International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 9, August 26, 1850Various
Science
International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 9, August 26, 1850
Various
Art -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
had sunk into the ground. The princely stream at the present time
flows through very humble veins. Among the lineal descendants of
Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I., King
of England, entitled to quarter the Royal arms, occur Mr. Joseph
Smart, of Hales Owen, butcher, and Mr. George Wilmot, keeper of the
turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank, near Dudley; and among the descendants
of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward
III., we may mention Mr. Stephen James Penny, the late sexton at St.
George's, Hanover Square.
"The story of the Gargraves is a melancholy chapter in the romance
of real life. For full two centuries, or more, scarcely a family in
Yorkshire enjoyed a higher position. Its chiefs earned distinction
in peace and war; one died in France, Master of the Ordnance to King
Henry V.; another, a soldier, too, fell with Salisbury, at the siege
of Orleans; and a third filled the Speaker's chair of the House of
Commons. What an awful contrast to this fair picture does the sequel
offer. Thomas Gargrave, the Speaker's eldest son, was hung at York,
for murder; and his half-brother, Sir Richard, endured a fate only
less miserable. The splendid estate he inherited he wasted by the most
wanton extravagance, and at length reduced himself to abject want.
'His excesses,' says Mr. Hunter, in his 'History of Doncaster,' 'are
still, at the expiration of two centuries, the subject of village
tradition; and his attachment to gaming is commemorated in an old
painting, long preserved in the neighboring mansion of Badsworth, in
which he is represented as playing at the old game of put, the right
hand against the left, for the stake of a cup of ale.
"The close of Sir Richard's story is as lamentable as its course.
An utter bankrupt in means and reputation, he is stated to have been
reduced to travel with the pack-horses to London, and was at last
found dead in an old hostelry! He had married Catherine, sister of
Lord Danvers, and by her left three daughters. Of the descendants of
his brothers few particulars can be ascertained. Not many years since,
a Mr. Gargrave, believed to be one of them, filled the mean employment
of parish-clerk of Kippax.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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