss Buckley may boast a descent through
1
MISS GEOKGIANA BUCKLEY.
many channels from the royal houses of England, Scotland, and France.
The Johnstones, of Westerhall, co. Dumfries, have been from time to time
honourably allied with the Lords Oliphant, Douglas, Traquair, and Elibank ;
and with the noble and knightly families of Somerville, Scott, Lockhart,
Gramme, the Earl of Bath, &c. Their most immediate royal descent is from
King James II. , of Scotland, and his queen, Mary of Gueldres. The late
Sir John Lowther Johnstone, Bart., M.P. for Weymouth, was one of the
claimants of the Annandale Peerage. He succeeded his uncle, Sir William
Johnstone Pulteney, Bart., and left issue by his wife, Miss Gordon, of
Cluney, three children ; of whom Charlotte Margaret, the eldest daughter,
became the wife of the Rev. Henry Buckley.
The family of the Buckleys, or Bulkeleys, is of a very ancient Welsh
extraction, and derived from a common ancestry with that of the Lord
Bulkeley, — of which family, indeed, that of the Buckleys is, by lineal descent,
the true representative. The present branch at one time possessed ancient
property in Whitechapel, where their family arms are engraved in stone
upon several old manorial buildings. Nor is this to be wondered at, as
we learn from Stow and the older writers on topographical antiquities, that
it was the custom of the great families to have their country houses and
villas in Whitechapel, Bow, and that now distasteful neighbourhood, which
was then pleasant fields, and groves, and rural lanes, through which mur-
mured the gentle Lea — the delight and solace of the anglers of that period,
as we learn from Izaak Walton.
On the paternal side, Miss Buckley enumerates amongst her kindred,
relatives, and family connexions, the Earl of Radnor, the ancient Earls of
Lincoln and through the Bulkeleys of the ancient Cheshire branch, by inter-
marriage, a line of ancestors reaching up to Owen Tudor, — and a long way
beyond him, if genealogies are to be accredited. The title and property
passed out of the family by the marriage of Emma, Viscountess Dowager
Bulkeley, — only daughter and heiress of Thomas Rowlands, Esq., of Nant,
2
MISS GEORGIANA BUCKLEY.
in Caernarvonshire, and widow of the seventh Viscount Bulkeley, — to Sir
Hugh William, Bart., and by the subsequent decease of her son, Thomas
James Warren, the seventh Viscount, without issue, whereby the property
of the Rowlands, the property of the Owens of Peniarth, Merionethshire,
and a greater portion of that of the Bulkeleys, passed into the family of
the Williams of Penrhyn — the present representative of which, Sir Richard
Bulkeley Williams Bulkeley, assumed by sign manual, in 1827, the additional
surname of Bulkeley. The family of Buckley, however, have always borne
the arms of the elder branch of the family — Sa. a chevron, between three
bulls' heads, embossed, arg. ; crest, out of a ducal coronet, or, a bull's head,
arg., armed of the first. Motto — Nee temere, nee timide. The Bulkeleys of
Stanlow bore, for some time, the arms of the former branch, — two chevronels
between three bulls' heads, caboshed, arg., — but they have of late years
assumed also those of the elder branch.
By female descent, on the paternal side, Miss Buckley is related to
the Earls De la Warr, the Stanhopes and the Chesterfields, the Mitchells
of Culham Court, Berks, the Myddeltons of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, the
Whinyards, the Earl of Clancarty, the Wilds of Droitwich, the Mortimers
of Mortimer's Hall, in the county of Southampton, the Poynings, the old
Lord Hungerford, the ancient baronial family of the Wests, the Cantilupes
of Hempston-Cantilupe, Devonshire, the Lords Mowbray, the Barons St.
Amand, the Cowleys of Gatton, Surrey, the Fitzherberts of Somerset, &c.
Indeed, it would be impossible to enumerate the various branches of ancient
and noble families which have been made to intertwine with the ancestral
tree of the Buckleys by the fair fingers of their female ancestresses— for
none other have we enumerated. Of the many historical recollections
which crowd themselves on such a theme, there is one of the stout Baron
Roger La Warr, third baron, who shared in the glory of Poictiers, and was
one of those brave Englishmen, who beat in the guard of King John of
France, struck down, successively, two lords, who bore his royal banner,
3
MISS GEORGIAN A BUCKLEY.
and finally captured the king himself. Who is there that cannot realize to
his mind's eye the scene so vividly described by Froissart, who tells the
story as he had it from an eye-witness?—
" As soon as the two marshals were come back, the prince asked them if they knew any-
thing of the King of France 1 They replied, < No, Sir, not for a certainty; but we believe he
must be either killed or made prisoner, since he has never quitted his battalion.' The prince,
then, addressing the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, said: 'I beg of you to mount your horses,
and ride over the field, so that on your return you may bring me some certain intelligence of
bim.' The two barons, immediately mounting their horses, left the prince, and made for a small
hillock, that they might look about them; from thence they perceived a crowd of men-at-arms,
on foot, who were advancing very slowly. The King of France was in the midst of them, and
in great danger; for the English and Gascons had taken him from Sir Denys de Morbeque, and
were disputing who should have him, the stoutest bawling out, ' It is I that have got him.'
' No, no,' replied others; ' we have him.' The King, to escape from this peril, said, ' Gentlemen,
gentlemen, I pray you to conduct me and my son, in a courteous manner, to my cousin the
prince ; and do not make such a riot about my capture, for I am so great a lord that I can
make all sufficiently rich.' These words, and others which fell from the king, appeased them a
little ; but the disputes were always beginning again, and they did not move a step without
rioting. When the two barons saw this troop of people, they descended from the hillock, and
sticking spurs into their horses, made up to them. On their arrival, they asked what was the
matter : they were answered that it was the King of France, who had been made prisoner, and
that upwards of ten knights and squire? challenged him at the same time, as belonging to each
of them. The two barons then pushed through the crowd by main force, and ordered all to
draw aside. They commanded, in the name of the prince and under pain of instant death,
that every one should keep his distance, and not approach unless ordered or desired so to do.
They all retreated behind the king; and the two barons, dismounting, advanced towards the
king with profound reverences, and conducted him in a peaceable manner to the Prince of
Wales."
Amongst the ten knights and squires who claimed the honour of
the king's capture, two alone were enabled to support their pretensions
to the satisfaction of the Prince of Wales and his Council of Barons,
Sir Roger La Warr, and Sir John Pelham, the ancestor of the Dukes of
Newcastle and of the Lords Pelham and Yarborough. These received,
as their guerdon, — in testimony of their valiant exploit, — the Lord De la
Warr the crampet or chape of the sword of the captive king, and Sir John
Pelham the buckle of his belt — knightly mementoes of a gallant achieve-
ment !
4
MISS LETHBRIDGE.
THE gentle face which beams forth so kindly from the opposite page upon
the reader of this memoir is the representative of an old English Somerset-
shire and Devonshire family, who, if royal lineage were of much importance
to enhance the sturdy worth that has distinguished them for eighteen
generations, could boast that in the nineteenth the blood of Loth-brig, or
Loth-brook, the Dane, — who held the bridge against a pursuing host of
Saxons, and rallied his recreant followers back to conquest, in some time
subsequent to Alfred — was united with that of King Edward I. The arms
of the family emblazon the legend of their origin in the two ravens, their
supporters, and the " argent over water, proper, a bridge of five arches
turreted, gules, in chief, an eagle displayed, sable. Crest out of a mural
crown, a demi-eagle displayed proper."
The original of this portrait is the daughter of Sir John Hesketh
Lethbridge, of Sandhill Park, Somersetshire, baronet, by his second wife
Julia, daughter of Sir Hugh Hoare, of Stourhead, Wilts.
The family of Lethbridge is of great antiquity, the present Baronet
claiming to be nineteenth in direct descent from King Edward I. They
have possessed through many generations extensive property in the counties
of Devon and Somerset ; and have allied themselves by intermarriage with
many of the most powerful families in the West of England.
The grandfather of Miss Lethbridge, Sir Thomas Buckler Lethbridge,
was Colonel of the second regiment of Somersetshire Militia, and repre-
1
MISS LETHBRIDGE.
sented the County in the House of Commons, where for upwards of twenty
years he was a distinguished leader of the agricultural party.
The very mention of the name of Lethbridge seems to call up before the
mind a vision of the hard-fought party contests of the latter years of George
IV., when the country party, headed by Sir Thomas Lethbridge, rallied round
the ministry, and did stout battle to stay the torrent of perilous innovation
on the commerce, the agriculture, and the constitution of the country. But
Sir Thomas Lethbridge was a generous and a manly opponent — and more
than once the country party stepped forth to check the proceedings of a
government, who thought that because they always had a majority, they
might deal with the people as they pleased, or sacrifice the interests of the
Country to the wishes of a Court. The clear good sense, the firm unshaken
integrity, and the true, honest, and loyal spirit of English Gentlemen were
then best represented, when during twenty years Sir Thomas Lethbridge
was leader of the country party in the House of Commons.
On the mother's side we find, in 1713, Sir Richard Hoare representing
the City of London in Parliament. In 1758 was born Sir R. Colt Hoare,
F.R.S., &c. &c., the celebrated antiquary, and historian of Stonehenge. This
gentleman married Hester, daughter of the first Lord Lyttelton.
Sir John Hesketh Lethbridge, who succeeded to the title as third
baronet at the decease of his father, 17th October, 1849, married first,
27th March, 1817, Harriett Rebecca, only daughter of John Mytton, Esq.,
of Halston, county Salop, and of Dinas Mowddy, county Merioneth, by
whom (who died 13th March, 1826) he has had, Thomas Christopher
Mytton, Lieutenant of the 85th regiment, (died 31st March, 1844, at
St. Kitt's;) John Periam, born 9th November, 1824; Harriet Agatha
Mytton, married in 1840, to Henry Pratt, Esq.; Jessy Catherine Hesketh;
Annette, married 22nd February, 1840, to Christopher G. R. Collins, Esq.,
of Helena House, Sidmouth ; Caroline Gifford, married at Paris, to John
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MISS LETH BRIDGE.
Tharp Burton Phillipson, Esq., eldest son of the late Rev. Burton Phillipson
Phillipson, of Herringswell House, county Suffolk.
Sir John married, secondly, 15th March, 1827, Julia, second daughter
of Sir Henry Hugh Hoare, Bart., and has other issue, Wroth Acland, born
28th January, 1831, an officer in the Rifle Brigade; Ernest Acland, R.X.,
H.M.S. Trafalgar, died at Malta, 1st May, 1848; Albert Arthur Erin, born
in Ireland, 24th May, 1844; Walter Buckler, born 9th March, 1845; Ada
Cicely Georgina, married 3rd May, 1845, to George Stone, Esq., eldest son
of George Stone, Esq., late of the 7th Hussars, of Ellsworth, county
Northampton; Adora Julia, married 10th January, 1848, to Peter Wells,
Esq., of Forest Farm, Windsor Forest, and died in 1850; Anna Maria;
Grace Catherine; Alda Gertrude; Agnes Maria; Julia Decima; Susanna
Octavia.
THE LADY OCTAVIA GROSVENOR.
THE charming features in the page before us seem to smile upon us from a
bower of genealogical trees bearing golden apples more rich than those of the
Hesperides. A Grosvenor, a Westminster, and a Sutherland form a very
bouquet of ancestral flowers, the most exquisite that could be imagined
by the finest heraldic fancy.
The Lady Octavia is the ninth child (but the eighth living, whence the
name) and the fourth daughter of Richard Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor,
Viscount Belgrave, Baron Grosvenor of Eaton, in the County Palatinate of
Chester, and Marquis of Westminster. Her mother is the Lady Elizabeth
Mary, youngest daughter of George, first Duke of Sutherland. Her grand-
mother, on the father's side, was the Lady Eleanor, only daughter of
Thomas, first Earl of Wilton; and on the maternal side, was Elizabeth,
Countess of Sutherland, and Baroness of Strathnaver, in her own right;
who brought in her title of Sutherland and the Barony of Strathnaver to
the family of the Gowers, the Trenthams, and the Granvilles ; but more
than all, brought into this noble family an hereditary example of the
domestic virtues which has raised their happiness to a higher elevation
than all the wealth and honours that could have been accumulated since
Charlemagne, could have procured for them. Of the father and mother of
this Countess of Sutherland the following affecting story is narrated :
William, the seventeenth Earl of Sutherland, married in 1761, Mary,
eldest daughter and co-heiress of William Maxwell, Esq., of Preston, in the
1
THE LADY OCTAVIA GKOSVENOR.
Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The Earl and Countess both died in the year
1766, just after the former had completed his thirty-first year; of which
melancholy circumstance the following affecting account has been given :
" The loss of their eldest daughter made so deep an impression upon
the spirits of the Earl and Countess, that they visited Bath in hopes the
amusements of that place would dispel their grief. After a few weeks'
residence there, his lordship was attacked with a fever ; and the Countess
devoted herself so entirely to the care of her husband, that she attended
for twenty-one days and nights without leaving him or retiring to bed.
This constant watching and fatigue, and the apprehensions of his danger,
affected her to such a degree, that she died 1st of June, in her twenty-sixth
year, sixteen days before the Earl fell a victim to disease. They were not
less ennobled by their virtues than their high rank; their untimely fate
was deeply felt, and universally deplored. They were lovely and pleasant in
their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided — but interred in one
grave, in the Abbey Church of Holyrood-House, on the 9th of August,
1776."
The Countess was their only surviving child; and, on her ladyship's
right to the title of Sutherland being established against the claims set up
by Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonstown, and George Sutherland, of Fare, —
the victory was welcomed as a national triumph, — so great was the interest
felt in the illustrious orphan throughout Scotland. Such is the rich inhe-
ritance of worth, that he who marries a Sutherland may expect the lady
of his love to bring with her as a dowry — such the bright example, which
now renders the homes of Ellesmere, the lordly halls of Dunrobin, and of
Eaton, each and all of them, hallowing examples of domestic felicity.
To enter into a description of the family connexions of this noble
lady's house, on either side, would require a greater volume than must
suffice for this our small collection of brief memoirs of the new stars that
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THE LADY OCTAVIA GROSVENOR.
rise from time to time in the court of Queen Victoria; one example of the
Sutherland quarterings may suffice, which, when emblazoned, comprise
Gower, Leveson (with its appropriate laurels, so richly won in later days
by pens, more powerful to conquer than the swords of old), Gower,
Granville, Earl of Bath, Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater, Stanley, Strange of
Knockyn, Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with his crowned lion,— Clifford, Earl
of Cumberland, the royal arms, and over all, on an escutcheon of pretence,
the arms of the ancient Earls of Sutherland.
On the side of the Westminsters we say nothing, because there is so
much that can be said ; nor will we be led from our purpose by Gilbert Le
Gros Veneur, " who came over in the train of the Conqueror," though
despite our resolution, we are led aside, by the name of his uncle, Hugo
Lupus, Count of Avranches, afterwards Earl of Chester, and uncle of
Duke William,— to tell one little story of the method of wooing pursued
by that victorious Conqueror — a chivalrous custom in the way of paying
court to his intended, which, it is to be hoped, has not descended to his
posterity : —
" When William thought of marrying, he sought a wife who would secure him a powerful
alliance : he demanded Matilda, daughter of Baldwin of Lille, Count of Flanders, and daughter of
Adela of France, sister of the king, Henry I. The Count of Flanders was at this time at war
with the Emperor ; and the Pope, entirely devoted to Henry III., interdicted the two lords from
contracting that alliance. The subjects of William were the most warlike of all the west ; those
of Baldwin the most industrious and richest : their union appeared formidable to the Emperor;
but William took no notice of his threats or those of the Pope. He repaired to Bruges in 1053.
Warned that Matilda had declared that she would never marry a bastard, he waited for her us
she came out of church, entreated her, frightened her, and if we can believe the Chronicle of Tours,
beat her, until he had obtained her consent." — SISMONDI'S FRANCE UNDER THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.
But it would be a poor compliment to the young lady, who is the
subject of so much learning, were we not to let the world know, that all
these knights and warriors, these Gilberts, and Sir Thomases, and Sir
Richards, great as they were, and noble as are their names, did not effect so
3
THE LADY OCTAVIA GROSVENOR.
much to aggrandize this family of the Grosvenors, as did a certain humble
little Miss Mary Davis ; who, taking a fancy one fine morning, while walking
in her father's (Mr. Alexander Davis's) fields at Ebury, in Middlesex,
to a fine noble gentleman whom she saw passing, gave her hand and
heart to Sir Thomas Grosvenor, the third baronet, and with it brought
the great estates they now hold in London and its vicinity into the family.
This might have been in 1685, when Sir Thomas, then Mayor of Chester,
came up to London to represent that city in James the Second's first
parliament; and Miss Davis, doubtless, saw him as he passed, a gallant
trooper, by Ebury, towards Hounslow Heath, where was encamped the
regiment of the Earl of Shrewsbury, in which the gallant Mayor of Chester
commanded a troop of horse. It might have been on that day, when, just
returning from his regiment, he was closeted with the king, and offered the
regiment and a peerage if he would assent to the Bill just brought in for
repealing the penal laws and test acts. This offer, splendid as it was, he
refused, nobly preferring the religion and liberty of his country to all the
distinctions that might be obtained by their sacrifice. He resigned his
command at once, went to the House, and gave his vote against the Bill.
It is fitting also that we should notice that three sisters of the Lady
Octavia have married, first, Eleanor, Algernon Percy, Baron Prudhoe, now
fourth Duke of Northumberland ; secondly, Mary Frances, Thomas Augustus
Wolstenholme, Viscount Parker, now fifth Earl of Macclesfield; third,
Elizabeth, the Hon. Beilby Richard Lawley, eldest son of Lord Wenlock :
an instance of noble alliance which can be paralleled only by her ladyship's
cousins, the daughters of the Duchess of Sutherland, who have married — the
first, the Lady Elizabeth Georgiana, to the Marquis of Lorn, now Duke of
Argyll; the second, the Lady Evelyn, to Charles Lord Blantyre; the third,
the Lady Caroline, to the Marquis of Kildare, heir to the only Irish
dukedom of Leinster.
4
MISS MARY CORNEWALL.
Miss MAKY COENEWALL is the daughter of Frederick Hamilton Cornewall,
Esq., of Delbury Hall, in Shropshire, anci grand- daughter of the Right Rev.
Dr. Cornewall, the late Bishop of Worcester. Her mother is Fanny
Harriett Caulfeild, eldest daughter of St. George Caulfeild, Esq., of Donamon
Castle, Roscommon County, Ireland, and grand-daughter of the first
Baroness Crofton. The family of Cornewall is of ancient standing in Here-
fordshire ; and its progenitor is presumed to have been Richard de Corne-
wall, a son of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who bore the title of King of the
Romans, and was the second son of King John.
On the maternal side, Miss Mary Cornewall may claim kindred with
the noble house of the Croftons of the Mote, County Roscommon, Avhose
ancestor, John Crofton, was auditor-general to Queen Elizabeth, and went
over to Ireland with the unfortunate Earl of Essex, where he obtained large
grants of land in Roscommon and Leitrim ; with the Berkeleys, the
Lowthers. and Lonsdales, the Morrises of Clareinont, the Earl of Galloway,
the Charlemonts, the Caulfeilds, from whom have emanated some of the
most eminent ornaments of the Irish bench, — and with most of the distin-
guished families of Ireland.
On the paternal side, Miss Cornewall is entitled to claim kindred,
through the late Bishop Cornewall's mother, Anne, second daughter of
George, third son of James, the seventh Earl of Abercorn, with the
Onslows, the Readings, the Hamiltons, the celebrated Captain James
MISS MAEY COENEWALL.
Hamilton, who distinguished himself at the siege of Londonderry, and
succeeded to the title of Abercorn as a peer of Scotland, being subsequently
created Baron Mountcastle and Viscount Strabane, — to the Eliots, the
Craggs, the Ciftons of Leightone Bromeswolf, and consequently to the
ancient ducal family of Richmond and Lennox, — to the gallant Frederick
Hamilton, the brave comrade in arms of Gustavus Adolphus, King of
Sweden, — to the Vaughans, the Gores of Manor Gore, the Humes of
Castle Hume, — to the Earls of Aberdeen, the Marquess of Douglas, thence
to the royal blood of Scotland, the Regent Hamilton, and his sons, — the
one the lover, and the other the last friend, of the unhappy Queen Mary,—
and lastly, to the witty author of De Grammont's Memoirs, and the no
less celebrated and accomplished beauty, Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, who
fixed the roving affections of Philibert Count De Grammont, and carried
him off, as his countess, from the pleasures of the courts of England and
France into the enjoyments of domestic peace; — a rich and lordly inherit-
ance, indeed, of wit, and beauty, and high honour, and ancient chivalry, to
be embodied and represented in the modest and retiring form of one young
English lady !
MISS KATE SNEYD.
" IT is a reverend thing," says Lord Bacon, in his Fourteenth Essay, " to
see an ancient castle or building not in decay, or to see a fine timber-tree
sound and perfect — how much more to behold an ancient noble family
which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time!" These
impressive words, the voice of truth and genius sounding through
a silver trumpet, will fitly serve to usher in a memoir of Miss Kate
Sneyd, the youngest of the five daughters of the late Major Ralph Henry
Sneyd, eldest son of the late Reverend Wetenhall Sneyd, of New Church,
Isle of Wight, and of Bletchingley, Surrey.
Major Sneyd married Jane Robina D unbar, youngest daughter of
William Dunbar, Esq., of the family of Dunbar of Durn, Murray shire, a
baronet of ancient date, and a lineal descendant of the Earls of March
and Moray.
On the paternal side, this young lady is descended from the Sneyds of
Keel, in the County of Stafford, a family whose lineage is as ancient as the
valour of their sons is famous, their loyalty stamped and proved with their
best blood, and the beauty of the daughters of their race matter of history.
The very name of this family is a standing proof of its great antiquity.
It bears upon its shield, " Arg., a scythe, the blade in chief, the sned, or
handle, in bend, sinister, sa., on the fesse point a fleur-de-lis, of the second.
Crest — A lion of England, or, passant, gardant. Motto — Nee opprimere,
nee opprimi ("I will neither oppress, nor endure oppression") — a right good
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MISS KATE SNEYD.
worthy Saxon motto, bespeaking the true English sturdiness and good-will
of the old blood of the Saxon thane, who took his name from the scythe
he honestly handled. Just such words we could fancy to be used by
old Henry de Sneyde. of Tunstall, who, the pedigree-books tell us, was
" living in the third year of the reign of Edward II., A.D. 1310, and was
seised of lands in the hamlet of Sneyde, which had been in the family from
the reign of Henry III., and also of lands in the right of his wife, Margaret,
daughter and heiress of Nicholas de Tunstall."
The Sneyds, then, may be found, not on the roll of Battle Abbey, but
on that of those who followed Harold to the field and fought for their
country, determined " neither to oppress nor be oppressed." We have
read the motto of the family, and found the meaning of their name. It is
seldom that heraldry can be so readily interpreted. Let us look further. On
the handle of the scythe there is a fleur-de-lis — what does that import?
Richard de Tunstall, otherwise Sneyde, was the grandson of the Henry
above mentioned, and followed his lord, the famous Lord Audley, to the
field, doing him service for his lands of Bradwell. He fought by his side at
the battle of Poictiers, in the thirtieth year of the reign of Edward III. A. D.
1356, and the King, or, we should rather say, the Black Prince — gave him,
in commemoration of his services, the addition to his arms of the fleur-de-lis,
in sign of the French defeat. But why was this especial honour done to this
plain country gentleman — this esquire — for as yet the lands of Tunstall,
and of Sneyde, even with the holding of Bradwell, could give him no further
title ? Froissart thus tells the tale :—
"Soon after the Earl of Warwick and the Lord Reginald Cobham had left the prince,
he inquired from those knights who were about him of Lord James Audley, and asked if any
one knew what was become of him.' 'Yes, sir,' replied some of the company — ' he is very
badly wounded, and is lying in a litter, hard by.' ' By my troth,' replied the prince, ' I am sore
vexed that he is so wounded. See, I beg of you, if he be able to bear being carried hither ;
otherwise, I will come and visit him.' The knights directly left the prince, and coming to Lord
James, told him how desirous the prince was of seeing him. ' A thousand thanks to the prince,'
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MISS KATE SNEYD.
answered Lord James, ' for condescending to remember so poor a knight as myself !' He then
called eight of his servants, and had himself borne in his litter to where the prince was. When
he was come into his presence, the prince bent down over him, and embraced him, saying, ' My
Lord James, I am bound to honour you very much ; for, by your valour this day, you have
acquired glory and renown above us all, and your prowess has proved you the bravest knight.'
Lord James replied — ' My lord, you have a right to say whatever you please, but I wish it were
as you have said. If I have this day been forward to serve you, it has been to accomplish a
vow that I had made, and it ought not to be thought so much of !' ' Sir James,' answered the
prince, ' I and all the rest of us deem you the bravest knight on our side in this battle ; and to
increase your renown, and furnish you withal to pursue your career of glory in war, I retain you
henceforward for ever, as my knight, with five hundred marcs (of 13s. 4d. each) of yearly revenue,
which I will secure to you from my estates in England !' ' Sir,' said Lord James, ' God make
me very deserving of the good fortune you bestow upon me.' At these words he took leave of the
prince, as he was very weak, and his servants carried him back to his tent. * * * When the Lord
James Audley was brought back to his tent, after having most respectfully thanked the prince
for his gift, he did not remain long before he sent for his brother, Sir Peter Audley, the Lord Bar-
tholomew Burghersh, Sir Stephen Cossington, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and Lord William
Ferrers of Groby : they were all his relations. He then sent for his four squires that had attended
upon him that day, and addressing himself to the knights, said : ' Gentlemen, it has pleased my
lord the prince to give me five hundred marcs as a yearly inheritance ; for which gift I have
done him very trifling bodily service. You see here these four squires, who have always served
me most loyally, and especially in this day's engagement. What glory I may have gained, has
been through their means, and by their valour : on which account I wish to reward them ;
I therefore give and resign into their hands the gift of five hundred marcs, which my lord the
prince has been pleased to bestow me, in the same form and manner that it has been presented
to me. I disinherit myself of it, and give it to them simply, and without a possibility of revok-
ing it !' The knights present looked on each other and said, ' It is becoming the noble mind of
Lord James to make such a gift;' and then unanimously added, ' May the Lord remember you
for it ! We will bear witness of this gift to them wheresoever and whensoever they may call
on us.' " — CHRONICLES OF SIR JOHN FROISSART, vol. i. ch. clxii., &c.
One of these four squires was Richard de Sneyde, doing service for his
holding of Bradwell, of which the grateful Lord James Audley, after his
return, granted the manor and demesne in fee farm to his son and heir Wil-
liam Sneyde, thence called " Sneyde of Bradwell." This was in the second
year of the reign of Henry IV. ; and curious it is, in after time, to read of
Elizabeth, the second daughter of Sir William Sneyde, knight of Bradwell,
mayor and sheriff of Staffordshire, in the third year of the reign of Edward
VI., and the fifth and sixth of Philip and Mary, being united in marriage to
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MISS KATE SNEYD.
a Lord Audley. A valorous knight was this same Sir William, and did good
service to the Crown of England — nor went he without his reward ; seeing
that in the partition of the many good things belonging to better men, which
Henry VIII. in the latter part of his reign had to give away, Sir William
Sneyde received his portion of the plunder of the monasteries, and thereby
came into possession of the lands of Keel, in Staffordshire. More than
this, he fought at Pinkey, where the Scots were routed, Protector fighting
against Regent, Somerset for the youthful Edward VI., and Murray for
the infant Mary. In remembrance of which, from Queen Elizabeth, in the
ninth year of her reign, he obtained the rectory and advowson of Wolstan-
ten, in the chancel of whose picturesque church he lies buried in a stately
tomb, on which are recumbent figures of himself in armour, with his first
wife by his side. It is curious to observe that of all the lands of which he
died possessed, scarcely any portion has passed out of the family, but yet
remain the property of his descendants in their different branches.
Sir William's great-grandson was that gallant royalist, Colonel Ralph
Sneyde, whose house was burnt over his head for his loyalty to King
Charles I. In a MS. journal of " the Committee at Stafford," (formerly in
the possession of the Burnes of Aldersham, ) we find the entry: "Feb. 29.
That Keele House be forthwith demolished by Captain Barbar's soldiers."
But this availed little to turn that gallant heart; for Colonel Ralph
Sneyde fought to the last for his king, and fell, by almost the last shot fired
against Charles I. in 1650, in the Isle of Man, in the last defence of the
Countess of Derby.
The royalist hero died without issue, and was succeeded by his brother
William Sneyd, Esq., M.P., in the Restoration Parliament, who, by his
petition, showed his family losses in the Civil Wars to amount to 20,000^.
This same William Sneyd, of Keel and Bradwell, Esq.. M.P. for Staf-
fordshire, A.D. 1660, was sheriff for Stafford, 1664. He married Felicia,
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MISS KATE SNEYD.
daughter of Robert Audley, of Gransden, County Huntingdon, Esq. Ralph
Sneyd, of Keel and Brad well, Esq., his eldest son, married Frances,
daughter of Sir John Dryden, of Canons Ashby, County Northumberland,
Bart., in March, 1703; and thus brought the poet's inheritance into the
Sneyd family. The second brother of Ralph Sneyd, of Keel and Bradwell,
viz. William Sneyd, of the Birches, County Stafford, third in descent from
Henry de Sneyde, Esq., born 1643, married Sarah, daughter and heiress of
Edward Wettenhal, of the Waterhouse, County Stafford. His third son,
Wettenhall, D.D., Archdeacon and Chancellor of the Diocese of Kilmore and
Ardagh, in Ireland, born 1676, died 1745, married Barbara Marsh,
daughter of an officer in the Guards, by whom he had twenty-one children.
He was grandfather of the late Wettenhall Sneyd, of New Church, Isle of
Wight, and of Bletchingley, Surrey.
But enough has been said of valiant gentlemen and noble relatives on
the paternal side ; we would speak of the traditional beauty of the female
branches of the family of Sneyd: a melancholy story, in connexion with
which, is entwined in the military as well as literary history of the country.
Edward Sneyd, Esq., the nephew of Dr. Wettenhall Sneyd, had a daughter
Honora. This gentleman resided at Belmont, near Lichfield, and his
family was intimate with that of the celebrated Miss Anna Seward. This
lady having lost her sister, " the blank in her society wras supplied," as we
are informed by Sir Walter Scott, in his Memoir of Miss Seward, " by the
attachment of Miss Honora Sneyd, who came there to reside with her family,
and whose name is so often mentioned in the ensuing volumes." In a letter
dated from Gotham, Oct. 1761 (in Sir Walter Scott's Collection), Miss
Seward gives us the first glimpse of this young lady : —
" It is evening : half an hour ago my fair cousin and myself were walking upon the grass-
plot, upon which our chamber-window looks. The sun was setting splendidly; but, looking up,
I saw an object more bright, more lovely, — the face of my beauteous Honora at the open case-
ment, packing up a little box, which we were to take home with us. She leaned forward, bending
MISS KATE SNEYD.
upon me her fine eyes, luminous with joy, then lifted them up with a smile of delight, and
clasped her dear hands together. I need not observe that it was the thoughts of our approach-
ing return which produced this silent eloquence of pleasure : she would have restrained it, I well
knew."
We next hear of her in a letter from the unfortunate Major Andre, in
October 3, 1764, published by Miss Seward, in her " Monody on the Death
of Major Andre."
" Honora will put in a little postscript, were it only to tell me that she is my very sincere
frieHil. Very short, indeed, Honora, was thy last postscript ! But I was too presumptuous."
Iii another letter, October 19, 1769, writing from Warneford Court,
Major Andre (then engaged in commercial pursuits) says—
" Thus all the mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most refulgent
colouring of an ardent imagination : borne on her soaring pinions I wing my flight to the time
when Heaven shall have crowned my labours with success and opulence. I see sumptuous palaces
rising to receive me ; I see orphans, and widows, and painters, and fiddlers, and poets, and builders
protected and encouraged; and when the fabric is pretty nearly finished by my shattered pericranium,
I cast my eyes around, and find John Andre by a small coal fire, in a gloomy counting-house, in
Warnford- court, nothing so little as what he has been making himself, and in all probability
never to be much more than he is at present. But oh ! my dear Honora ! it is for thy sake
only I wish for wealth ! You say, she was somewhat better at the time you wrote last. I must
Hatter myself that she will soon be without any remains of this threatening disease."
Again, on November 1, 1769 —
" Thus all my mercantile calculations go to the tune of clear Honora. When an impertinent
consciousness whispers in my ear, that I am not of the right stuff for a merchant, I draw my
Honora's picture from my bosom, and the sight of that dear talisman so inspirits my industry,
that no toil appears oppressive."
Miss Anna Seward, in her famous Monody, thus speaks of this unfor-
tunate attachment of which she had been the confidant : —
" While with nice hand he marked the living grace
And matchless sweetness of Honora's face,
Th' enamoured youth the faithful traces blest,
That barbed the dart of Beauty in his breast ;
Around his neck the enchanting portrait hung,
While a warm vow burst ardent from his tongue,
That from his bosom no succeeding day,
No chance should bear that talisman away.
MISS KATE SNEYD.
Now Prudence, in her cold and thrifty care,
Frowned on the maid, and bade the youth despair ;
For power parental sternly saw, and strove
To tear the lily-bands of plighted love ;
Nor strove in vain j — but while the fair one's sighs
Disperse like April's storms in sunny skies,
The firmer lover, with unswerving truth,
To his first passion consecrates his youth ;
Though four long years a night of absence prove,
Yet Hope's soft star shone, trembling, on his love ;
Till busy rumour chased each pleasing dream,
And quenched the radiance of the silver beam.
" Honora lost ! my happy rival's bride !
Swell, ye full sails ! and roll, thou mighty tide ;
O'er the dark waves forsaken Andre bear,
Amid the rolling thunders of the war !
A letter from Major Andre to one of his friends, contained the follow-
ing sentence, —
" I have been taken prisoner by the Americans, and stript of everything except the picture
of Honora, which I concealed in my mouth. Preserving that, I yet think myself fortunate."
Miss Honora Sneyd, to whom Major Andre's attachment was of such
extraordinary constancy, died in a consumption a few months before he
suffered death at Tappan. Alas, for romance! she had married another
gentleman some few years after her engagement with Major Andre had been
dissolved by parental authority.
Alas, we say, for romance ! the husband of Miss Honora Sneyd was
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq., of Edgeworthstown, Ireland, the father,
by a first marriage, of that charming novelist, Maria Edgeworth. He
took the lady for his second wife, (he married a third, and also a fourth
time, ) and in his gossiping Autobiography tells us a singular story of how
Mr. Thomas Day, the philanthropist, (the author of" Sandford and Merton,")
used to pay his addresses, by protocol, to this same Honora, and how that
philosopher finally broke off his courtship on account of the lady's being too
7
MISS KATE SNEYD.
lively and dancing too well for a wise man's wife. Mr. Edgeworth himself,
who had been in love with the lady (by-the-bye he married her sister
Elizabeth when she died, and makes a very curious mixture of his double
love-story in his Memoir), then declared himself, and was accepted, Miss
Seward herself being present at the wedding, and her father, the Rev. Dr.
Seward, " shedding tears of joy as he united the happy pair." Mr. Edge-
worth, also, indignantly repudiates the accusation, which he imputes to
Miss Seward's romantic feelings, of Major Andre's having been jilted by
Honora. He asserts that he had often met them in each other's presence, and
that Andre had totally withdrawn from all pretensions, nor was he in any
respect " a favoured swain." He shows, also, that the date of Major Andre's
first commission having been in 1771, and Honora Sneyd's marriage having
taken place on the 17th of July, 1773, the latter could not have been the
cause of the change in Major Andre's profession. The letters of Mrs. Edge-
worth also bear evidence to her happiness as a wife and mother; her last
words, as he records them, breathe the tenderest affection, and there is
no doubt, from Maria Edgeworth's report, that he made her a kind, atten-
tive, and affectionate husband.
On the maternal side, Miss Kate Sneyd is related to the Earls of
March and Moray, (the tenth Earl of March, Patrick, having married the
Lady Agnes Randolph, only daughter of Thomas, Earl of Moray, the first
baronet, Sir W. Dunbar, of Durn, being the eighth in lineal descent from
James, fifth Earl of Moray), the Deans, of the Aldearn, the knightly family
of the Bairds of Archmedden, and the Bartletts of Banff, &c.
X
MISS LOUISA LENOX PRENDERGAST.
THIS lady is the fair blossom of an ancient Irish hereditary tree, and is
descended from the Prendergasts of Newcastle, county Galway, her father
being the late Guy Lenox Prendergast, Esq., formerly member of the
Bombay government, and M.P. for Lymington, and her mother the daughter
of the late Dr. Greine of St. Petersburg. The story of this lady's family
is so fully told in the tradition known as " The Dream of Sir Thomas
Prendergast," that it would be as well to repeat it in this brief notice of his
fair descendant.
" Early appointed to a regiment of horse, Thomas Prendergast, the heir
of a distinguished Anglo-Norman family, long seated at Newcastle, county
Tipperary, had already risen to the command of a troop, when the Revolution
of 1680 took all chance of promotion away from the Irish Catholics. Ardent
and sanguine in temper, he was persuaded to promise adhesion to Lord
Aylesbury's conspiracy for the restoration of King James, which was
unfortunately altered by some of the inferior leaders into the Assassination
Plot. From such a perversion of the original plot his honourable mind
recoiled with horror ; and it is well known to readers of English history
how, wfoen compelled by religious feeling to place the king upon his guard,
he nevertheless withstood with fortitude both promises and threats, even
when they came from the mouth of William himself ; absolutely refusing to
give the names, or assist in convicting any of the conspirators, until that
friend at whose solicitations he had become a party to the original plot,
1
MISS LOUISA LENOX PRENDERGAST.
gave information against him. For his conduct then and subsequently,
he was warmly praised in both Houses of Parliament; and the king,
having marked his own sense of it by a grant of one of the forfeited estates,
the Parliament, when subsequently revoking even the grant to the suc-
cessful De Ginkell, Earl of Athlone, confirmed that only which was made
to Sir Thomas Prendergast." He subsequently married the well-dowered
Penelope Cadogan, the only sister of the gallant general, afterwards Earl
Cadogan, and was again placed in active service. Foremost in the fight
in almost all the brilliant achievements of Queen Anne's reign, he, in
addition, served the cause of Marlborough, at intervals, in Parliament, as
M.P. for Monaghan; whilst in matters which concerned Ireland, he voted
with his illustrious cousin, the great and unfortunate Duke of Ormond.
We are told of his happy leisure, spent in adorning his new properties with
woods and gardens, or in resting amid the honoured towers and groves of
Newcastle, which overlooked the broad expanse of the lovely Suir. Sir
Thomas, as the story goes, attended the death-bed of an old retainer and
fellow- soldier, James Cranwell, who had fought by his side in many a field.
After the battle of Oudenarde, where he did good service in carrying
the strong post of Heynem with Cadogan' s brigade, he sought leave of
absence, and reached his home; where, on the very first night of his return,
he had a forewarning of his death in a dream. A figure appeared before him,
which for many years he had not seen. He looked and doubted, and looked
again ; but could doubt no more. The figure wore the old livery of the
Prendergasts : it was James Cranwell. The gallant baronet, who had never
trembled at the battle's loudest roar, felt an unaccountable dread, nor could
find words to inquire wherefore he came. ' It is well to be prepared for
death, Sir Thomas Prendergast,' was the answer ; ' you will die upon this day
year.' The warning delivered, the figure vanished; and when Sir Thomas,
shuddering, raised himself in his bed, the room was empty, daylight yet absent
2
MISS LOUISA LENOX PRENDERGAST.
from the horizon, the smouldering embers still reddening the grate, and he
knew it was but a dream. Nevertheless, so vividly did it impress his mind
that he made a memorandum in his tablets the following morning, stating the
warning he had received — a memorandum found among his papers after his
death, and in which he professed " to have no faith in such superstitions."
Peace appeared certain; but in spite of Louis XIV .'s desire to obtain it by
any concession, the selfishness of those who commanded the Allies, and their
desire still further to humiliate France, drove the aged monarch to another
struggle. Tournay was taken ; Mons threatened ; and a battle was imminent.
The year had run out all but two days ; and now, on the 9th of September,
Sir Thomas felt a satisfaction in thinking the fight would be on that day.
But soon the intelligence arrived that Maryborough had postponed the battle,
and the 10th having been passed in partial contests, Malplaquet was fought
on the llth, the most dearly-bought victory ever won by a British general,
the number of killed having doubled that which fell at Waterloo. " On the
night previous, Prendergast felt, at last, that there might be truth in the
mysterious warning; whilst others slept he prepared himself, as best he
could, for meeting Him who is Lord also of the battle; and when the
morning light first broke, struggling through the surrounding fog, he
mounted his favourite charger with the feelings of one who has bid adieu
to all that is dear to him. Wife, children, and father — all appeared before
his mind; the latter then nearly in his hundredth year. On all he earnestly
prayed a blessing, and then and from henceforth thought only of his queen
and country. The fight was long and fierce, the blood of both armies fell
in torrents. Among the list of the gallant dead, drawn up in the British
camp that night, was found the name of Brigadier-General Sir Thomas
Prendergast."
Sir Thomas was succeeded by his only son, who was a distinguished
member of both the English and Irish parliaments, and postmaster-general
3
MISS LOUISA LENOX PRENDERGAST.
in Ireland. He died whilst a patent was drawing out, raising him to the
Viscountcy of Clonmel, leaving no issue by his wife Anne, only daughter
and heiress of Sir Hugh Williams of Marie, Bart. Of the daughters,
Juliana married Chaworth, sixth Earl of Meathj Anne married Samuel
Hobson, Esq. ; and her eventual heiress married Jeffrey Prendergast, Esq. ;
and Elizabeth married, first, Sir John Dixon Raman, Bart., and secondly,
Charles Smyth, Esq., M.P., son of the then Bishop of Limerick. She
eventually inherited the Galway estates. But though this branch of the
family is extinct in the male line, the elder branch still flourishes; and
Colonel Charles O'Neal Prendergast, of the Scotch Fusilier Guards — an
officer who proved at Salamanca and Vittoria that he was a worthy scion
of this time-honoured tree, is the possessor of Newcastle, built by his direct
ancestor, six hundred and sixty years ago.
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