to the crown upon the accession of Henry, Earl of Richmond, to the throne as Henry VII. The ruins of the castle, as most of my readers who have visited Yorkshire know, rise proudly and majestically above the side of the river Swale, the bold Norman keep being still almost entire; and the castle, though untenanted, is still the property of the noble duke who derives from it the first of his many titles.

It may be added that Richmond in Surrey was originally called Shene, for its "bright" and pleasant situation; and that its modern name of Richmond was given to it out of compliment to Henry VII. when he built a palace there and made it a royal residence.

101

GEORGE HANGER, LORD COLERAINE.

"M

ARCH 31: died of a convulsive fit, at his residence, near the Regent's Park, aged 73, the Right Hon. George Hanger, fourth Lord Coleraine, of Coleraine, co. Londonderry, in the Peerage of Ireland, and a Major-General in the army; better known by the title of Colonel Hanger, or the familiar appellation of George Hanger.'" Such is the curt and brief manner in which Mr. "Sylvanus Urban" records in the column of the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1824, the decease of a nobleman who had played in his day a conspicuous part among the early boon companions of George, Prince of Wales, of whom he was wittily said to be not the constant Hanger, but the constant "Hanger on." Like Lord Rochester and Lord Camelford before him, he lived a life not very creditable to a member of

"the upper ten thousand," and died lamented and regretted by none, or, at all events, by few of his contemporaries; and the extinction of his title, which was caused by his death, could scarcely be said to have created in the Irish peerage any gap or void which it was difficult to fill up.

The life of this mauvais sujet, however, though not such as to place him among the true aristocracy-the viri optimè meriti-may well entitle him to a place among the "Eccentric Characters" of the nineteenth century; and as such I fancy that a brief outline of his life may possibly amuse my readers, and serve as a beacon of warning to young (and possibly also middle-aged) noblemen with more money than brains.

The family from which the hero of the present paper sprang does not seem to be in any way illustrious in history. George Hanger expressly says that he could not trace it up beyond his grandfather, whom he styles Sir George, "though how he got the title he knew not, and cared less." All that is known about the family is that the name borne by its members was variously spelt at different times as Ainger, Aunger, Aungre, and Aungrier; and it is probable that the "h" was prefixed by some of the family whose

spelling and pronunciation were alike at fault.* But however the name was or ought to have been spelt, the "Extinct Peerage of Ireland" says that the Hangers came from Essex and Hertfordshire, but that they "disposed of their English estates towards the end of the fifteenth century.' Francis Aunger or Ainger, one of the younger sons of the house, appears to have gone over to Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, like many another English gentleman, to seek his fortune. He chose the profession of the law, became Master of the Rolls, and was raised to a peerage as Earl of Longford and Baron Aungier; these titles, however, became extinct in 1704. Another member of the same house, probably his brother, followed the trade of a Turkey merchant, either in London or in Dublin-it is not clear which; and, having got together a good round sum of

* The name of Hanger, however, is not qnite unknown to fame, for in the British Museum Library there is a book published in 1685, by one Philip Hanger, entitled "A True Relation how Eighteen Men were Cast Away at Sea, with the great hardships they underwent." It is therefore quite possible that the love of strange adventure was not original in my hero, George, but simply broke out afresh, as being already "in the blood." I may add that in the present day a West End firm of tailors, Messrs. Hanger and Sons, appear in the Museum Catalogue as the authors of "An Infallible Guide in Cutting Clothes." Can they be any relations of Lord Coleraine ?

money, made up his mind to look out for an heiress, so as to consolidate and perpetuate at once his wealth and his name. He purchased the estate of Driffield in Gloucestershire, where the Hangers continued to live till the close of the last century. His son or grandson, George Hanger of Driffield, governor of the Bank of England in its earlier days, was the father of Sir George Hanger, mentioned above, who received the honour of knighthood from King William III. This gentleman had three sons, of whom the third, Gabriel by name, happening to go over to Ireland to visit his cousins, took a fancy to that island, where he contrived to marry a rich wife-Elizabeth, only daughter and heiress of one Richard Bond, "of Cowbury, in Herefordshire, and of the province of Ulster." In noticing his family in the account of his own eccentric "Life and Adventures" which he published in 1802, the son of this union, George Hanger, thus speaks of his father:"His sister, Miss Anne Hanger, was married to Hare, Lord Coleraine; but my father was not in the most distant degree related to his lordship, or connected with him except by that marriage. Lord Coleraine, however, happening to die at the very nick of time without issue or heir to his coronet, my father claimed it, with just as