The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-21 00:00:00

LORD ALFORD.

Talking of family matters, what a slice of good luck
has at last befallen Lord Alford, the nephew of your
Cheshire neighbour, Sir E. Cust, by the death of the
wealthy and amazingly old Countess of Bridge-
water, whose heir the Noble Lord is by the terms
of the will of the late eccentric Earl. What these
terms are have been explained here on a former
occasion when speaking of the Custs ; but as
a good many errors are " going the rounds" in con-
nexion with the story of the inheritance, it may be as
well to repeat our former particulars, with come few addi-
tions. John William Egerton, seventh Earl of Bridge-
water, Viscount Brackley, and Baron of Ellesmere (hus-
band of the Countess), died without issue in 1823, and on
the death of his next brother, half-a-doa..n years after-
wards, all the titles became extinct, some of them, as
you are aware, being lately revived in the person of
the present Earl of Ellesmere, who, as second son to
the late Marquis of Stafford (first Duke of Suther-
land), succeeded to his granduncle's, the last Duke of
Bridgewater's, immense estates, and to that portion
of the famous Stafford Gallery which is about being con-
veyed to Bridgewater House, now building near St.
James's Palace, and which pictures were valued at
150,0001. The Earl willed that on the death of the
Countess (just deceased), his grandnephew, Lord Al-
ford, the Tory Member for Bedfoidshire, and son
and heir to Earl Brownlow, should succeed to his
great estates for five years, and if at the expiration of
that period he had not advanced in the peerage beyond
the degree of earl, then his next brother, Lord Charles
Henry Cust, an officer in the Guards, married to the
daughter of the Chief of Clanranald, is to succeed
on precisely the same conditions, failing which, the
head, whoever he may be at the time, of the
Egertons of. Tatton succeed. Here, then, are the
materials for a real modern romance of the peerage.
Lord Alford is not much of a conjuror, at all events in
the political world ; and bow is he to get the requisite
marquisate or dukedom without the thing being a too
palpable contrivance for securing the inheritance? It
such be attempted, all eyes will be turned to it
by the notoriety that attaches to the will ;
and what Minister in these days will venture
on any performance of the kind without being
able to justify it, especially as there are at least two
sets of individuals, Lord Charles H. Cust and his family
and the Egertons, who have the deepest interest in see-
ing that the spirit as well as the letter of the will
is complied with ; for of course the deceased Peer
meant that his heir should earn the honour whose
attainment is the condition of the retention of the
property. However, here, no doubt, will come in the
value of the Court favouritism of the Master of the Cere-
monies with his old employer, Leopold, the Queen's
uncle, and the favouritism of Lady Charlotte Cust with
the Queen's mother; so that if Lord Alford be the fa
vourite nephew of the proprietor of Leasowe Castle, the
chances are that the Crown will make a Marquis of
him, irrespective of the Ministers of the day alto-
gether, before the five years are up. That there will be
counterplotting and intriguing there can be small ques-
tion. The Brownlow family extend to three times the
length of the O'Connell tail when it was at its fullest
stretch. The late Earl had three wives, and three large
families, almost every member of whom has also had
numerous offspring, extending, in the three generations,
to not far short of 200 individuals, without touching
the cousins, at all. To suppose that all these, or the
quarter of them (putting the multitudinous Egertons
out of the question), will acquiesce in the propriety of
Lord Alford being left in quiet possession of his good
fortume,- would be to fancy a state of domestic bliss which
the proprietor of the original " Happy Family " himself
would declare to be purely ideal. Alford has al-
ready pretty well illustrated the futility of human
calculations, for he is now not far short of forty ; arid
every one expected he would have come into at
least his five years' tenure on reaching his majority,
by which time the Countess was passed seventy.
However, he is quite young enough yet to turn mat•
ters to account for himself and other people, amongst
whom, it is to be presumed, will be his Cheshire
uncle, to whom it would not be very respectful if he
allowed him to receive a miserable 3001. a year, for going
through an amount of Court ceremonial gymnastics
which necessarily entail an annual three months' lumbago
on any man attempting them who doesn't happen to be
born with a gutta-percha backbone; and Sir Edward,
to all external appearances, does not look as if he had a
particularly flexible vertebrw—much to his inconveni-
ence at this present juncture, seeing all the levees and
drawing-rooms, and other state pageants which her Ma-
jesty, it seems, is to institute this season, with a view to
I give the tribe of Howell and James and the modistes of
Belgravia a preliminary taste of California.—Corre-
spoudent of the Liverpool Albion.