Love Romances Of The Aristocracy - free ebook by Thornton Hall

THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.

BARRISTER-AT-LAW AUTHOR OF "LOVE INTRIGUES OF ROYAL COURTS," ETC. ETC. ILLUSTRATED LONDON T. WERNER LAURIE CLIFFORD'S INN TO MRS TOM HESKETH L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes...

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PREFACE

My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy, with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable rea

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A PRINCESS OF PRUDES

Among the many fair and frail women who fed the flames of the "Merrie Monarch's" passion from the first day of his restoration to that last day, but one short week before his death, when Evelyn saw him "sitting and toying with his concubines," there was, it is said, only one of them all who really captured his royal and wayward heart, that loveliest, simplest, and most designing of prudes, La belle Stuart . When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the queen of his many

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THE NIGHTINGALE OF BATH

A century and a half ago Bath had reached the zenith of her fame and allurement, not only as "Queen of the West," but as Empress of all the haunts of pleasure in England. She drew, as by an irresistible magnet, rank and beauty and wealth to her shrine. In her famous Assembly Rooms, statesmen rubbed shoulders with card-sharpers, Marquises with swell mobsmen, and Countesses with courtesans, all in eager quest of pleasure or conquest or gain. The Bath season was England's carnival, when cares and c

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THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS

The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a "threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France. Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke of Bucking

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THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY 'SCUTCHEON

The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud 'scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain, and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there. Horace Walpole calls this degenerate Shirley "a low wretch, a mad assassin, and a wild beast." He was, as my story will show, all this. He was

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A GHOSTLY VISITANT

There is scarcely a chapter in the story of the British Peerage more tragic and mysterious than that which chronicles the closing days of Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, whose dissolute life had its fitting climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson declared, "I am so

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A MESSALINA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

There have been bad women in all ages, from Messalina, who waded recklessly through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina or Messalina, and b

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A PROFLIGATE PRINCE

Of the sons of the profligate Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was, by universal consent, the most abandoned, as his eldest brother, George III., of "revered memory," in spite of his intrigue with the fair Quakeress, was the least vicious. Each brother had his amours—many of them highly discreditable; but for unrestrained and indiscriminate profligacy Henry Frederick took the unenviable palm. Even the verdict of posterity is unable to credit this Princeling with a

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THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS

If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous" figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic, and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was one of his most amiable characteristics. The Irish squire was a proud man—pro

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A QUEEN OF COQUETTES

The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging sweet may-blos

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THE ADVENTURES OF A VISCOUNT'S DAUGHTER

When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate could sully her. Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to t

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A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ELOPEMENT

In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London. From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to succeed; and so prof

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TRAGEDIES OF THE TURF

In the whole drama of the British Peerage there are few figures at once so splendid in promise and opportunities, so pathetic in failure and so tragic in their exit as that of the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings. Seldom has man been born to a greater heritage; scarcely ever has he flung away more prodigally the choicest gifts of fortune. When Henry Weysford Charles Plantagenet was born one July day in 1842 it was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank and wealt

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THE WICKED BARON

The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles, fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago. Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of Okehampton, who took to wife a

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A FAIR INTRIGANTE

The face of a baby, the heart of a courtesan, and the brain of a diplomatist. Such was Louise de Querouaille who, two centuries and a half ago, came to England to barter her charms for a King's dishonour, and, incidentally, to found a ducal house as a memorial to her allurements and her shame. If she had been taken at her own estimate Louise was at least the equal in lineage of any of the proud beauties whose claim she thus challenged to Charles II.'s favour. She had behind her, she said, centur

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THE MERRY DUCHESS

When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the romantic and adventurous rôle Fate had assigned to her on the stage of life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she dazzled

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THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER

If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox, whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness. There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and philandering o

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THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM

Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter, and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother, had

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A NOBLE VAGABOND

The circle of the British Peerage has included many "vagabonds," some of whom have worn coronets in our own day; but it is doubtful whether any one of them all has had the wanderlust in his veins to the same degree as Edward Wortley Montagu, whose adventurous life was ignominiously ended by a partridge-bone more than a century and a quarter ago. It would have been strange if this blue-blooded "rolling-stone" had been a normal man, since he had for mother that most wayward and eccentric woman, La

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FOOTLIGHTS AND CORONETS

Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow allurement, and has proved the passport by which she has stepped from the stage to the gilded circle which environs the throne. The hero of the Peninsula and the terror of the French was an old man, with one foot in the grave, w

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A PEASANT COUNTESS

In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna, which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break. He must find some

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THE FAVOURITE OF A QUEEN

When Robert Dudley was cradled in the year 1532 the ball of Fortune was already at his feet, awaiting the necessary vigour and enterprise to kick it. He had, it is true, no great lineage to boast of. Cecil spoke contemptuously of him in later and envious years as grandson of a mere squire and son of a knight; but the so-called squire was none other than Edmond Dudley, the shrewd financier and crafty-tongued minion of Henry VII., who, with Empson for ally, filled his sovereign's purse with ill-go

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TWO IRISH BEAUTIES

In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant, to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time, "They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital like twin planets of dazzl

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THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS

A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of Lady

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THE MAYPOLE DUCHESS

For many a century, ever since her history emerged from the mists of antiquity, Germany never lacked a Schulenburg to grace her Courts, to lead her armies, or to wear the mitre in her churches. They held their haughty heads high among the greatest subjects of her emperors; their family-tree bristled with marshals and generals, bishops and ambassadors; and they waxed so strong and so numerous that they came to be distinguished as "Black Schulenburgs" and "White Schulenburgs," as our own Douglases

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THE ROMANCE OF FAMILY TREES

Such are a few of the scenes which arrest the eyes as the panorama of our aristocracy passes before them; but it would require a library of volumes to do anything like adequate justice to the infinite variety of the dramas it presents. There is for instance a whole realm of romance in the origins of our noble families whose proud palaces are often reared on the most ignoble of foundations; and whose family trees flaunt, with questionable pride, many a spurious branch, while burying from view the

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