She died in 1759, leaving a numerous and distinguished family of eight sons and four daughters, remarkable for their good looks and talents, which made them of note in the society of the day. Especially was this the case with the eldest son, Sir Francis Blake-Delaval, K.B., who inherited his father’s great estates in Northumberland, and made himself conspicuous in the annals of the time for his wit and gallantry, his reckless extravagance and dissipation. He, however, was not otherwise connected with Doddington than as a visitor to the house, to which he brought his theatrical friend Foote in 1752, and where his own full-length figure, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, may still be seen. We are more concerned with his next brother, on whom Doddington had been entailed. This was John Delaval, born in 1728, who, in accordance with Mrs. Apreece’s will, assumed the name of Hussey on his mother’s death in 1759, and became successively Sir John Hussey-Delaval, Bart., in 1761, Baron Delaval of Redford in the peerage of Ireland in 1783, and Baron Delaval of Seaton-Delaval in the peerage of Great Britain in 1786. He represented Berwick in Parliament from 1754 to his elevation to the British peerage. In 1750 he had married Susannah, widow of John Potter, Esq., Under-Secretary of State for Ireland; she was his first cousin, her mother having been Margaret Delaval, his father’s sister. The young couple at once made Doddington their country residence, John Delaval acting as virtual owner of the mansion and estate, both of which showed signs of energetic management and lavish expenditure. New marble mantelpieces were bought for the more important rooms of the hall in 1760, and to the same date we may ascribe the classic broken architraves with which they and many of the doors are surmounted. The present great staircase was put up in 1761, and the long gallery refloored at a cost of £500, under the direction of Mr. Lumby, the surveyor of Lincoln Cathedral. At the same time the enclosure of the moorlands on the estate was vigorously carried on, many thousand plants of quick being purchased for enclosure, and labourers continuously employed in dyking and fencing and paring sods. Another improvement was the formation of a hop-garden of twenty-six acres in the parish—the only one, it is said, in Lincolnshire. In this Lady Delaval took especial interest, and part of it was known as My Lady’s Acre. In 1770, on the death of his eldest daughter Rhoda at the age of eighteen, he undertook the restoration of the church, adding to it the present south aisle and west tower, and giving it the shape which it retains to-day. He showed his good taste, when church architecture was at its lowest ebb, by copying, though unskilfully, in his additions the fourteenth century work which remained in the older part.