Elm Grove passed successively into the hands of Dr. Hedges, secretary to Queen Anne, and Dr. Egerton, Bishop of Durham, and Lord Kinnair from the heirs of which nobleman it was purchased by the Rt. Hon. Spencer Percival, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was shot on May 11th, 1812, as he was entering the lobby of the House of Commons, by one Bellingham, whose mind had been unhinged by commercial misfortunes, and who in some way connected the Chancellor with his adversities. Bellingham was hanged at Newgate. Elm Grove became subsequently an Asylum for the officers of the East Indian Company, and was purchased by Baron Rothschild, and is now dismantled. The crime and execution of Bellingham recall another event connected with Ealing the story of which is infinitely sad. It is a story of great talents prostituted to base uses, with dismal tragedy in their train. In the year 1766 the Manor House, subsequently called Goodenough House, was occupied by Dr. Dodd as a boarding School for young gentlemen, and in February of that year, he was there arrested and conveyed to Newgate on a charge of forging the name of Lord Chesterfield to a receipt for money and a bond. The prisoner acknowledged his guilt and alleged the stress of poverty. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, but drew up a recommendation to His Majesty for mercy. The sheriff of London, attended by the City Remembrancer, presented a memorial from the city to the King, entreating mercy; another was sent to the Queen from the Magdalen Hospital, in whose institution Dr. Dodd had borne an active part. Lord Percy handed in one signed by twenty thousand inhabitants of Westminster, and the wife of the unhappy man with whom he had lived in the most perfect conjugal felicity, presented a petition for the Royal clemency to the Queen in person. But their efforts were fruitless, and he was hanged on June 28th, displaying great fortitude. The unhappy man was LL.D. of Cambridge, a clerk in holy orders, and a prebend of Brecon, one time tutor to the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, and vicar of Wantage in Buckinghamshire. He was a man of singular attainments, but unhappily of a profuse and extravagant style of life. It was the old story, _alieni appetens, sui profusus_, and the embarrassment occasioned by reckless expenditure led him to an awful doom. Whilst awaiting his end he wrote his “Prison Thoughts,” in which he was assisted by Dr. Johnson. _Ealing House_ in the Park Road, now occupied as Byron House School, belonged to the Bonfoy family in 1691; in 1715 to Sir James Montagu, Baron of the Exchequer, later to General John Hawke and the Earl of Galloway. A further notice of this house will be found in later pages.