Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849

The subject is a pleasing one – a gentle banter of "the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us – the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

 
"Somewhat lower down,
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied,
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,
A dozen angry models jetted steam;
A petty railway ran; a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves,
And dropt a parachute and pass'd:
And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,
They flash'd a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
With science hand in hand went: otherwhere
Pure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'd
And stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd about
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arrang'd a country-dance, and flew through light
And shadow." —
 

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

 
"Convention beats them down;
It is but bringing up; no more than that
You men have done it; how I hate you all!
O were I some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college of my own,
And I would teach them all things; you would see.'
And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
… Yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.'
"At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot:
'That's your light way; but I would make it death
For any male thing but to peep at us.'
Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd;
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she."
 

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened – who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

 
"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat,
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne,
All beauty compass'd in a female form,
The princess; liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the sun,
Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said:
'We give you welcome; not without redound
Of fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,
The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime,
And that full voice which circles round the grave
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.
What! are the ladies of your land so tall?'
'We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!'
She answered; 'then ye know the prince?'
And he,
'The climax of his age: as tho' there were
One rose in all the world – your highness that —
He worships your ideal.' And she replied:
'We did not think in our own hall to hear
This barren verbiage, current among men —
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment:
We think not of him. When we set our hand
To this great work, we purposed with ourselves
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling
The tricks which make us toys of men, that so,
Some future time, if so indeed you will,
You may with those self-styled our lords ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'
At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,
Perused the matting."
 

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word, Fancy, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two widows, (both of whom have children, and one an infant,) – Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche – for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognises her brother.

 
"'My brother! O,' she said;
'What do you here? And in this dress? And these?
Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!
A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!
A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"
 

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out, —

 
"To take
The dip of certain strata in the north."
 

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

 
"She stood
Among her maidens higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
And from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so
Went forth in long retinue, following up
The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."
 

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract – even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

 
"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read – no books?
Quoit, tennis-ball – no games? nor deals in that
Which men delight in, martial exercises?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.
We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,
Being other – since we learnt our meaning here,
To uplift the woman's fall'n divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man."
 

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

 
"'Forbear,' the princess cried, 'Forbear, Sir,' I—
And, heated through and through with wrath and love,
I smote him on the breast; he started up;
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."
 

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him: —

 
"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,
And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:
And you look well too in your woman's dress;
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;
Then men had said – but now —
You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd
Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us —
I wed with thee! I bound by precontract,
Your bride, your bond-slave! not tho' all the gold
That veins the world were packed to make your crown,
And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"
 

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the mêlée, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up – disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights – a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

 
"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child!
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more;
For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
And either she will die for want of care,
Or sicken with ill usage, when they say
The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,
Remembering her mother. O my flower!
Or they will take her, they will make her hard;
And she will pass me by in after-life
With some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,
Until they hate to hear me, like a wind
Wailing for ever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"
 

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass —

 
"Psyche ever stole
A little nearer, till the babe that by us,
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,
Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass,
Uncared for, spied its mother, and began
A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance
Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms,
And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal
Brook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine – mine – not yours;
It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,'
Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."
 

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled – gives it, however, to Cyril.

 
"'Take it, sir,' and so
Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,
Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprang
To embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks,
Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,
And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough;
And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it,
And hid her bosom with it; after that
Put on more calm."
 

The two kings are well sketched out – the father of Ida, and the father of our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

 
"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,
And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,
And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
'All honour. We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony —
I think the year in which our olives failed.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart; —
With my full heart! but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place,
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;
Nothing but this: my very ears were hot
To hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier: I said No,
Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"
 

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone – a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

 
"Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child
Is woman's wisdom."
 

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says: —

 
"'Tut, you know them not, the girls:
They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do, —
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of trumpets round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score,
Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death,
He reddens what he kisses: thus I won
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand – gentleness
To such as her! If Cyril spake her true,
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
And trip a tigress with a gossamer,
Were wisdom to it.'"
 

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our maiden university:

 
"There
One walked, reciting by herself, and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that.
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadow'd from the heat."
 

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem, such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance, The Princess, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him – not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances – a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.¹²

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and erudite – at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value. And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole, his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on – for he promises four or five more volumes – that interest is likely to rise. Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened, instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito – and Burke is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth. As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style. Ne sutor, &c., means, we apprehend, in this instance, let not Burke, whose prename is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance. Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant. But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes, tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive, are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections. People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay, has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately, being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"

The first section of Mr Craik's book extends over nearly a century, "that most picturesque of our English centuries which lies between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion," and owes its priority to its length and importance, not to chronological precedence, which is due rather to some of the narratives in the second volume. The history of the Lady Lettice Knollys, her marriages and her descendants, occupies nearly the whole volume, including much interesting matter relative to various noble English families, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, Antonio Perez, and other characters well known in history or romance. Here there is temptation enough to linger; but we pass on to a most interesting chapter of the second volume, which illustrates, as well and more briefly, the merits of Mr Craik's book. It is entitled The Old Percys– a name than which none is more thoroughly English, none more suggestive of high and chivalrous qualities. Mr Craik begins by a tilt at Romeo's fallacy of there being nothing in a name, instead of which, he says, "names have been in all ages among the most potent things in the world. They have stirred and swayed mankind, and still do so, simply as names, without any meaning being attached to them. Of two sounds, designating or indicating the same thing, the one shall, by its associations, raise an emotion of the sublime, the other of the ridiculous. There can hardly be a stronger instance of this than we have in the two paternal names, the assumed and the genuine one, of the family at present possessing the Northumberland title. The former, Percy, is a name for poetry to conjure with; it is itself poetry of a high and epic tone, and may be said to move the English heart 'more than the sound of a trumpet,' as Sidney tells us his was moved whenever he heard the rude old ballad in which it is celebrated; but when Canning, or whoever else it was, in the Anti-Jacobin audaciously came out with —

 
'Duke Smithson of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,'
 

he set the town in a roar." The case is neatly made out, and the writer then investigates the etymology of the name of Percy. The popular version is, that a Scottish king, the great Malcolm Canmore, was slain in the latter part of the eleventh century whilst assaulting the castle of Alnwick, whose lord ran his spear into the monarch's eye, and thence derived the surname of Pierce-eye. This is so pretty and romantic a derivation that one is loath to relinquish it, but unfortunately the Percys were Percys fully two centuries before Malcolm's death. Geoffrey, son of Mainfred the Danish chieftain, accompanied Rollo in his invasion of France, and became lord of the town of Percy or Persy, in Lower Normandy, and this became his sur-name – originally sieur-name or lord-name – an appellation derived from territorial property. Two of the de Percys, fifth in descent from Geoffrey, followed William the Conqueror to England, where the elder of them became one of the greatest lords in the country. "About a hundred and twenty lordships in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and other parts, are set down in Domesday Book as his property. He was, of course, a baron of the realm. His family name being probably reserved for occasions of form and ceremony, he was familiarly known in his own day as Guillaume al gernons– that is, Will with the Whiskers – which puts us in possession of at least one point in the personal appearance of this founder of the English house of Percy. Hence Algernon became a common baptismal name among his descendants… Will with the Whiskers must have been a good fellow, if it be true, as we are told by an old writer, that his wife, Emma de Port, was the Saxon heiress of some of the lands bestowed upon him by the Conqueror, and that 'he wedded her in discharging of his conscience.'" We here observe a variance between Mr Craik and Mr Bernard Burke, who devotes more than one chapter to anecdotes of the house of Percy, which he states to have enjoyed an uninterrupted male descent from the date of the Conquest to the death of Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh earl, in 1670. Mr Craik, on the other hand, whilst noticing that the line has thrice ended in a female, and been revived through the marriage of the heiress, fixes the date of the first of these extinctions and revivals in 1168, or rather later, about a century after the Conquest, when the death, without male heirs, of the third Lord Percy, left the wealth and honours of the house to his two daughters. Maud, the eldest, died without issue; Agnes, the younger, married Jocelyn of Loraine, whose house was one of the most illustrious in Europe, boasting relationship with the dukes of Hainault, and collateral descent from the emperor Charlemagne, but whom she took for her husband only on condition of his assuming her ancestral name. Mr Craik gives Collins' Peerage as his authority; Mr Burke would probably refer us to his own: but we do not feel enough interest in the subject to attempt to decide where doctors of this eminence differ. Amongst his celebrated "Peerage Causes," Mr Burke gives some curious particulars of the claim made by a Dublin trunkmaker to the titles and estates of the Percys, on the extinction of the male line in 1670. This man, whether the blood of the Percys flowed in his veins or not, showed no small share of the pluck and boldness for which that family was so long distinguished, by upholding his pretensions for fifteen years – at first against the dowager Countess of Northumberland, and afterwards against the proud and powerful Duke of Somerset, who had married the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy. When it is remembered that this occurred in the reign of Charles II., whose tribunals were not renowned for their equity, (and when a long purse was often better than the clearest right,) and that the influence and position of the countess and duke gave them incalculable advantages, it may be thought that the box-builder from Ireland was almost as bold a man as the Hotspur he claimed for an ancestor. He got hard measure from the House of Lords, and was rebuked for presuming to trouble it. He tried the courts of law, suing persons for scandal who had stated him to be an impostor – an indirect way of establishing his descent. After one of these trials, Lord Hailes, dissatisfied with the decision of the court, which was unfavourable to the plaintiff, is stated to have said to Lord Shaftesbury, when entering his coach – "I verily believe he (James Percy) hath as much right to the earldom of Northumberland as I have to this coach and horses, which I have bought and paid for." In the reign of James II., Percy again petitioned the Lords, but ineffectually. His final effort was in the first year of William and Mary, when his petition was read and referred to a Committee of Privileges, whose report declared him insolent; and ultimately he was condemned to be brought "before the four courts in Westminster Hall, wearing a paper upon his breast, on which these words shall be written: The false and impudent pretender to the Earldom of Northumberland." This was accordingly done, and, thus disgraced and branded as a cheat, the unfortunate trunkmaker was heard of no more.

Connected with the early years of the heiress whose rights were thus disputed, are some singularly romantic incidents, of which a long account is given by both Burkes. Before the Lady Elizabeth Percy attained the age of sixteen, she was thrice a wife, and twice a widow. She was not yet thirteen when the ceremony of marriage was performed between her and the Earl of Ogle, a boy of the same age, who died within the year, leaving the heiress of Northumberland to be competed for by new suitors. Amongst these was Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat in Wiltshire, known, from his great wealth, as Tom of Ten Thousand, member of parliament for his county, a man of weight in the country, and living in a style of great magnificence. He had been an intimate friend of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., but, having quarrelled with that prince, he turned Whig, and courted the Duke of Monmouth, who frequently visited him at his sumptuous mansion of Longleat, and to whom he made a present of a team of Oldenburg carriage – horses of remarkable beauty. Thynne was soon the accepted suitor of Lady Elizabeth Percy, and they were married in 1681, but separated immediately after the ceremony on account of the youth of the bride, who went abroad for a tour on the Continent.