There are matters connected with the case before us, which render it undesirable, indeed scarcely possible, to go into minute details with respect to the relations of Lord and Lady Chartley. So I will use the words employed in Mr. Hardwicke's "Annual Biography" for 1856:

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Our readers may possibly remember an event which took place in connection with the Townshend title a few years since. The late Marquis, it is well known, at that time Lord Chartley, separated from his wife shortly after his marriage, which she endeavoured to set aside by a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts. These Courts, however, are proverbially slow in their proceedings, and while her suit was pending, she eloped from her father's house with the late Mr. John Margetts, a brewer of St. Ives, with whom she lived in Hunter Street and other places, down to his death in 1842, calling herself at one time Mrs. Margetts, and at other times the Marchioness Townshend. During this time she had by Mr. Margetts a family of sons and daughters, the former of whom were sent to Westminster School, first in the name of Margetts, and afterwards under the names of Lord A. and B. Townshend. The eldest son was actually returned to Parliament in 1841 as the Earl of Leicester by the

electors of Bodmin, who fondly imagined that they had secured as their Member the eldest son of a live Marquis, and one who would hereafter prove a powerful patron of their interests in the House of Lords.

"At this time Lord Charles Townshend, next brother of the late Marquis, and then heir presumptive to the title (but since deceased without issue), presented a petition to the Crown, and to the House of Lords, entreating that the children of Lady Townshend by Mr. Margetts might be declared illegitimate. The petition was referred to a Committee of Privilege, who, after hearing the evidence of a considerable number of witnesses, reported their opinion in favour of a Bill to that effect. A Bill accordingly was introduced, "for declaring the issue of Lady Townshend illegitimate," and it passed the House of Lords by a large majority in May, 1843. If it had not been for this procedure on the part of Lord Charles Townshend, which was rendered more difficult by the forced residence of the late marquis abroad (for he had never taken his seat in the House of Peers, nor had he been in England since his accession to the title, nor seen his wife since her elopement). the marquisate of Townshend, with the noble estates of Raynham, in Norfolk, and the castle at Tamworth, would have

passed to a spurious and supposititious race, the children of a brewer at St. Ives. By the death of Lord Charles Townshend in November, 1853, his nephew, the present (late) Marquis, became heir presumptive to the title; and his lordship, we believe, has every reason to feel grateful for the event of a trial but for which he might have found an irrevocable "slip between the cup and the lip" in the Townshend peerage.

"We may add that, the late Marquis having died near Genoa on the 31st of December, 1855, his late wife, mother of the children by Mr. Margetts, having remained a widow for nearly a fortnight, was married, by special licence, on the 12th of January following, to Mr. John Laidler, of whom report says that he was assistant to a linendraper at the West-end of London, until selected by her ladyship as her-shall we say second, or thirdhusband."

It is clear, from the above brief narrative, that it was a most fortunate thing for the Townshend family that Lord Charles Townshend's life was spared long enough to enable him to prosecute this suit, and to submit the Townshend Peerage case for the calm consideration of the House of Lords. Had he not chosen to do so, but preferred to let matters coolly and quietly take their own course, it is not easy to see how, during his

lifetime, the ultimate heirs of the reversion of the title could have mooted the question, and so secured the passing of an Act of Parliament to bastardise those who, even on their own showing, had no more right to the proud marquisate of Townshend and the halls of Raynham than the young of the cuckoo have to the nest of the thrush they have displaced. And a most useful lesson does the "Romance of the Townshends afford to such noble lords as, being burdened with the possible succession of a spurious issue, are too indolent and easy-going to take action in the matter. They may depend on it, if any such there be, that in these affairs speedy action is the safest policy. and the best for their own interests. I can only add that I do not make this remark at random, but mean it to apply to at least one case within my own personal knowledge, where an ancient title is at the present moment risked on the turn of fortune's wheel in an almost similar

manner.

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THE DYMOKES OF SCRIVELSBY.

HE recent death at Naples* of the Rev. John Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Manor, Lincolnshire, "the Hon. Her Majesty's Champion," reminded the world through the daily newspapers that, even in the midst of the present prosaic and utilitarian age, one knightly office at least was in existence to contradict the assertion of Edmund Burke that "the age of chivalry is gone." The office of "Her Majesty's Champion" at all events has not passed away, in spite of the cheese-paring economy of the illiberal Liberals who happened to be in power at the Coronation of William IV. in 1831, and again at that of her present Majesty in June 1838. It lived till a few months since in the late Rev. John Dymoke, and, as "the King never dies," so also "never dies"

*This paper was written in March, 1874.