The Express.
London, England, 1851-02-08 00:00:00

ESTATES OF ENGLAND.

CLUNIBER ESTATE.
(tram the Daily New.)
(CONT tree,).
It is said the Duke of Newcastle mac riee twenty.
fire miles in a straight line on his own land. I have not
been able to track the property to ascertain from personal
observation if this be true. But though it be, it does not
give proof of the real extent. The estate is fragmentary
in several directions. The manor of Wurksop was acquired
by purchase, about nine years ago, at the price of 37.5,000/.1
The park of Clamber and some of its appended farms
which join on to Worksop Manor were chiefly acquired by I
enclosures of the forest of Sherwood 90 to 100 years ago,
as explained in the precious hit The property lying to-
wards Newark and Nottingham is that which came with
the Clinton branch of the family. An estate in Wales, that
of Ilafixl, was purchased a few years ago and again sold. As
it was crown property and had been conveyed to the late
duke before payment of the purchase money, there was
much public discussion about it, owing to his son, Lord
Lincoln, being at the head of the crown lands de-
partment in the government. It appeared, however.
that the bargain had been made with the crown
tv•fore Lord Lincoln was its representative in that depart-
ment, and that he charged interest on the incompleted pur-
chase money. It is now added by those professing to know,
that Lord Lincoln had pressed his father so closely to settle
the purchase, either by payment or forfeit, that the duke
nsolved to sell the property, and did so for about the same
price be had engaged to pay.
The acquisition of territory was with him a passion.
It
is said that he paid 150,000/. for property to give him par-
liamentary influence in boroughs alone, which, at the pass-
ing of the Refortn Act in 1832, he himself valued at
200,000/. Allusion to this leads us naturally to the destruc-
tion of Nottingham Castle at that time, and to the causes of
hostility on the part ot the populace towards him.
Ile succeeded to the dukedom before he was eleven years
of age-1794. Ile was at Eton School until the l'eace
of Amiens, in 1802. In that year, the conti-
nent being opened to travellers for the first time
since the declaration of war in 1793, his mother
and hie stepfather, her second hudiand, himself and some
friends, proceeded to France. The sudden resumption
of hostilities led Napoleon to bar their return. Full of the
recollections or hearsays of the terrible fate of the French
nobility in the earlier stages of the revolution, it need not
lie doubted that, detained as they were, they trembled fur
their fate, or at least hardened their minds against every-
thing pertaining to revolutionary politics. The manner in
which the young duke spent his time, or, as some will have
it, obtained subsistence, remained a mystery which those
most familiar with the family declare to have died with
him. The report which floats about Clamber is, that during
his four years of captivity he worked as a tailor. Sonic say
this is only an ill-natured invention of his enemies. But it
need not be so considered; a greater man than he, the late
Louis Philippe, could boast of working fur bread and per
menial employments when an exile through that
same revolution which made the Duke of Newcastle a pri-
soner. It is said about Clamber, that there were halt hours
of the duke's domestic life which were employed, and occa-
sional expressions uttered, which proved him to have been
more familiar with the constructiint of coats and pantaloons,
and the manipulation of needles and thread, with the snip-
ping of scissors, than he ever seemed to be with any other
mechanical employment, or than any ordinary man is with
Woe-elan.

lie obtained his release on the accession of the whip to
office in 1806, Charles James Fox being urgent, as soon as he
attained to the ministry of foreign affairs, in pressing foe the
release of the English in France. But this induced no gra-
titude to the Whigs from the liberated duke. Ile was then
entitled to take his scat in the House of Lords, which he did.
giving his earnest support to the narrowest-minded minister
of the tory party—Mr. Spencer Percival. Whether it was,
politically, a loss or gain, or of no consequence, fur him to
miss the University education common to his order, is not
now to he ascertained. Socially, he was familiar only with
the narrowest circle of tory exclusives. Every measure
which had in view the extension of human rights, religions,
political, or industrial, received his decided opposition.
Every institution or principle of policy which gave to the
few, of whom he Wai one, more wealth, more power, he
energetically supported.
Soon after his return to England he married Miss Mundy.
an heiress, of Derbyshire, who brought him a fortune ti!'
150,0001., and property worth from 10,0001. to 12,0001. a
year; and who also became the mother of a numerous
family of children. Much of this fortune, if not all, was
spent in the ponchos.• of parliamentary influence; and as
the duke never hesitated to estimate hie loss by pounds
sterling, it may be inferred that had not the Reform Act
interfered with his borough traffic, be intended the invest'
ment for profit. lie that as it may, lie defended his bo-
rough property with a firmness unequalled by any other
peer of parliament. By one sentence he made himself
famous " May I not do what I like with my own ?" he
asked. It has been supposed that for this he was specially
singled out for vengeance by the mobs of Nottinghamshire;
but reference to the course of their wrath—the order in
which their mischief was execv.ol, shows that the duke's
castle was neither singled for attack, nor attacked first in
order.

The Reform Bill had been debated in parliament from
Ist March to the 7th October 1831, and on the hustings at
a general election. The anti-reformers bad become not
only violent and undignified in debuts, but disloyal, at least
in deportment ; fur when the King went in person to dis-
solve parliament, on the 22nd of April, the anti-reformers
rushed from the house to mark their discontent. The clet-
Con, re-introduction of the bill to the (louse of Commons,
sod its stormy passage through that house, excited and
wearied the nation beyond patient endurance. On the 3rd
of October, the hill has ing passed the Commons on the 22nd
September, by a majority of 109, in a full house, everybody
I asked " What will the Lords du ?" On the 3rd of October
it stood for the second reading in the Lords. It was debated
I five nights ; and at five o'clock in the morning of Satur-
day the Bth, was thrown out by a majority of 41
against it. The coaches arriving in Nottingham that
afternoon carried the unwelcome news. During the
evening nine different requisitions from as many public
bodies were presented to the Mayor, calling for a public
meeting. This was appointed for Monday. During
Sunday the streets were thronged with crowds. On Mon-
day the speeches of the reformers were chiefly of a nature
to soothe the multitude, but were imperfectly heard by those
for whom they were intended. When those prudent
speeches became talked of in the crowds, the opinion 1
gained currency and force that the moderate reformers were',
siding with the anti-reformers, and that the earnest, the
vehement men, must take the reform question into their
own management. Bands of the working people, each led
by recognised club speakers, perambulated the outskirts of
the town. They had broken some windows, but had not yet
began systs matieally to do mischief. The houses of moderate
reformers and mill windows were, as yet, their ob-
jetss of mark rather than the mansions of the
aristocracy. But at last the cry was raised "To Colwiek
Hall." This was the scat of Mr. John Musters, a noted
sportsman, not peculiarly unpopular. Ile was the husband
of that Mary Chaworth, daughter of an ancient family,
whom Lord Byron bad wooed, but not won, in his youth. She
and her daughter, and some domestics, were in the house
as the mob approached shouting through the woods. The
two ladies escaped by a back door, and in the dark, drizzly,
October night hid themselves in a laurel thicket. There
they were witnesses to a bonfire of furniture made outside'
the house, and to the plunder of the cellars, and feasting
and drinking from the plunder. The effect of terror, cold,
wet, and desolation on Mr'. Musters was an illness which
soon ended in death.

The mob, eicited by unopposed destruction and brutal
eneesees. careered homeward to Nottingham, making sr-reek
of windows on the wayside, and one or more wind-
mills and other buildings. They seemed inclined
to attack the Rouse of Correction ; but in de-
fence of that the magistrates had concentrated the
mall military force at hand and their constabulary.
"To the castle !" then became the cry, upon which the
migratory crowd divided, and, going several ways, met