This is the summary of the evidence, which to my mind is conclusive. Unless one assumes a conspiracy of silence between Lord Hardwicke and Mrs. Yorke, I do not see that I can reasonably admit any other hypothesis. I therefore claim that phrase of his brother's as a solution of the supposed mystery of Charles Yorke's death.
If hereafter the vague rumours which have so long been current should be supported by any real evidence, my judgment will be disputed, but I am glad to have this opportunity of asserting my own firm conviction that the version of the unhappy affair given in the family papers is correct, and that Charles Yorke's death was due to natural causes.
Charles Yorke was twice married. His first wife was a daughter of Williams Freeman, Esq., of Aspeden, Hertfordshire, by whom he had a son Philip. This son succeeded his uncle as third Earl of Hardwicke, he inherited the Tittenhanger and other estates (which passed away to his daughters on his death in 1834) from his mother, and he is still remembered for his wise and liberal administration as the first Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland after the Union (from 1801 to 1806), the irritation and unrest caused by which measure he did much to allay. [Footnote: A recent publication, The Viceroy's Post Bag, by Mr. MacDonagh, gives some curious details of his correspondence from the Hardwicke Papers at the British Museum.] As a Whig he had always been in favour of Catholic Emancipation in Ireland, and though he agreed to postpone it on joining Addington's Administration, he adhered to the cause till its triumph in 1829; and he gave a qualified support to the Parliamentary Reform Bill in 1831. He was created a Knight of the Garter in 1803, [Footnote: Lord Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lübeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764-1834) who left no heir, and Joseph Sydney (1768-1831), father of the subject of this memoir. I have already alluded to the public career of their half-brother, the third Lord Hardwicke; and it is interesting to see how the tradition of political and public work was maintained by the two younger brothers, who both, and especially the younger of the two, added fresh laurels to the distinguished record held by so many of the descendants of the great Chancellor. The Right Honourable Charles Yorke represented the county of Cambridge in Parliament from 1790 to 1810, and joined Addington's Government at the same time as Lord Hardwicke, first as Secretary at War in 1801, and then as Secretary of State for the Home Department, till the return to office of William Pitt (to whom he was politically opposed) in 1804. In 1810 he became first Lord of the Admiralty under Spencer Perceval, with his younger brother Joseph as one of the Sea Lords, and retained office till Perceval's assassination broke up the ministry; and when in 1812 Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister he left the Admiralty and never afterwards returned to office, retiring from public life in 1818. The splendid breakwater at Plymouth was decided on and commenced while he was at the Admiralty, and a slab of its marble marks his tomb in Wimpole Church.
With Joseph Sydney Yorke, afterwards Admiral and a K.C.B., opens a chapter of family history with which this volume will be mainly concerned; and the navy rather than the law or politics henceforth becomes the chief interest of the story in its public aspect. Sir Joseph, indeed, may be looked upon as a sort of second founder of the family. Although Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, which the Chancellor purchased from the Harleys, Earls of Oxford, was for many generations the principal seat of the family, Sydney Lodge, on Southampton Water, [Footnote: Attached to Sydney Lodge on the shore of Southampton Water is a white battery containing guns taken from a French frigate and bearing an inscription, written by my father, commemorating his last parting with my grandfather, Sir Joseph. The battery encloses a well, known as 'Agneta's Well,' which has refreshed many a thirsty fisherman. The inscription is as follows:—