The Washington herald., 1921-02-06
BRETHY PARK Is
INTERESTING ESTATE.

IT HE most interesting Of the
country seats OF the Earls OF
= CarnarvOn is Brethy Park, in
Stanordshire, which came to them
from the seventh Earl Of Chester
held through his sister and heiress,
married to the fourth Lord of Car
narVon. 1t was the scene of a trae-
edy that has served to inspire poets
playwrights and novelists, and CEN
terlng around the death Of the love-
ly wife of the second Earl of Che.-
terheld. She was the daughter of
James, Duke OF Ormonde. and one
OF the most beautiful women at the
court of Charles II, as well as one
OF the most blameless. Yet her mar
rage to Philip Stanhope, Earl OF
Chesterfield, furnished her with ey-
cry excuse and provocation to re-
Gard her marriage vows but lightly.
since he was perhaps the most cyn-
lcalIy bad and selfishly dissolute of
all the courtiers OF the Merrie Mon
arch. Naturally, he Judged every
one else by his own standard. and
could not believe that his wife wa,
really innocent when she became an
OBJECT OF admiration on the part OF
the Duke of York (who afterward
succeeded to the throne as James
ID.
Concealing his anger, he induced
MS "Ie TO accompany him from
Dohoon to his ancestral home at
brethy Park. On arriving there he
taxed her for the first time with
untalthtulness, and declared that he
proposed to keep her at Brethy
NPfr
der OF her life. She protested her
innocence, whereupon he finally de-
clared that he would believe her II
she would pledge to him her inno-
Cence while taking the sacraments
She succumbed before the conmu-
MON service in the chapel at Brethy
Hall had been brought to a close
and within a few minutes only af-
ter having partaken OF the sacra-
mental wine.
Lord Chesterfield professed to see
in this an evidence of her guilt and
divine punishment for her wicked
ness in perjuring herself over the
sacraments and intimated as much
to his relatives and friends, though
ascribing her death so far as the
general public was concerned to
the plague. The understanding al
ways has been that the earl either
himself inserted a violent poison
in the saCramental wine or else
caused his chaplain to do so, thus
numbering the countess. In this
connection it is a matter of note
that his own daughter-in-law, Lady
Elizabeth Saville, who became third
Countess OF Chesterfield, whenever
she dined with him or met him any
where at dinner insisted on bring
ing with her her own wine and her
own goblet, as a public manifesto
ton of her belief that he had been
his wife's assassin.
Brethy Hall, like HighcIere,
stands in a large and beautiful deer
park, dotted with a chain of lakes
and shaded by some glorious old
trees, as to one of which there are
authentic and ancient records to
show that it was in existence in
the reign of Alfred the Great 1t
is believed to be the oldest tree in
the United Kingdom. Brethy Hall
was pillaged and partly destroyed
by the Roundheads after a long
siege in their war against Charles
I. Rebuilt on grander lines than
before in the reign of Charles II.
it rivaled in magniicence Chats
worth, the principal country seat of
the Dukes of Devonshire; but the
fifth Earl of Chesterfield. who was
master-of- -the-horse to George III,
allowed himself to be persuaded by
his steward that the mansion was
unsafe. having become rotten. 1t
was only after it had been pulled
down that it was discovered that
it was perfectly sound. 1t was
rebuilt by his son, the sixth earl.