since been the chief home of the family. He died in 1465.

The fortune of the house thus begun was completed by his son and successor, Sir Roger, who rose to eminence in the legal profession, becoming Reader in Law at Lincoln's Inn, M.P. for Calne, a Serjeant-at-law, and at length one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. His daughters made what must have been the best matches of the time in their native county among the Bedingfelds, the Wodehouses, the Castells, and the Windhams. For several generations the Townshends,* as they had now

*It is possible that this name originally, like many others, was of purely local origin, being applied to a person living at the extreme "end" of a "town;" but there are not wanting those who affirm that the real orthography is Townshend, denoting military prowess in its founder as the "shender” or

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destroyer" of cities-not unlike the epithet of wroλiwoglos, so constantly applied by Homer to Ulysses. I find the following in Webster's Dictionary of the English language:

"To Shend (Anglo-Saxon scendan, Dutch schenden, German scänden).

"1. To reproach, scold, or blame: 'I am schent for speaking to you' (Shakespeare).

"2. To injure or disgrace: 'That knight should knighthood ever so have schent' (Spenser).

"3. To punish or chastise: For which ere long himself was after schent' (Harrington).

"4. To destroy, ruin, or spoil: But we must yield whom hunger soon will schend' (Fairfax)."

A

begun to spell their name, lived as country squires on their Norfolk estates at Raynham and Brampton down to the reign of Elizabeth, when we find John Townshend, Esq., of Raynham, M.P. for Castle Rising, receiving the honour of knighthood in reward of the valour which he displayed at the capture of Cadiz under the Earl of Essex, his brother being shortly after knighted by King James I. at the Charter House. baronetcy conferred by the same Sovereign on the head of the family in the next generation took the Townshends out of the untitled into the ranks of the titled nobility; and their connection with the Court was further confirmed by their election in successive Parliaments as representatives of Norfolk, or of Castle Rising and King's Lynn, in Parliament, to say nothing of the discharge of the duties of the shrievalty.

The third baronet, Sir Horatio, having borne an active part in the support of the royal cause, and afterwards in the recall of Charles II., was raised to the peerage as Viscount Townshend, and both he and his son* were suc

*This Lord Townshend lived in a house in Cleveland Row, St. James's, which is identified by that old gossip Sir Nathaniel Wraxall as still standing in his day, as that which witnessed the memorable quarrel between its owner and Sir Robert Walpole, when the First Minister of the Crown and his Secre

cessively

Lords-Lieutenants of their native county. The latter, we are told, was a strong supporter of the "Protestant succession at the time of the Revolution, and afterwards one of the Lords Justices of the Kingdom and Principal Secretary of State, and was constantly employed in diplomatic business. His marriage with the sister of Sir Robert Walpole-his neighbour at Houghton in Norfolk-added another stone to the rising fortunes of the family, and secured the Lord-Lieutenancy of his native county to a third and even a fourth generation.

One of his younger sons, Thomas Townshend, entering on a Parliamentary career, though a man of no great abilities, yet proved a fair speaker, was chosen member for the University of Cambridge, and appointed one of the Tellers of the Exchequer. He was a great friend of Lord North, and was known in St. Stephen's and among the wits of the day as "Tommy Townshend." Some of our readers will remember the lines in Goldsmith's poem, "Retaliation," where he describes Burke as,

Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat
To induce Tommy Townsend to lend him a vote."

tary of State seized each other by the throat

-a scene which

Gay is supposed to have portrayed in the "Beggar's Opera," under the characters of Peachum and Lockitt.

His brother, the third lord, had besides his successor a son Charles, who became an eminent statesman and parliamentary orator; it is he to whom Gray alludes in the lines,

"A post or a pension he did not desire,

But left Church and State to Charles Townshend and
Squire."

George Townshend, however, the eldest son, was a man of equal talents, and he completed the edifice which his ancestors had raised. He was a godson of King George I., and served under George II. at Dettingen. He also took part in the battles at Fontenoy and Culloden, and was commander-in-chief at the siege of Quebec, which city surrendered to him after the death of Wolfe. In the end he gained the bâton of a Field Marshal, and was not only MasterGeneral of the Ordnance, but also Lord-Lieutenant of Norfolk, as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been before him. He was also the most popular of all the noblemen who held the post of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the last century. He married a lady who owned a peerage in her own right, the Barony of Ferrars de Chartley, which has since passed into abeyance. His son and successor, celebrated in his day as an antiquary and man of

letters, left at his death in 1811 two sons, of whom the younger, Lord Charles Townshend, died without issue in 1853, while his elder brother, George, came to the marquisate, having contracted in his father's lifetime a marriage with Sarah, daughter of Mr. John Dunn Gardner, of Chatteris, in Cambridgeshire.

It appears that, owing to some irregularities in early life, the Marquis was forced to live abroad, and he resided in a state of seclusion for the best part of half a century at Genoa, where he had taken up his abode almost immediately after his marriage. From that day to the day of his death at the close of 1855, his family and friends heard nothing of him or from him; and the records extant at Doctors' Commons or in the House of Lords, will serve to show, that only a few days after her marriage his wife had instituted proceedings at law, in order to have her union with his lordship declared null and void ab initio.

Now it frequently happens, especially in matters hymeneal, that young ladies, and middle-aged ladies too, will act precipitately. The sex is as deserving now as it was in the days of Eschylus, of the epithet of "fast-going," and the wife of his Lordship (who at that time was known as Lord Chartley) formed no exception to the rule.