The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-21 00:00:00

THE LATE DUKE OF RUTLAND, E.G.

We have received intelligence of the death of the vener-
able Duke of Rutland, which took place at half-past 3
o'clock yesterday, at Belvoir-castle, near Grantham, in
his 79th year. The immediate cause of his death was an
attack of bronchitis, supervening on a gradual decay.
John Henry Manners, sth Duke and 14th Earl of Rut-
land, Senior Knight of the Garter, Lord Lieutenant and
Custos Rotulorurn of the county of Leicester, and Co-
lonel of the Leicestershire Militia, High Steward of
Cambridge, Recorder of Scarborough and Grantham, a
trustee of the British Museum, and one of the Council of
King's College, London, born on the 4th January, 1778.
He was the eldest and last surviving son of Charles,
fourth Duke (son of the celebrated Marquis of Granb'),
who died suddenly in 1787, at the age of 34, from an
internal attack while holding the important post of Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland,* by the Lady Mary Isabella
Somerset, youngest daughter of Charles, fourth Duke of
Beaufort, who died in 1831, long after she had outlived
her reputation as the most beautiful woman of her day.
The late Duke succeeded to the princely title and
estates of his father when he was under ten years of age,
and consequently held hisdukedom for the unprecedented
period of all but 70 years. At the usual age his Grace
entered Trinity College, Cambridge, then under Dr.
Pestlethwaite, where he took the degree of M.A. in
1797. At the time of his decease he must have been
nearly the senior member of that college, with the ex-
ception of Lord Lyndhurst, who graduated there some
three years before him. Having come to his title at so
early an age, his Grace was never able to hold a
seat in the House of Commons. In 1799, however,
he took his seat in the Upper House, and naturally
gave his support to the then existing Ministry of Mr.
Pitt, who, it may here be remarked, owed to the
recommendation of the father his first introduction
to public life as member for Lord Lonsdale's pocket-
borough of Appleby. The Duke, however, though
on one occasion, we believe, he moved or seconded the
Address in the House of Lords, never took an active or
prominent part in the proceedings of that assembly, but
contented himself with giving to the Ministries of Pitt,
Addington, Perceval, and Liverpool, as afterwards to
Wellington, Peel, and Lord Derby a steady but silent
support. Daring the greater portion of his time his
brothers, the late Lord Charles and Robert Manners,
represented the Tory interest in the counties of Leicester
and Cambridge, in which lies the greater part of the pre•
perty of the house of Rutland.
The late duke was by conviction a strong supporter of
the old-fashioned opinions of his party on Church and
State questions, and accordingly he opposed the relaxa-
tion of the Test and Corporation Acts, and also resisted
the Catholic Relief Bill as long as be felt that the latter
could be refused with safety to the State. Indeed so
late as the month of Jan., 1829, we find the name of
his Grace heading an address to the Crown against the
proposed innovation in the constitution, but as soon as
he was convinced that the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Robert Peel had but one course open before them, if
they wished to avoid the horrors of a civil war, he did
did not shrink from professing a change in his opinions
and from giving his vote in favour of the mea-
sure. Eventually, however, his deeply-rooted prin-
ciples or prejudices resumed their place, and at
the final division in the House of Lords upon
that important measure his Grace was one of the four
dukes who voted among the minority, declaring them-
selves "not content." To the Reform Bill, also, his
Grace was strenuously opposed upon principle, though
here again, in the self-same spirit, he abstained from
recording his vote against the measure on the decisive
and final division of April 14, 1832. His opposition to
the repeal of the corn laws is too recent to need being
repeated here. A Tory by conviction, and possessed,
as he was, of the extensive political influence which
was inseparable from his large landed property, it is not
remarkable that his Grace should have received an early
mark of Ministerial favour in the shape of the Blue
Riband of the Garter, which was conferred upon him in
1803 by the then Premier, Mr. Addington, afterwards
first Lord Sidmouth, and for many years previous to the
time of his decease he had become senior Knight of that
illustrious order.
His Grace, however, found a more congenial sphere of
action in his native county and his domestic circle than
in political glans and the atmosphere of courts. As a
magistrate, country gentleman, friend, neighbour, and
parent it is not too much to say that be was equally
honoured and beloved. As a proof of the affectionate
regard in which he was held by his tenantry we may
mention that so lately as Christmas, 1855, the tenants on
the Belvoir estates presented him with his portrait,
which they had painted by subscription by Grant. He
took great pride in his corps of Leicestershire Yeomanry;
and at Christmas and other seasons of the year, and
especially on his own birthday (Jan. 4), he rejoiced in
keeping open house in "princely style," and in entertain-
ing not only his family and friends, but the leading in.
habitants of the eountry and his own poorer dependents.
He also subscribed largely to the maintenance of the

ieicestershire hunt, though for some years he had been
unable to follow the amusements of the chase. It should
be added that his Grace was regarded with high esteem
by the poet Crabbe, who owed to his father his earliest
preferments ; and who mentions him with much respect
in the prefaces prefixed to hip poetical works.
By his wife, the lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of
the filth Earl of Carlisle, to whom he was married in
1799, and who died about 30 years ago, ho had issue

four daughters and three sons. - Of the former, two are
deceased, the Lady Katharine Jermyn, and the Lady
Emmeline Stuart Wortley ; though the reputation of
the latter lady as a poetess of no common order will not
readily pass away. Her death, near Beyrout, in the au-
tumn of last year, which will be fresh in the memory of
our readers, was a grievous blow to the Duke, who was
fondly attached to her. His two surviving daughters are
the Lady Elizabeth F. Drummond, and the Lady Adeliza
Norman. His Grace's three sons all hold seats in the
present House of Commons—the Marquis of Granby,
for North Leicestershire ; Lord John Manners, for
Colchester; and Lord George Manners, for Cambridge-
shire. Lord George, who is also a captain in the Horse
Guards?, was recently married to the Lady Adeliza
Howard, daughter of the late and sister of the present
Duke of Norfolk. The name of Lord John Manners
has long been before the political world as head of the
Woods and Forests under the short-lived Administration
of Lord Derby, while the literary public are better ac.
quainted with his lordship as the author of some poems
of a highly feudal and medieval character, and of a
" Plea for National Holydays." His Grace's eldest
son, Charles Cecil John, Marquis of Granby, who has
now succeeded to the dukedom, was appointed in 1852
Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorunt of Lincolnshire
on the resignation of the late Earl Brownlow. He was
born in 1815, and is unmarried. His lordship. is well
known as one of the heads of the " country" or Protec-
tionist party, in which capacity he has frequently spoken
with considerable ability in the House of Commons,
though he did not take office under Lord Derby. It
may be remembered that he declined to lead the great
Conservative party in the House of Commons on the
death of Lord George Bentinck.
The vast estates of Belvoir are possessions inherited
by the ducal family of Rutland on account of their de-
scent from the ancient Barons Roos or De Roos, an
heiress of which noble family married Sir Robert Man-
ners, ex-Sheriff of Northumberland, towards the close
of the 15th century, and eventually succeeded to the
Barony of De Ros. Thomas, 13th Lord de Roe, created
Earl of Rutland in 1525, and honoured with the Knight.
hood of the Garter, held many important posts in the
Court and Cabinet of Heary VIII. He was the grand-
son of Anne Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV. It is re-
marked as strange by Sir E. Brydges, in his article on
the English peerage, in the Quarterly Review for April,
.1830, that, " notwithstanding this alliance with the
House of York, the Earls of Rutland were able to escape
the oppression of the Tudors." Tbe second earl rebuilt
the family mansion of Belvoir. On the death of the
third earl, in 1857, the titles of Rutland and De Ros
became separated, the latter passing in the female line
to his lordship's only daughter, wife to the celebrated
Lord Burleigh, afterwards Earl of Exeter ; but the titles
were again united for a time in the person of the sixth
earl. The tenth earl, who had previously received a
summons to Parliament from Charles 11., in his father's
lifetime, as Lord Manners, was raised to the dukedom
in 1703. The second duke married a daughter of the
celebrated patriot, William, Lord Russell, by whom he
became the grandfather of the great Marquis of Granby,
whose military reputation, handed down to our own
times on the signboard of many a village inn, was won
during the years which he spent in Germany as Com-
mander-in-Chief of the British forces serving under Prince
Ferdinand of Brunswick. The Marquis of Granby
who died before his father, and consequently never sue'
ceeded to the dukedom, was grandfather of the duke so
lately deceased.

The late Archbishop (Manners-Sutton) of Canterbury
and the first Lord Manners, sometime Lord Chancellor
of Ireland, were first cousins of the deceased duke. The
archbishop's eldest son, Sir Charles Manners Sutton,
was for many years member for the University of Cam-
bridge, and Speaker of the House of Commons from
1817 to 1834, and was elevated to the Viscountcy of
Canterbury in 1835.

* The late Dr, Watson, Bishop of Llandaff,
in his place in
tho House of Lords, pronounced a warm oulogium on the
duke soon after
decease, which may be found recorded in
the " Gentleman's Magazine " for November, 1787. A more
correct and far more graphic account of his character, and
of his Lord-Lieutonantcy in Ireland, may be found in the 2,1
vol. of Sir Nathaniel Wrasall's " Posthumous Memoirs of his
Own Time.

--orAt a court which was held
pg,
Eight Hon. J a letter from the
yeset°eruclitaThOtWheAl:7--. s
rElldgMily. residinortley, the Solicitor-General,
was read, thanking the court for the vote of congratula-
tion which been passed upon his accession to that
bad
office.
Alderman Wire called attention to some erro-
eons statements lately published about the state of
vv,„te Gaol, and wished them to be referred to the
-e
Gaol Committee, to contradict or correct them. No
resolution, however, was adopted on the subject. The
nub-committee on the state of Whitecross-street Prison
bad prepared a report, in which they said—" The existing
evils are a want of cleanliness, great laxity of discipline,
occasional disturbances, disregard of the governor's au-
thority, sometimes a display of insulting and violent con-
duct towards solicitors or others whose duty may lead
them there to serve ,process, &c., and a coercive bearing
towards such new-coming inmates as may desire to with-
hold themselves from a familiar identification with the
prison community. The sub-committee are of opinion,
that although much may be done to render the existing
state of things less unsatisfactory, more might be accom-
plished if the law of debtor and creditor, as administered
under the act for the relief of insolvent debtors, could to
some extent be amended so as to give power to some
officer of the Insolvent Debtors' Court, or of the prison,
to enforce that part of the act which deals with the
property of the debtor and discharges his person from
enetodyt