The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-01-21 00:00:00

THE LATE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE

The Duke of Newcastle expired at Clumber-park, on
the afternoon of Sunday week, in the presence of almost
all the members of his immediate family. He was born
on the 30th January, 1785. The third Duke. his father,
married a daughter of the second Earl of Harrington, and
died, at the age of 43, on the 17th 'of May, 1795 ; so that
the noble personage just dead succeeded as fourth Duke
NI hen he was only in the 11th year of his age. He re-
ceived his education at Eton, where he continued till very
near the period when, according to the regulations of that
school, he must have been superannuated. His mother,
the Dowager Duchess, who had remained a widow five
years, married in 1800 Sir Charles Crauford. In 1803 the
young Duke quitted Eton, and joining his mother and
stepfather, in taking advantage of the brief peace of
Amiens, ventured upon a continental tour; but was un-
fortunately, on the renawal of hostilities, among the num-
ber of the English who were detained in France. There
he passed four years of the most susceptible period of his
life in a state of comparative inaction.
On his return to England, in 1807, he had reached the
22d year of his age, when it was considered too late for
him to go to Oxford, he being then a member of the Up-
per House of Parliament, the master of considerable es-
tates, and about to become a married man. Although he
never received a shilling of pubiic money except the tri-
fling and occasional pay of a yeomanry commander ; al-
though he never held an office the possession of which in-
volved any invidious duties ; although he was a man,
whose personal honour no one ever questioned, and
whose personal courtesy bore a due proportion to his
exalted rank, and one who in public or private never
swerved from that which he believed to be just and
honourable; yet scarcely any person of late years has
been so vilified as the Duke of Newcastle.

Forty years ago the head of the long-ennobled house of
Pelham-Clinton, eleventh in succession from the firstEart
of Lincoln, and fourth from the first Duke of INewcastle,
was regarded as a youth of great promise, and known to
be a person of great possessions. He entered on life with
many personal advantages, with a fortune originally con-
siderable, and much improved by the accumulations of a
ten years' minority; but besides these aids and appliances
he bad the prestige of an ancient descent ; he possessed
the highest rank in the peerage, and the political weight,
which arose from the command of six seats in the House
of Commons—namely, two for Boroughbridge, two for
Aldborough, one for East Rettord,,and one for Newark.
But his wealth and influence had been still further aug-
mented by a matrimonial alliance with one of the greatest
heiresses then in England, whose landed estates even at
that time produced £12.000 a-year, and who possessed a
further fortune of £190,000. That lady, who bad only
just completed her 18th year, was the daughter of the
late Edward Miller Mundy, of Shipley,. in Derbyshire.
Their marriage took place on the 18th of June. 1807,
at Lambeth-palace, and was solemnised by. the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. At the end of about 15 years this
union was terminated by the death of the Duchess of
Newcastle, but at its commencement it presented every
prospect of being as long as it was happy ; and•in all re-
spects few men have begun the world with fairer pros-
pects and possessions than Henry Pelham Duke of New-
castle—young. manly, full of health and vigour, suitably
wedded, and amply endowed, rich in political power,
ancestral honours, and social rank ; still, as he advanced
in life, the world did not smile on him. The Reform Act
stripped his Grace of borough property, the money, value
of which could not,. at one time, have been set down at
less than £150,000. He, himself, estimated it at£2oo,ooo,
Nothing can be more certain than that his ancestors and-
he expended large sums.in maintaining their parliamen-
tary interests—a mode of applying capital which, com-
bined with some not very fortunate purchases of land,.
placed the Duke, at an advanced period of his life, in
circumstances by no means easy as regarded his pecuniary
affairs ; which fact his Grace did not hesitate publicly to
acknowledge, as he might well do without any injury to
his private character ;. for it is very generally understood
that, whatever inconvenience he may have suffered in
matters of finance, it had not been occasioned by profu-
sion or ostentation, but was, on the contrary, to be im-
puted to purchases of land far exceeaing in value the
amount of capital that he could really command. His
acquisition of Worksop Manor, when combined with his
other possessions in Nottinghamshire, gave him the
ownership of that which he was accustomed, and in some
degree entitled, to call " the finest estate in England ;"
but, though fairly sold and bought, the effort was one to
which his resources were unequal. The purchase of the
Hafod estate in Wales was, hewever, not so ill judged,
though that event ultimately occasioned the Duke of
Newcastle more trouble and anxiety than any pecuniary
inconvenience which he ever underwent, for charges con-
nected with that property were brought in the House of
Commons against him and the present Duke which deeply
wounded the feelings of the deceased peer. It so hap-
pened that adjoining the Hafod estate there were 7,000 or
8,000 acres of waste land in which the Crown was some-
what interested. The former proprietor, from whose de-
visees the Duke made this purchase, had agreed with the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests for the transfer of
those rights, supposed to be about one. twentieth of the
whole. The Duke accepted the estate from the vendors
subject to this agreement. Now, it unfortunately occurred
that the annual returns delivered to Parliament by the
office of Woods and Forests made it appear that the Duke
had purchased from the Crown—his eldest son acting on
behalf of the Crown—a tract of 7,000 or 8,000 acres of
land for a sum not much exceeding £l,OOO.

In this transaction certain Lberal members of the Lower
House thought they had discovered an amazing job per-
petrated between father and son—Lord Lincoln, the pre-
sent Duke, being at that time the Chief Commissioner of
Woods and Forests; but the valuation had been made in
the time of the previous proprietor, long before the Duke
of Newcastle had any connexion with the estate. Of the
whole only a very small portion belonged to the Crown,
and even that was contingent upon those waste lands be-
ing.inclosed, so that the valuation could not be impeached,
and Lord Lincoln by a very simple statement of facts was
enabled to give his accusers a triumphant answer. But
this did not satisfy the Duke, who published a letter in
which he stated, doubtless with perfect truth, that he was
reluctantly drawn into this transaction with the Crown
by the conditions on which he had purchased the estate,
ana that Lord Lincoln made him pay interest for 6 years
On the purchase money.

Besides such causes of vexation, he experienced heavy
domestic afflictions in the loss of some of his children,

at an age when it could
scarcely be said that the days of her youth had passed
away. In September, 1822, the late Duchess of Newcas-
tle gave birth to twins. and on the 27th of that month her
1.
Grace ex

_ ired at Clumber-park, Nottinghamshire, the
chief country residence of the family, being then only 33
years of age, having been born on the Ist of June, 1789.
The deceased peer did not form a second matrimonial
alliance, nor does fortune seem to have alleviated his do-
mestic losses by any great success as a legislator or a po-
litician. Upon himself even the Ministry which he sup-
ported could not well confer any office of much responsi-
bility, for though his integrity could never be suspected
his discretion was by no means remarkable. He obtained
from George 111. the rangership of Sherwood Forest, a
situation of no pecuniary emolument; and on the death
of the late Duke of Portland in 1809 he was appointed
Lord-Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Nottingham-
shire—an office that so far from being one of emolument
is a source of expense to almost every holder. In this
high posit'on he served under four monarchs, throughout
a very eventful period, extending over 30 years. As lord-.
lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, he refused to insert the
name of a gentleman in the commission of the peace, on
account of his not being a member of the Established:
Church. Lord Cottenham, then Lord Chancellor, re-
monstrated with the Duke on this refusal, urging the
obvious grounds why the nomination of the Government
should be complied with. But the Duke replied by a
stern refusal, and a warm avowal of his reasons ; and the
result was his removal from the lord-lieutenancy. in which
post he was succeeded by the Earl of Scarborough.
The sole honour obtained from the Crown, of which, he
was deprived only by death, was the Order of the. Garter,
a distinction that he did not solicit, but which the Sove-
-12 commanded him to accept; for

reign in the year

itics were so entirely in the right as
those of the Duke of Newcastle. In the days, however,
when reform in Parliament was brought about,. it was
evident that there existed a wide gulf between him and
what might be called the spirit of the age. When the
riots, to which the agitation of that great gpestion gave
rise, attained their most dangerous elevation, the Royal
castle of Nottingham was in a few hours- reduced to
ashes. On Monday, the 10th of October,. 1831, at six
o'clock in the evening, a furious mob demanded admission
at the gate of the castle, which, having been refused,they

Lien no man's

the property of the Duke of Newcastle, the wild incen-
diaries of that period resolved to manifest their hatred of
him and his order by setting fire to one of his dwellings
and reducing to a heap of ruins one of the most interest-
ing relics of a bygone age. Of its noble apartments no-

thing now remains save naked and blackened walls ; but
possibly, the present or some future Duke of Newcastle
may effect its restoration. At all events, its destruction
will not speedily be forgotten. In the eyes of the inhabi-
tants of Nottingham and of the surrounding country the
ilous though* ' conf

.ration was awful ; and, owing to the magnitude of
the building as well as the lofty eminence on which it
stood, 'the fire, which lasted five hours, was visible at a

prodigious distance

The windows of the Duke of New,

e's town mansion, in Portman-sq

uare, were

by London mobs ; and at the same time, when he fortified
his residence at Clumber,, his precautions were found to.
be by no means unnecessary. It, however, would be
superfluous to say much more of the deceased peer than
that his private virtues will be long remembered and ad•
mired ; that his character, as an amiable, honourable,
high-spirited English gentleman will be equally appre-
ciated.

The late Duke is succeeded by his son, the Right Hon.
Henry Pelham Clinton, Earl of Lincoln ; and a vacancy
is thus created in the parliamentary representation of the

atneral ~-01t5rellanp.

A brevet will be issued on the 9th of November next,
the birthday of the Prince of Wales.
A farm is to be established at Dundee, in connexion
with the ragged sehool.
The provincial papers received this week record a great
number of highway robberies, attended with unusual
daring and atrocity.
At Northampton sessions last week, the Duke of Graf.
ton gave notice of a motion that the business of the
sessions be hereafter opened with prayer.
The Bugsworth Cotton Mill, at Chapel-en-le-Frith'
near Derby, has been destroyed by fire. The loss £6,000'
which is covered by insurance.
At a meeting of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce,
on Tuesday, it was agreed to memorialise the Treasury in
favour of a repeal of the duty on soap and a large reduci
tiou in the duty on tea.