'bettering of his right and obtaining of his will, if words, however strained, may serve the turn.' The whole story is curious, since it shows us that a quarrel, arising out of rights of sporting,' was, in Elizabeth's days very much the same, with a difference,' as it might be now; and from the picture it affords of such a disturbance as would have been quite in place at that time in the High Street of Edinburgh, but which we should hardly have expected to encounter under the shadow of Temple Bar.

We return to the Irish Fortescues, whose several branches sprang from Sir Faithful, the Cavalier of Edgehill. His grandson, William of Newragh, was the father of Thomas Fortescue, who formed the beautiful domains of Clermont Park and of Ravensdale (both in County Louth), on which are now the principal seats of his representative, the present Lord Clermont. Arthur Young, travelling through Ireland in 1776, describes the situation of Ravensdale as very romantic, on the side of a ' mountain, with fine woods hanging on every side, with the lawn beautifully scattered with trees spreading into them, and a pretty river winding through the vale. Beautiful in

*

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itself, but trebly so on information that before he fixed there it was all wide waste.' His eldest son, William Henry, became Earl of Clermont, and was an original Knight of St. Patrick on the institution of that order in 1783. Lord Clermont gives an engraving from what appears to be a fine portrait of the Earl by Hudson, the master of Sir Joshua. He was, we are told, a first-rate shot, and is appropriately represented carrying a gun and caressing a pointer. once, we are told, for a wager killed in one day in Done'weale Wood, on Lord Farnham's estate in Cavan, fifty brace ' of woodcocks, shooting with a single-barrelled and of course "flint" gun. Having missed every shot before breakfast, from the excessive kicking of the gun, he then, by the advice of the late Earl of Enniskillen, who was present, padded his coat sleeve, and in a few hours killed his hundred birds.' This is the Lord Clermont of whom Sir Nathaniel Wraxall gives an amusing sketch in his Memoirs,' and of whom he says that he had never known a man more fitted for ' a companion of kings and queens.' It is true that Nature

* He was raised to the Irish peerage May 26, 1770, as Baron Clermont. In 1776 he was created Viscount and Baron Clermont, with (as he had no son) a special remainder to his brother; and in 1777 he became Earl of Clermont. His frequent visits to France probably suggested the name of his title.

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had formed his person in an elegant mould,' but Sir Nathaniel's ideal of a royal companion would hardly perhaps be accepted at present.

'Such,' he says, 'was Lord Clermont's passion for the turf, that when menaced by his father to be disinherited if he did not quit Newmarket, he refused, preferring rather to incur the severest attacks of paternal indignation than to renounce his favourite amusement. His understanding was of the common order; but though his whole life had been passed in the sports of the field or among jockeys, yet he wanted not refinement; and he used to shelter himself under Horace's "sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum," when justifying his ardour for

races.'

At his house in Berkeley Square the Prince of Wales was a frequent visitor. Lord Clermont lived much with Charles Fox; and, says Wraxall, I well remember an extraordinary 'bet which he made with Fox and Lord Foley, for a hundred 'guineas; namely, that he would find a heifer which should eat twenty stone of turnips in twenty-four hours. He won the wager.' Of his wife, Frances, daughter of General Murray, of Monaghan, there is a beautiful portrait by Reynolds. She, too, is duly noticed in the pages of Wraxall; and was, as he tells us, an enthusiastic defender of the French Queen Marie Antoinette, at whose court she was a great favourite.

The earldom became extinct on the death of this first Lord Clermont in 1806. The viscounty descended to his nephew, son of his younger brother, who had inherited Ravensdale Park. This nephew died unmarried in 1829, leaving by will his estates in the first place to his only nephew, Sir Harry Goodricke, of Ribston in Yorkshire, with remainder to the heirs issue of Colonel Fortescue, of Dromiskin, who represented the elder line in descent from Sir Faithful of the Civil Wars. Sir Harry Goodricke, well known in the sporting circles of his day, died unmarried in 1833; and the estates then passed to Thomas, son of Colonel Fortescue, of Dromiskin. In 1852 a revival was made in his favour of the barony of Clermont, with remainder to his only brother. It is to Lord Clermont that we are indebted for the exhaustive history of the Fortescues which we have been considering in the present article. How earnestly the true interests of Ireland-agricultural, educational, political-have been supported and advanced by him and by his younger brother, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, created Lord Carlingford in 1874, this is hardly the place to set forth; but the pages which at some future time a competent hand will be called on to append to Lord Clermont's volume, will not be the least interesting or important within its covers. We should

add that in 1866 Lord Clermont was created a peer of Great Britain.

Another Irish peerage was created in 1746, in favour of John Fortescue, descended from a younger son of Fortescue of Filleigh-now Castle Hill. He was a distinguished lawyer, and became a judge successively in the Courts of Exchequer, King's Bench, and Common Pleas. In consideration of his merits ' and services' he was created a Peer of Ireland, with the title of Baron Fortescue of Credan, the name of a headland on the eastern shore of Waterford harbour, which formed part of his wife's estate. She was the eldest daughter, and eventually the heiress, of Henry Aland, of Waterford. This Lord Fortescue was, for his time, a good Saxon scholar, and held in great regard the works of his famous ancestor, the Chancellor. He was distinguished by a very prominent and remarkable nosea feature which in all the Fortescue portraits is decidedly pronounced. In the case of Lord Fortescue of Credan it is said to have resembled the trunk of an elephant. On one occasion he remarked from the bench to the counsel who was pleading Brother, you are handling this case in a very lame manner.' Oh no, my Lord,' was the reply; have patience with me, and I will make it as plain as the nose in your Lordship's 'face.' The barony descended to his only son, who never married. The Irish estates passed to Lord Fortescue of Castle Hill, whose descendant still holds them.

The Fortescues of Castle Hill represent, as we have said, John, the eldest son of Martin Fortescue, heir and only son of Henry VI.'s Chancellor. Martin, with the heiress of Ďenzille, acquired the estates of Weare Giffard and Filleigh-now Castle Hill. He died before the Chancellor; and his son John succeeded not only to his mother's estates, but to those of his grandfather, Ebrington, in Gloucestershire, and Combe, in South Devon. The earlier Fortescues of this descent lived much at Weare Giffard, and there is an elaborate monument in the church there in which two generations are represented, the last date being 1637. But there had always been a residence at Filleigh (not the same place, it must be remembered, as Buckland-Filleigh, the home of William Fortescue, often mentioned in Pope's letters); and there was born, about 1717, Lucy, daughter of Hugh Fortescue, who married in 1742 the first Lord Lyttleton, distinguished, in Lord Clermont's words, as an historian, poet, statesman, and Christian philosopher." The wedded happiness of Lord and Lady Lyttleton became almost proverbial; but it was as brief as it was unusual. She died in 1746, and was celebrated by her husband in a 'Monody'

which was once better known than at present. The inscriptions, in Latin and English, on her monument in Hagley Church, were also written by Lord Lyttleton.

In favour of Hugh Fortescue, brother of this Lady Lyttleton, the barony of Clinton was called out of the abeyance in which it had fallen in 1692. This was in right of his mother. Lord Clinton was much about the court of George I.; and George II., in 1746, created him Baron Fortescue of Castle Hill, and Earl Clinton. It was this Lord Clinton who changed the name of the old house from Filleigh to Castle Hill, and almost rebuilt it. At his death the earldom of Clinton became extinct. The Clinton barony passed to his sister Margaret, and afterwards quite away from the Fortescues. Hugh, third Baron Fortescue, was, in 1789, created Viscount Ebrington of Ebrington, and Earl Fortescue. He died at Castle Hill in 1841, at the venerable age of eighty-eight years, during fifty'five of which he had been a member of the House of Lords.'

Of his son, the second Earl, more must be said. Throughout his long career (he came into public life very early in the present century, and died in 1861) he was an eminently consistent politician, and did excellent service to the party which he followed as much from personal conviction as from hereditary principle. He was especially active and influential during the great Reform agitation. In September 1831, Macaulay, writing to his sister, observes that he had been moving heaven and earth to render it certain that if our Ministers are so foolish as to resign in the event of a defeat in the Lords, the Commons may be firm and united.' 'I think,' he continues, that I have arranged a plan which will secure a bold ⚫ and instant declaration on our part if necessary. Lord Ebring'ton is the man whom I have in my eye as our leader. I have had much conversation with him, and with several of our leading county members. They are all staunch; and I 'will answer for this--that if the Ministers should throw us over, we will be ready to defend ourselves.'* Lord Ebrington was at this time member for Tavistock, which he had represented since 1820; and this mention of him by Macaulay is sufficient proof of the high estimation in which he was held by his friends, and of their perfect confidence in him. It was indeed on a motion of Lord Ebrington's that the House of Commons passed the vote of confidence in Lord Grey's Government after it had resigned, which caused their immediate resumption of office to carry the Reform Bill. Firm,

* Life of Lord Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 193–4.

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severely honourable, consistent, kindly-there have been few nobler and yet more unpretentious characters than that of the late Earl Fortescue. After the passing of the Reform Bill he sat as member for North Devon until 1839, when (as yet Lord Ebrington) he was called to the Upper House in his father's barony of Fortescue in order that he might go to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant. He remained there until Sir Robert Peel's accession to power in 1841, and in the same year succeeded his father in the earldom. He was already Lord Lieutenant and Vice Admiral' of Devon; and his work in his own county as an earnest patron of improvements in agriculture, as a zealous promoter of education, and as a binder together' of various social classes, had been, and continued to be, of the highest value. He was, it need hardly be said, the recognised leader of the Liberal party in Devonshire. Many important changes are due to him; the most important, perhaps, was made in the conduct of the county business, which had hitherto been managed and discussed by the justices as they sat over their wine after dinner. Lord Fortescue carried his motion at Quarter Sessions for the transaction of all such business in public; and the practice, very soon afterwards, was made by Parliament compulsory in all other counties, after the example of Devonshire. We must not, however, dwell further on a life of which the records speak for themselves, but which could not be passed over here, if only because it illustrates so strongly and decidedly the family character of the Fortescues. A statue, by Stephens, of this second Earl has been erected within the Castle Yard at Exeter-a memorial, as the inscription runs, marking the love of friends, and the respect of all.' Honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' have, indeed, never been wanting to a family which, through many long ages has always shown itself worthy of the position it has filled.

It would be interesting, had we the means of doing so, to compare Castle Hill, the present 'chief place' of the Fortescues in Devonshire, with their cradle at Wimpstone. But we know nothing of the latter house before it sank into a farm; and all that is certain about it is that it was never of any great architectural importance. This indeed can hardly be said of Castle Hill; and judging from a North Prospect' which Lord Clermont reproduces from an old engraving, the house, before Lord Clinton altered it, had more character, with its steep roof and 'lucarnes,' than it possesses now. Its size and extent, however, give it a certain dignity; and it has lost nothing of the character given to it in the days of James I. by Risdon, who declares that the frankness of the housekeeper