The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-12-30 00:00:00

THE LATE LORD ELLENBOROUGH.

We regret to have to record the death, at four o'clock on
Friday morning, the sdod inst., of the Earl of Ellenborough.
He had for time time past been in failing health, and his
appearances in public have for some years been few and far
between but the decease of one who has at various times
tilled to large a space in affairs cannot Mit produce a certain
emotion The Times of Saturday gives the following brief
memoir of his life

The old saying, "Fortes cronotur forte7.,s," might
well he supported by reference to the family of Law.
L rd Ellenhereugh was not only a remarkable man in
himself, but the on of a remarkable father. Indeed,
talents of a high order would went to have lwen in-
herent in the Laws for inure than a century past.
Seated at Askham, in Westmoreland, they appear
to have held a very fair position among the county
families of the North; and just a hundred years
as one of their number, Edmund Law, Laving
already distinguished himself as the author of
many religious and philosophical works still con-
sidered of authority, was consecrated to the See
of Carlisle. This is late, by his wife, Mary Chris-
tian, of Ewanrigg, in the county of Cumberland, mater-
nal granddaughter of one of the Senhouses Ellen-
borough, had a numerous family, of whom the eldest,
John, became successively Bishop of Clonfert,
and Elphin, and the youngest, George Henry,
Bishop of Chester and eventually lif Bath and Wells;
while Ms third son, John, having chosen the Ear as
his profession, became Attorney-General in ball, and
lord Chief Justice I d the Court id Queen's Bench in
the following year, when he was raised to the peerage
as Lord Ellenhorough, taking his title from the ancient
patrimony of his grandmother's family.
'

Lord Ellenboreugh presided over his Court during a
time when high Tory principles prevailed ; and it is
well known that he occasionally carried his political
predilections into court with him ; but at his death
In 1519 he left behind him a high reputation for legal
ability of no ordinary kind. By his marriage with
Anne, daughter of Captain Towry, MN., he had five
daughters and five sous, of whom the eldest, Edward,
the subject of this present memoir, was born on the
Bth of September, 1790.

He was sent at the usual age to Eton, where he wa
the contemporary of the late Mr. Osbaldiston, the late
Marquis of Downshire, the late and present Earl
Bathurst, and the late Dean Milman ; he completed
his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, where
he took the ordinary degree of M.A. in 1800. He first
entered Parliament in P 414, as M.P. for the since
disfranchised borough if St. Mil:haters ; and at this
time it is understood that be professed far more Liberal
Opinions than those which he must have imbibed as
a child from no strong and uncompromising a Tory
as his father. His early removal to the House
of Peers by his father', death, in December, 181.8, al-
ready alluded to, brought his %weer in the Commons
to a close sooner than was to he expected in the nature
of things. Nor did his promotion to the Upper House
at once liring him into any prominent piieition. In
1828. however, the Duke of Wellington, on becoming
Premier, offered him a place in his Administration ; in
which he became, first, Lord Privy Seal, and after-
wards President of the Board of ControL He of course
retired with his party on the formation of the Grey
Ministry, and remained in opposition until the autumn
of 1814, when he resumed his former office under
Sir Robert Peel, with a seat in the Cabinet. Peers
tenure of power, however, WAS but brief, and at the
end of the period known as his "Hundred Days" he
was towed to resign by an adverse majority in the
I louse of Commons ; so Lord Ellenborough again
found himself without a place. Sir Robert Peers
second tenure of office commenced in the autumn of
1,41, and Lord Ellenborough's name was included in
the list of his Cabinet, AS once more President of the
Board of ControL But in the following month he was
offered and accepted the post of Governor-General of
India, vacantly the recall of Lord Auckland.
Lord Ellenborough lost no timein making his way to
the East, and, once arrived, soon made his presence
felt from Calcutta to the foot of the Himalayas. He
reached India in the midst if a crisis little less
threatening in its aspect than the more recent crisis of
the Mutiny. Thmugh a large part of India our
prOd (IC was gone, great discredit had befallen our arms,
and a general want of contidenceprevailedtoan extent
which fell little short of a panic. But Lord Ellen-
borough lid not hesitate or stand still. By stringent
and summary measures, which he rightly judged to be
imperathe, but which were condemned by the civil
service as needlessly severe and arbitrary, he put an
end to the " Secretariat " system which had pre-
vailed raider his predeceseor, concentrated the power
AM responsibility in his own hands, awl brought the
civil and military authorities into unity. Next, by a
bold stroke, in which he was ably supported by the
late Lord Gough (who WAS then in command of our
forces in India), he reconquered the Affghan territory,
where the honour and lustre of the British name had
been sadly tarnished by failures ihiring the administra-
tion of Lord Auckland, and enabled the British forces
in a few months to evacuate the country of Affghani-
stan, after having thoroughly reduced its people to sub-
mission, and captured and levelled the fortress of
Uhuznee. On returning to Calcutta they
carried with them the gates of Somnauth to
grace the triumph of the Governor-General,
whose pompous and high-flown proclamation of
the fact may possibly be still remembered by many

of our readeis. Thu Aumers of Scinde, the—next
aggiessora agaiust the peace of India, were, in their
turn, made to pay a like srice for their violation Of
Treaties, and their attaeks on our residents, being de-
feated with heavy loss by Sir Charles J. Napier in
two or three blie,dy battles, including the hard-fought
field of Meeanee, which was followed by the annexa-
tion of &Mile to our dominions. Finally, in con-
junction with Lord Gough, the Governor-Central
was able to report home that the Alahratta State
of Gwalior, wineh had long been afflicted with in-
ternal feuds in ismsequence of a disputed succeasion,
and bad threatened to involve India in another war,
hail been reconquered and reduced to obedience.
The news of this success, however, had scarcely
reached the shores of England when society at home
was startled in the early nommer of 11444 by the news
that the magnates of Leadenhall-street had exercised
their undoubted right of recalling- for reasons best
known to themselves -the loan who had thus rescued
their Eastern Empire from ruin. The Duke of Wel-
lington, who hail the greatest confidence in Lord
Ellendorough, and who had watched his Indian career
with approval, did not scruple to declare that
this step was "a most indiscreet use of their authority
on the part id the East Indian Directors," and it is
almost needless to add that its impolicy Wail publicly
proclaimed by Sir Robert Peel, who lost no time in
ehowing his appreciation of Lord Ellenborough's
Indian services by recommending him to her Ma-
jesty for promotion in the ranks of the Peerage.
Accordingly he received the formal thanks of both
Houses of Piuliament for the ability and judgment
with which he had supported the military operations
in Afghanistan; and, as a more substantial re-
ward, in Octsiben 1844, he was gazetted "Earl of El-
lenborough and Viscount Southern ;" and, as a vacancy
occurred at the Admiralty by the retirement of the
Earl of lladdington, at the end of ISIS or the begin-
ning of the following year, he was appointed to the
post of }list Lord. Here too, short,las was his period
of rule—for he hail to resign with the rest of his party
in the course of about six months—he made his pre-
sence felt, and showed that a strone'. Tory in politics
could be also a strong Reformer in th*lesser world of
official existence.

Lord Ellenborough resumed his old office as Pre-
sident of the Board of Control with a seat in the
Cabinet on the formation of Lord Derby's first and
bluort-liv ed Administration in 1658; but he resigned
that post after a tenure of only a few weeks' duration
in order to avert the threatened catastrophe of a Mi-
nisterial defeat. This, to a great extent, was provoked
by a most severe censure conveyed in Lord Ellen-
borough's celebrated despatch to Lord Canning, in
which be condemned, in no measured term; the policy
of the Governor-General in terminating the entire
right of property in Oudh after the suppression of the
Indian Mutiny.

Since that period Lord Ellenborough, thong revealin g
at times the powers of oratory which had at one time
made him, with scarcely the exception of the late Lord
Derby himself, the most forcible and impressive
speaker in the House cf Lords never took on himself
the cares and responsibilities of office. The routine,
indeed, of the various departments of our Home
Government, it may safely be mwertedinever could
have been in harmony with the tastes of a
man so original in his character, so self-re-
iant, and, it may he added, so self-willed, so
vehement and impetuous, and inpatient of all
checks and contradictions. By a sad fatality, which
carried off Lord Dalhousie, Lord Canning and Lord
Elgin, he became, some time before his death, the
only surviving ex-Governor-lieueral of India, with the
exception of Sir John (now Lord) Lawrence. Lord
Elleuborough held up to the time of his death
a very valuable sinecure, worth, it is supposed,
t 7,000 a year, as Joint Chief Clerk of the Pleas in
the Court of Queen's Bench, an office which had been
conferred upon him by his father, the Chief Justice.
Lord Ellenborough was twice married, fintly in 1013,
to the youngest daughter of Robert, first Marquis of
Londonderry, and secondly to Jane Elizabeth, daughter
uf Admiral Digby ; but this latter marriage WM dis-
solved by Act of Parliament. Lady Elfenbotough,
thus set free fri an the ties of matrimony has made her
home in the East since that period:and few Englishmen
m Englishwomen who have visited Dane -o, have omit-
ted to pay the eccentric Englishwomen a visitlo her tent
in the Desert, and probably to experience her aid if they
have wished to pursue thew route to Palmyra. As the
Earl's only issue was a child who I lied in infancy,
his Earldom and Viscountcy become extinct, Nth&
the Barony of Ellents,rough plusses to his nephew,
Mr. Charles Edmund Lew, only surviving son id Ids
next brother, the late Right Hon. Chalk., E. Law,
Recorder of London, and M.P. for Cambridge !Uni-
versity, by Elizabeth Sophia, daughter of the late
Sir Edward Nig!,aingale, of Kneesworth, Cambridge-
shire.

The new peer, who was formerly Lieutenant-C, done'
6141, Foot, was horn in November, 1820, and has been
three times married, firstly, in 1 10, to Lady Eleanor
Cecil }lowan', eldest daughter of the late Earl of
Wicklow; and secondly, in 1655, to Anna Elizabeth,
daughter f the lice. John Fitzgerald Day, of Beaufort-
house, Killarney. That lady died in ebruary,
leaving an only son, Charles Towry Hamilton, now
heir to the baronetcy, born in the year, 18,75 i. His
Lordship married thirdly, in I xeid, Isabella, only child
of the late Mr. Alexander Ogilby, of Pellipar, county
L .ndonderry, by whom he has a daughtr, Gertrude
Edith, born in 164:9.