There was also at that time at Florence a very charming English coterie, which gathered round Lord and Lady Burghersh. Lord and Lady Dillon were there with their daughters, and I have often heard my wife’s grandmother, old Lady Stanley of Alderley, who was one of them, say how agreeable the society of the Legation then was. Among others who occupied villas were my grandparents, Lord and Lady Ashburnham, and it was there that my father and mother made acquaintance. They were married in February, 1828. There is much talk nowadays about links with the past. I take it that there are not many men who can say, as I can, that they had an uncle whose portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds who died in 1792. My grandfather’s first wife was Lady Sophia Thynne, and there is a beautiful portrait of her at Ashburnham by Sir Joshua, playing with her baby boy who lies in her lap: that boy, my uncle, was born in 1785, just one hundred and thirty years ago. The picture was privately engraved, and I have one of the only twenty-five copies that were struck off. His second wife, my grandmother, was Lady Charlotte Percy, sister of the Duke of Northumberland. She was a noted beauty, and there is a charming portrait of her by Hoppner, which has also been engraved. Among the treasures which are at Ashburnham is one of the two shirts worn by King Charles the First at his execution. Everybody remembers how the King insisted on wearing two shirts lest on that cold January morning he should shiver, and men should think that it was from fear. The shirt was kept as a sacred relic by our ancestor, John Ashburnham, who attended His Majesty on the scaffold: it was deeply stained with the blood of the Martyr, and people used to beg to be allowed to touch it as a remedy for the King’s Evil. When my grandmother came back from Florence, she asked the housekeeper where the shirt was. “Quite safe, Mylady,” was the answer, “but it was so stained that I have had it washed.” The pity of it! The second shirt is at Windsor.