WOMEN OF MERIT CONNECTED WITH THE COUNTESS OF DERBY. BY SERJEANT BURKE, THE illustrious house of Stanley, Earls of Derby, has at various periods formed the very highest matrimonial alliances, counting among them marriages with the sister of the stout Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, and with the mother of Henry VII.; yet, of all the matches that great line ever made, the most distinguished was the union which James, the seventh Earl of Derby, K.G., and Lord of the Isle of Man, formed with the high-born and high-minded Charlotte de la Trémouille. This lady, the daughter of Claude, Duke of Thouars, by his consort, Charlotte Brabantina de Nassau, daughter of the renowned William I., Prince of Orange, could, as consequently can her representative, the present Duke of Athole, show a clear descent from Alexius Comnenus I., Emperor of Constantinople. The blood not only of that monarch and his successors, Alexius III. and Theodore Lascaris I., but also of the Kings of Hungary, Naples, Spain, and France, flowed in her veins. Her grandmother was a Princess of Bourbon, and her great-grandfather was the famous Anne, Duke of Montmorenci, Marshal of France. No wonder, therefore, that this Countess of Derby and Lady of Man held in reverence kings, princes, and nobles, looked scornfully on vulgar insurrection, and had no toleration for aught like disobedience from a people towards its Sovereign. Abounding in all the graces of beauty, intellect, and education, this proud but fascinating lady was the charm of the high society in which she moved. Devotion to her husband and children, and loyalty to the King, were the marked characteristics of her chequered course. was natural for the cavalier Earl of Derby, with such a wife, to consecrate, as he did, his whole career a votive offering to the service of Charles I. and Charles II. His wife's spirit, in which he fully shared, made him a martyr and her the chief heroine of the royal cause. Lord Clarendon thus describes the husband, the cavalier Earl :-"James, the seventh Earl of Derby, was a man of unquestionable loyalty to the late King (Charles I.), and gave clear testimony of it before he receive any obligations from the Court, and when he thought himself disobliged by it. This King (Charles II.), in his first year, sent him the Garter; which, in many respects, he had expected from the last. And the sense of that honour made him so readily comply with the King's command in It attending him, when he had no confidence in the undertaking, nor any inclination to the Scots; who, he thought, had too much guilt upon them in having depressed the Crown, to be made instruments of repairing or restoring it. He was a man of great honour and clear courage; and all his defects and misfortunes proceeded from his having lived so little time among his equals, that he knew not how to treat his inferiors ; which was the source of all the ill that befel him, having thereby drawn such prejudice against him from persons of inferior quality, who yet thought themselves too good to be condemned, that they pursued him to death. The King's army was no sooner defeated at Worcester, than the Parliament began their old method of murdering in cold blood, and sent off a Commission to erect a High Court of Justice to persons of ordinary quality, many not being gentlemen, and all notoriously his enemies, to try the Earl of Derby for his treason and rebellion; which they easily found him guilty of, and put him to death in a town of his own, against which he expressed a severe displeasure for their obstinate rebellion against the King, with all the circumstances of rudeness and barbarity they could invent." "Charlotte, daughter of Claude, Duke de la Tourville," says Lord Oxford, "was the conjugal counterpart of this gallant peer and behaved with exemplary prudence, dexterity, and honour; and her defence of Lathom House for a whole month, against an army of 2000 men, may be recorded among the bravest actions of those times. She formed her garrison, appointed her officers, and commanded in chief during the whole siege, till it was raised by her royal lord. The circumstance is commemorated by a picture at Knowsley, in Lancashire." Mr. Granger mentions her as the last person in the British dominions, who yielded to the Republican party. The Earl of Derby's final gallant struggle and his death for the Crown, were preluded by the act of heroism on the part of his wife, alluded to by Clarendon, which stands prominently forward in the history of those troubled times. This was her defence of the then family mansion of the Stanleys in Lancashire, Lathom House, where they had for years exercised all their magnificence and hospitality, and which seat surpassed in splendour all the residences of the North. So right-royal was the place, and so venerated were its possessors by the people around, that one would commonly hear in the neighbourhood the following innocently meant inversion, "God save the Earl of Derby, and the King." It was after the battle of Nantwich in 1644, that this great defence occurred, when the united forces of the Parliament, under Sir Thomas Fairfax, accompanied by the regiments of Colonels Egerton, Rigby, Ashton, and Holcroft, marched to Lathom House where they arrived on the 28th February 1644. The Earl of Derby was at the time absent in the Isle of Man. In defending the mansion, her Ladyship had the assistance of Major Farmer and the Captains Ffarington, Charnock, Chisenhall, Rawstorne, Ogle, and Molyneux. ""Twas then they raised 'mid sap and siege, At their she-captain's call; Who, miracle of woman kind, Lent mettle to the meanest hind, That manned her castle wall." On arriving, General Fairfax sent a trumpet to request a conference, to which the Countess agreed; and, in the interim, "to make the best show she could, she placed her inefficient and unarmed men on the walls and the tops of the towers, and marshalled her soldiers in good order, with their respective officers, from the main-guard to the great hall,” in which she calmly waited to receive him. Their meeting was courteous, but ceremonious. He offered an honourable removal to, and unmolested residence, at Knowsley; and a moiety of the Earl's estate for the maintenance of herself and family. She answered that, "she was under a double trust-of faith to her husband, and allegiance to her Sovereign, and desired time for consideration;" which being denied, she rejoined, that "she hoped he would excuse her if she preserved her honour and obedience, although perhaps to her ruin." Fairfax, deceived by false intelligence as to the supplies of the garrison, delayed a fortnight, and then sent a summons in military form; the Countess replied, that "till she had lost her honour or her life, she would defend the place." The enemy now began to form their trenches, on which she ordered a sally of two hundred, killed about sixty, and lost two. The enemy doubled their guard and drew their lines to a greater distance, but were so interrupted by sallies, that they were several weeks in completing them; but at length, gradually approaching the moat, they mounted a strong battery, and particularly a mortar of large calibre, a shell thrown from which fell into an apartment in which the Countess and her children were at dinner. They escaped unhurt, and the heroine instantly ordered another sally, in which all their guns were spiked or thrown into the moat, except the mortar, which was triumphantly drawn into the house. Several days were now occupied, during incessant annoyance from the garrison, in repairing the works, which was no sooner accomplished than the garrison again dispersed them, killed one hundred of their soldiers, and spiked their cannon, losing only three, and having five or six wounded. Every action was preceded by prayer, and every success acknowledged by thanksgiving ; the Countess being in most of them, to the manifest danger of her life. Three months having now elapsed, and the assailants having lost two thousand men, Fairfax, impelled by chagrin, removed the commanding officer and appointed Colonel Rigby, a personal enemy of her Lord's, a disposition which he presently manifested by a summons to surrender, conveyed in affronting terms. "Trumpet," exclaimed the indignant Countess, "tell that insolent rebel, Rigby, that if he presumes to send another summons within this place, I will have the messenger hanged up at the gates." They were now, however, in great extremity, their corn and ammunition being spent, and having killed for food nearly all their horses. The Earl of Derby hastened from Man to solicit relief, while Rigby, learning Prince Rupert was directed to give it, raised the siege the 27th May 1644. The Countess then accompanied her Lord to the Isle of Man, which he continued to hold for the King with a firmness which the Parliament avenged by sequestration, and by detaining his children in harsh captivity. The Earl constantly refused repeated offers of the restoration of his whole estates and the liberation of his family, in exchange for his giving up possession of the island; but affronted at length by importunity and solicitation, which implied a doubt of his courage or fidelity, he sent the following reply to the regicide, Ireton, the organ of the party on those occasions: "I received your letter with indignation, and with scorn I return you this answer-that I cannot but wonder whence you can gather any hopes from me, that I should, like you, prove treacherous to my Sovereign; since you cannot be insensible to my former actings in his late Majesty's services, from which principle of loyalty I am in no ways departed. I scorn your proffers: I disdain your favours: I abhor your treasons; and am so far from delivering this island to your advantage, that I will keep it to the utmost in my power, to your destruction. Take this final answer, and forbear any further solicitations; for if you trouble me with any more messages on this occasion, I will burn the paper and hang the bearer. This is the immutable resolution, and shall be the undoubted practice, of him who accounts it his chiefest glory to be his Majesty's most loyal and obedient servant, DERBY." "CASTLE TOWN, 12th July 1649." This letter breathes the very spirit of Lady Derby, who must indeed have been at the writing of it. The Earl of Derby continued to give proofs of valour and activity. Almost his last engagement was the memorable encounter of Wigan Lane, where, with six hundred men he maintained a fight of two hours against three thousand horse and foot, commanded by Colonel Lilburne; and, though in that action he received seven shots on his breastplate, thirteen cuts on his beaver, five or six wounds on his arms and shoulders, and had two horses killed under him, yet he made his way to King Charles, and fought by his side at Worcester. He was, after that unfortunate battle, taken in Cheshire by Colonel Edge, and was tried by a Court-Martial, which found him guilty of a breach of the Act for "prohibiting all correspondence with Charles Stuart or his party." He was sentenced to death, and on the 15th October 1651, was beheaded in the market-place of Bolton, in Lancashire. The following particulars, somewhat quaintly told, of the Earl's last moments, are very touching. They are entitled: "A True Revelation of the Death of the Great Earl, given by Mr. Bagaley, who attended on him ;" and they run thus : "Upon Monday, Oct. 13, 1651, my lord procured me liberty to wait upon him, having been close prisoner ten days. He told me the night before, Mr. Slater, Colonel Duckenfield's chaplain, had, been with him from the Governor, to persuade his lordship, that they were confident his life was in no danger; but his lordship told me, he heard him patiently, but did not believe him; 'for,' says he, 'I am resolved not to be deceived with the vain hopes of this fading world.' After we had walked a quarter of an hour, he discoursed his own commands to me, in order to my journey to the Isle of Man; as to his consent to my lady to deliver it on those articles his lordship had signed. With many affectionate protestations of his honour and respect for my lady, both for her birth and goodness as a wife, and much tenderness of his children there. "Then immediately came in one Lieutenant Smith, a rude fellow, and with his hat on; he told my lord he came from Colonel Duckenfield, the Governor, and that his lordship, must be ready for his journey to Bolton. My lord replied: "When would you have me to go?' 'To-morrow at about six in the morning,' said Smith. Well,' said my lord, 'commend me to the Governor, and tell him, by that time I will be ready.' Then Smith said: 'Doth your lordship know any friend or servant that would do the thing that your lordship knows of? It would do well if you had a friend.' My lord replied: "What do you mean? Would you have me find one to cut off my head?' Smith said: "Yes, my lord, if you could have a friend.' My lord said: 'Nay, sir, if those men that would have my head will not find one to cut it off, let it stand where it is. I thank God, my life has not been so bad, that I should be instrumental to deprive myself of it, though He has been so merciful to me as to be well resolved against the worst terrors of death. And for me and my servants, our ways have been to prosecute a just war by honourable and just means, and not by these ways of blood, which to you is a trade.' Then Smith went out, and called me to him, and repeated his discourse and desires to me. I only said to him my lord had given him an answer. At my coming in again, my lord called for pen and ink, and writ his last letter to my lady, to my lady Mary, and his sons in the Isle of Man. And, in the meantime, Mons. Paul Moreau, a servant to my lord, went and brought all the rings he could get, and lapped them up in several papers, and writ within them, and made me superscribe them to all his children and servants. The rest of the day, being Monday, he spent with my Lord Strange, my Lady Katherine, and my Lady Amelia (his son and daughters). At night, about six, I came to him again, when the ladies were to go away. And as we were walking, and my lord telling me he would receive the Sacrament next morning, and on Wednesday morning both, in came the aforesaid Smith, and said: 'My lord, the Governor desires you will be ready to go in the morning by seven o'clock.' My lord replied: Lieutenant, pray tell the Governor, I shall not have occasion to go so early;. by nine o'clock will serve my turn, and by that time I will be ready; if he has not earnester occasions, he may take his own hour. 2Q VOL. IV. |