The Earl of Lindsey was shot at Edgehill in 1642, when a reckless and
intemperate charge of Rupert had led to the total defeat of the
unsupported foot. His son, Lord Willoughby, was taken in endeavouring to
rescue his father. Clarendon describes the earl as a lavish, generous, yet
punctilious man, of great honour and experience in foreign war. He was
surrounded by Lincolnshire gentlemen, who served in his regiment out of
personal regard for him. He was jealous of Prince Rupert’s interference,
and had made up his mind to die. As he lay bleeding to death he reproved
the officers of the Earl of Essex, many of them his old friends, for their
ingratitude and “foul rebellion.”[727]
The fourth Earl of Lindsey was created Duke of Ancaster, and the house
henceforward bore that now forgotten name. It was subsequently sold to the
proud Duke of Somerset, the same who married the widow of the Mr. Thynne
whom Count Königsmarck murdered.
In the early part of George III.’s reign Lindsey House became a sort of
lodging-house for foreign members of the Moravian persuasion. The
staircase, about 1772, was painted with scenes from the history of the
Herrnhuthers. The most conspicuous figures were those of a negro
catechumen in a white shirt, and a missionary who went over to Algiers to
preach to the galley-slaves, and died in Africa of the plague. There was
also a painting of a Moravian clergyman being saved from a desert rock on
which he had been cast.[728]
Repeated mention of the Berties is made in Horace Walpole’s pleasant
_Letters_. Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert the first Duke of
Ancaster and Kesteven. He was a general in the army, a colonel in the
Guards, and a lord of the bedchamber. He married Lady Raymond in 1762, and
died in 1782.
The proud Duke of Somerset, in 1748, left to his eldest daughter, Lady
Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, three thousand a year, and the
fine house built by Inigo Jones in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he had
bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess, hoping that his daughter
would let her mother live with her.[729] In July 1779 the Duke of
Ancaster, dying of drinking and rioting at two-and-twenty, recalls much
scandal to Walpole’s mind. He had been in love with Lady Honoria,
Walpole’s niece; but Horace does not regret the match dropping through,
for he says the duke was of a turbulent nature, and, though of a fine
figure, not noble in manners. Lady Priscilla Elizabeth Bertie, eldest
sister of the duke, married the grandson of Peter Burrell, a merchant, who
became husband of the Lady Great Chamberlain of England, and inherited a
barony and half the Ancaster estate.[730] “The three last duchesses,”
goes on the cruel gossip, “were never sober.” “The present
duchess-dowager,” he adds, “was natural daughter of Panton, a disreputable
horse-jockey of Newmarket. The other duchess was some lady’s woman, or
young lady’s governess.” Mr. Burrell’s daughters married Lord Percy and
the Duke of Hamilton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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