battle reached the baronet before he had taken a rash step forward for a lost cause. Every night for thirty years he was carried to bed drunk, and, though he was never too drunk to sip from a goblet which had not been previously passed across a finger-bowl to the king over the water, he was too drunk and gouty to come out in '45. The nephew who succeeded him two years later worked hard for the second George to atone for his uncle's disaffection, and the family came to be favorably regarded at court. Sir William was a bachelor and hated the sea. When not at St. James's he used to live in Clare Lodge, a trim, red-brick house he had built for himself about a mile eastward of the family mansion, overlooking the hamlet of Little Cherrington and many desirable acres of common land. Mr. Beadon was discoursing of Sir William when the dowager paused to admire the view from Clare Lodge. An excellent tenant had lately vacated it, and she was wondering how long it would be before she and the girls should be living there. She turned her attention once more to the rector's mild criticism of Sir William, who had not attempted to make Clarehaven a real borough, but who had bought Little Cherrington, and inclosed all the acres he coveted. When he died in 1764, his cousin Anthony enjoyed a tolerably rich inheritance, to which he added by marrying a Miss Arabella Hopley with a dowry of £10,000. This lady, by the death of her brother in a hunting accident, some years later became heiress of Hopley Hall and three thousand acres of good land adjoining the Clare estate; Sir Anthony loyally sent the two members for his borough, which by now was reduced to three or four cottages moldering at the tide's edge, to vote for the government; and on being rewarded in the year 1796 with the barony of Clarehaven, he decided to finish Clare Court. Before his succession he had spent a good deal of time at the famous health resort of Curtain Wells, and he was not satisfied with the sea view that did not include sunshine; it was he who pulled down the kitchens and stables behind and built the present front of Clare Court. His son Gilbert was prominent during the Napoleonic wars for seeing that his tenantry kept a lookout for Bonaparte; and by putting down smuggling he performed a vicarious penance for the deeds of his ancestors. It was he who completed Clare Court; and in 1816, ten years before his death, he was created Earl of Clarehaven and Viscount Clare, a peer of that United Kingdom lately achieved by Pitt with such a mixture of glory and shame. To mark his appreciation of the divine favor the first earl built at Little Cherrington a chapel-of-ease to Clarehaven church, the congregation of which by that time was the three electors of the borough. He then bought the living of Great Cherrington, and presented this shamrock of a cure to his natural son, who became rector of Clarehaven-cum-Cherringtons. This gentleman paid a curate £40 a year to