“E. Countess of Northumberland to the Duke of Newcastle.
(c. 1671). I have received your Lordship’s letter full of obliging expressions to our family which I am very sensible of, and for the offer you are pleased to make of your grandson. I can only say I have no present exceptions to make against so noble an alliance, but that it is too early days to think of disposing of my grandchild [Baroness Percy], whose tender years are not yet capable of distinguishing what may most conduce to her future happiness. And when she is of age to judge I must be so just as to give her the choice of all those who shall then offer themselves, and possibly none may be more acceptable to her than this young Lord.”
As a matter of fact, when she was “of an age to judge,” the sole heiress of the eleventh and last Earl of Northumberland (of the old Percys) did marry Newcastle’s grandson. And “the age to judge” was fourteen. Her husband died in the following year; so she was a widow at fifteen, which she only remained for two years, as she married a second time at the age of seventeen,[151] and she had been engaged also to another suitor[152] in the interval; but he was assassinated.
[151] Burke’s Extinct Peerages, p. 425.
[152] “Thomas [Thynne] known as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ who succeeded to Longleat [subsequently the home of the Marquesses of Bath], and lived there in great magnificence. He was basely assassinated, while in his coach in Pall Mall, 12 Feb., 1682, by the connivance, it is thought, of Count Königsmark, a Swedish nobleman, who was tried for the crime, but acquitted; his associates, who actually committed the murder, were hanged.” Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, see “The Marquess of Bath”. Count Königsmark invented the blade of a small-sword once fashionable, called the “Clichernarde”. See Schools and Masters of Fence, by Egerton Castle, p. 239.
Later still, some very elaborate and most business-like matrimonial arrangements were under discussion.[153]
[153] Welbeck MSS., p. 151.