It was a tale of family degeneracy, in which the honoured name of Windham should, strictly speaking, have had no part. When the famous statesman died, the historic property went to his nephew, William Howe Lukin, who assumed the name of Windham, and married Lady Sophia Hervey, sister of the Marquis of Bristol. In November, 1854, the self-styled William Howe “Windham” died, leaving a widow and an only son, William Frederick, at that time fourteen years of age, and already, at Eton and elsewhere, an ill-disposed and uncontrollable buffoon and vicious idiot. Among the guardians of this promising heir to the name and lands of the Windhams were his mother and his uncle, General Windham, whose actions and motives were so severely and unjustly criticised by the Radical press and the lower orders in course of the notorious “Windham Trial.” William Frederick Windham would, in the ordinary course, have come of age and succeeded to his inheritance, without question, in 1861; but his conduct as a boy and as a growing man was so extraordinary and outrageous that it was reluctantly decided by General Windham and others to petition for a judicial inquiry into the state of mind of this heir, who, they claimed—and after-events fully supported that claim—could not be safely entrusted with the management of his own affairs. The Commission “_de Lunatico Inquirendo_,” popularly known as the “Windham Trial,” granted to the petitioners, began on December 16th, 1861, and lasted thirty-four days. Extraordinary interest was taken in the proceedings, and even now the pamphlets printed and sold by thousands, containing the dreadful evidence taken in those thirty-four days, may be occasionally met with in the cottage homes of Norfolk.