Sir John Manners, second son of the first Earl of Rutland, and who was consequently great grandson of the sister of King Edward IV., is the one member of this illustrious family with whom Haddon is especially connected. This John Manners, before he was knighted, became attached to Dorothy Vernon, the youngest daughter and co-heiress of Sir George Vernon of Haddon Hall, known far and wide as “the King of the Peak.” Disguised, as we have already related, as a forester or woodman, John Manners for some time lived in the woods about Haddon, in the hope of obtaining occasional glimpses of, and stolen interviews with, Dorothy Vernon; and at length so wooed that he won her, and carried her off on horseback into his own county of Leicester, and there married her. The story of this romantic elopement is one of the pleasantest episodes in the history of Haddon, and will have again to be alluded to later on. By that marriage the grand old mansion of Haddon Hall, and the Derbyshire property of the “King of the Peak,” passed into the family of Manners, and helped to swell its already large rent-roll of estates. This John Manners, who was knighted in 1603, had issue by his wife, Dorothy Vernon, three sons: Sir George Manners who succeeded him; John Manners, who died at the age of fourteen years; Sir Roger Manners, of Whitwell; and Grace Manners, who married Sir Francis Fortescue, of Salden. He died June 4th, 1611; his wife died in 1584. Sir George Manners, their son, married Grace, daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepoint, and sister to the Earl of Kingston, by whom he had issue, with others, John Manners, his eldest son, who not only succeeded him, but also succeeded his own cousin George, seventh Earl of Rutland, in his title and estates, and thus became eighth Earl of Rutland. He married Frances, daughter of Edward, Lord Montague of Boughton, by whom he had issue four sons and seven daughters. He was Sheriff of Derbyshire in the ninth and eleventh years of Charles I., and also represented that county in Parliament. His lordship was attached to the Parliamentary interest during the Civil Wars, and was one of the twenty-two peers who remained at Westminster when the king summoned both houses to attend him at Oxford. As a consequence, his castle of Belvoir was seized by the Royalists, and was held by them and Sir Gervase Lucas, and here the king frequently resided; it was finally surrendered to the Parliamentarians in January, 1645-6. In 1649 the castle was demolished, by consent of the earl, who soon afterwards set about rebuilding it, which he completed in 1668. During this time the earl lived principally at Haddon Hall, where he died in 1679. Here he lived in a style of almost princely magnificence, maintaining a large number of servants and retainers, and dispensing, especially at Christmas time, his hospitality with a lavish hand.