THE EARLDOM OF BRIDGEWATER.

On the death of the last Duke of Bridgewater, his relative, then General Egerton, claimed the Earldom, but found a difficulty in complying with the established rule of the House of Lords, that before a nobleman can take his seat he must produce his patent, or prove his descent from a former peer, inasmuch as he could not find the registers of the marriage of his grandfather or father. The former, when Bishop of Hereford, had run away with Lady Harriett Bentinck, a daughter of Lord Portland, which occasioned the difficulty in that case. This was got over; but not so readily the other impediment; for though Lord Bridgewater knew that his father, when Bishop of Durham, had married Lady Sophia De Grey, a daughter of the Duke of Kent, and that the ceremony was performed at the Chapel Royal, George the Second attending to give the bride away; though

all these were circumstances of public notoriety, still he could not find the marriage recorded in the St. James's register; for, we believe, almost a twelvemonth he was thus prevented from taking his seat, when, having offered in the newspapers a considerable reward to any one who would give him such information as should enable him to obtain the required document, his agent, Mr. Clarke, was waited upon one morning by a very old man, who stated that he could prove the marriage of Egerton, Bishop of Durham, with Lady Sophia de Grey, having himself acted as clerk on that occasion. He related that, in consequence of the lameness of His Majesty, the ceremony was performed in the pew in which the King sat, instead of at the altar, and that pew being in St. Martin's, not in St. James's, the marriage was registered in the former parish. Search was immediately made at St. Martin's Church, and the entry found forthwith.

GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE OF

BUCKINGHAM.

THE well deserved prominence which the Villiers family has again obtained in the nation's eyes renders anything having reference to former distinguished members of it peculiarly interesting at the present juncture. It has been said that "beauty was their inheritance," but it would not be difficult to shew that talent has also been hereditary among them. The influence which one man may exert on a nation's destinies was rarely ever more strongly manifested than in the case of GEORGE VILLIERS.

He changed a nation's taste-he ruled two kings-he captivated a queen-and after passing like a meteor before men's eyes, he left behind him, at the age of thirty-six, a character which people were too dazzled to appreciate in his lifetime, and which has not always been rightly appreciated since.

In any age George Villiers would have been a remarkable man. In an age when chivalry

was not yet extinct, and when pedantry by royal practice and example passed for scholarship, he became a compound of the preux chevalier and fashionable courtier, something very like what Raleigh had just ceased to be. There were, indeed, many points of strong resemblance between these illustrious men. In beauty of person and courtly grace" the philosophic soldier" was as much excelled by Villiers, as he excelled Villiers in the higher gifts of mind and in the acquirements which a good use of it procured him. The origin of the Villiers family, when first the subject of these remarks began to engross so large a portion of public attention, was considered to be extremely obscure. This opinion arose from the retired life led by his immediate ancestors, and was by no means consistent with fact, for they could justly claim a very remote and honourable descent. Aymer de Villiers, a distinguished courtier of the time of Philip the First of France, (1064) being their direct and undoubted progenitor.

It was in the old hall of the truly sequestered hamlet of Brooksby, and in the year 1592, that George, the second son of Sir George Villiers, and that extraordinary lady of dubious parentage, afterwards Countess of Buckingham, first saw the light. The first years of a life that was to be one of such unusual glitter was spent partly at Brooksby

and partly at Goadby Marwood, both in Leicestershire, and it would be difficult to find two places better calculated to foster a love of rural quiet and to check the promptings of ambition. It was at the little school of Billesdon, a few miles from Brooksby, that Villiers received the first rudiments of his education. He was what is still called a weekly boarder, and with his brothers John and Christopher, was fetched home every Saturday, and sent back on the Monday morning.

At thirteen he lost his father, after which the widowed Lady Villiers took George from school, and removed to her jointure house at Goadby. Here he continued three years under the care of his mother. How this obscurely born lady had acquired the requisite accomplishments for training such a youth is certainly a mystery; but she whose personal or mental attractions enabled her to raise herself from the rank of a serving-maid to be Lady Villiers and Lady Compton by marriage, and Countess of Buckingham by creation, could not have been an ordinary woman. The eminently handsome person and bright parts of her son George, soon suggested to this discerning mother the chance of future distinction; and to add the finishing stroke to his education, she sent him to complete his education in France, where he spent two or three years in all the exercises at that time