The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-07 00:00:00

THE WENTWORTH PEERAGE.

The first holder of the Barony of Wentworth, as is re-
lated by the _London Review, was one of those worthy per-
sons who in the time of the eighth Henry passed from the
rank of country gentleman to that of a magnate of the land.
His coat showed that he was a cadet of the house of Went-
worth Woodhouse, from which in after days sprang the
great Lord Strafford. He has been said to have been a cor-
dial Protestant, and it is certain that ho got some Church
lands. It was probably as a safe politician that he was, with
five other new peers, summoned by Henry to the Parliament
which met in the twenty-first year of the reign. No formal
record of the creation of these six barons exists, and the fact
is inferred from the entries in the Journal of a session of the
same Parliament held five years later. 'What is more im
portant with reference to the present claim is that these baro-
nies are held to be descendiLle to heirs female as well as heirs
male—in technical language, to heirsieneral of the original
barons. The consequence is that except two which un-
luckily came to grief at a very early date, they may be said
to be indestructible. Occasionally they fall into abeyance
when two or more sisters succeed as co-heirs, but an abso-
lute extinction of the whole issue of the parent stocks is
almost impossible. The first Lord Wentworth had a troop
of sons and he was succeeded in 1550-1 by his eldest, a
second Thomas. The second baron was as prudent as his
father, but on one notable occasion he was not so fortunate,
He duly witnessed the will of Edward VI. giving the suc-
cession to Lady Jane Grey; as duly he went over to Mary
on the death of her brother, and he carried out the whole duty
of man by sitting in judgment on the degraded favourite,
Dudley the Duke of Northumberland. Such a faithful ser-
vant deserved to be made Governor of Calais, but then
unluckily he lost it. We are accustomed to look upon poor
Mary's despair as the passionate outburst of an intensely
morbid woman ; but in tact the fall of Calais raised a storm
of indignation throughout England. We may conceive the
feeling by imagining the rage which would be felt against
the commander who should lose Gibraltar in a war with
Spain. Professor Goldwin Smith's voice might be heard
piping above the storm that the loss was a gain, but the corn-
mander might think himself lucky if he escaped the
fate of Byng. England had held Calais more than
two hundred years; its possession was the symbol and
justification of the style King of England and France and
the quartering of the French lilies ; when it was lost,
the process of English law was strained in a fashion
that can only be paralleled in Sir Bulwer Lytton's " Strange
Story." An indictment was found against the Lord Went-
worth, in his absence, for having traitorously surrendered
the town to the French king; his estates were sequestered,
and his goods were confiscated. He did not return to Eng-
land till the death of Mary, when he was formally tried by
the Peers and acquitted. Ho lived to sit himself in judg-
ment on the Duke of Norfolk, and to marry his son to a
daughter of Burleigh. An insignificant third baron begot a
fourth, who was one of the most gallant supporters of Charles
I.; the Earldom of Cleveland marked the King's sense of the
loyalty of his subject. The Earl served the sonwith the same
zeal that he served the father : he fought at 'Worcester, and,
though upwards of sixty, he is said to have come to the
battle after twenty-one days' continuous hard riding. The
gallant cavalier had an only son, who died without male
issue in his father's lifetime, so that the earldom became
extinct with the first possessor, but the barony descended
to the son's only daughter, a Henrietta Maria, a ged-daugh-
ter of the Queen. The fair Henrietta was loyal after the
fashion of the restoration. The worthless Monmouth deserted
his Scotch wife, the Duchess of Buccleuch, the patroness
of the " Last Minstrel," for the charms of the Lady Went-
worth. With a prevision of the doctrine of elective affini-
ties, for which he is rarely credited, he obstinately refused
to acknowledge, when in the Tower, the criminality of the
connection, and—as even the divines of that age had limits
to their complaisance—he went to the scaffold without
the last sacraments of the Church. Let it be said
to the grace of Henrietta that she did not long survive
her lover, but died unmarried in 1686. The barony went
to her aunt, the only danghter of the old cavalier, and
after passing through two more females, was carried to the
family of Noel of Kirkby Mallory. In 1745 Sir Edward
Noel took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Went-
worth ; but his only son died without male issue, and the
barony fell into abeyance between a single daughter,
Judith Noel, who married Sir Ralph Mi!banke, and
the issue of another daughter, Sophia, who had been
married to Lord Scarsdale. The issue of Lady Scarsdale be-
came extinct, in 1856, by the death of the late Lord Scarsdale,
and the abeyance terminated, the inheritor of the barony
being Anne Isabella, the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke
and Dame Judith. Anne Isabella Milbank° was the wife
of THE Lord Byron (to use the language of a witness on
Monday) ; and, as all the world knows, the only issue of her
unhappy marriage was Ada, "sole daughter of my house
and heart," the late wife of the present Earl of Lovelace.
The only surviving son of Lord Lovelace now claims the
barony of Wentworth.

At the Croydon Assizes yesterday a printer's
engineer, named Myers, recovered damages from the Great
Northern Railway, £1,660, as compensation for injuries he
received in January last, in a collision at Knottingley, on
the line belonging to the defendants.
MR. JOHN BRIGHT, MY, IN SCOTLAND.—
We (Caledonian Mercury) understand that Mr. John
Bright, M.P., has been residing for some time past at
Amulree, which is situated about mid-way between Crieft
and Dunkeld, in the I'erthshire Highlands.
The &ova of Turin states that Sir James Hud-
son has been recalled from that capital. The approaching
departure of this Minister has caused, says the journal from
which we quote, a painful impression in Turin, where he
wan much esteemed. If it be true that Sir James Hudson
has really been recalhd, his loss will no doubt be much felt
by many of the leadiug statesmen of Turin. Sir Jaarz,s was
one bf the closest friends of the late Count Cavour.

con
rt
,

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, August 6.
To-day is the anniversary of the birth of his
Royal Highness Prince Alfred.
The Queen drove out yesterday with Princess.
Louise and Prince Leopold.
Viscountess Jocelyn and Lieutenant-Colonel Du
Plat were in attendance.
Princess Helena rode on horseback, attended by
the Hon. Horatio Stopford.