HENEAGE FINCH, SECOND EARL OF WINCHELSEA, FIRST Cousin of the chancellor Nottingham, made a figure at the same period. He was intimate with Monke, and concerned in the Restoration; soon after which he was sent embassador to Mahomet the fourth. Monke had given the earl the government of Dovercastle, which was continued to him; and when king James was stopped at Feversham, he sent for the earl of Winchelsea, who prevailed on the king to return to London. The earl voted for giving the crown to king William, by whom he was continued lord-lieutenant of Kent. He died soon after, in 1689. On his return from Constantinople, visiting Sicily, he was witness to a terrible convulsion of Mount Ætna, an account of which he sent to the king, and which was soon after published by authority, in a very thin quarto, with this title, "A true and exact Relation of the late prodigious Earthquake, and Eruption of Mount Ætna, or Monte-Gibello; as it came in a Letter written to his Majesty from Naples. By the Right Honourable the Earle of Winchilsea, his Majesties late Ambassador at Constantinople; who, in his Return from thence, visiting Catania in the Island of Sicily, was an Eye-witness of that dreadful Spectacle. Together with a more particular Narrative of the same, as it is collected out of several Relations sent from Catania." Lond. 1669.2 With a view of the mountain and conflagration. [The whole title of the tract is here given, which appears to be as much as is requisite, from the nature of the subject.] HENRY BOOTH, LORD DELAMER, AND EARL OF WARRINGTON. It is remarkable how many of the fairest names in our story have contributed to grace our memoirs of literature. The lord in question was an author; and, like his father, an active instrument in a revolution of government. Lord Henry, who was thrice imprisoned for his noble love of liberty, and who narrowly escaped the fury of James and Jefferies, lived to be commissioned by the prince of Orange to order that king to remove from Whitehall; a message which he delivered with a generous decency. He was soon dismissed by king William, to gratify the Tories, and died in the forty-second year of his age; having written a vindication of his dear friend, under this title, 2 [On a false accusation of treason, says Bolton; for which, in January 1686, he was tried in Westminster-hall by twenty-seven peers, who were selected for that purpose by king James and his operator Jefferies, the high-steward; but, after hearing his defence, all those peers unanimously acquitted him. Extinct Peerage, p. 86.] |