“A trouble weighed upon her
And perplexed her, night and morn,
With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.”
The poet continues—
“So she droop’d and droop’d before him,
Fading slowly from his side;
Three fair children first she bore him,
Then before her time she died.”
The Countess of Exeter, in fact, died on January 18, 1797, not quite twenty-four years of age; but not from “the burthen of an honour unto which she was not born.” Happily, accession to the ranks of the titled nobility is not fatal, as the marriage of many distinguished ornaments of the musical comedy stage assure us; and so we must charge the Poet Laureate with the flunkey thought that blue blood is a kind apart, and not to be admixed with other strains. This from the poet who wrote—
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
is unexpected.
She left two sons and one daughter. Her eldest son became second Marquis of Exeter, his father, the Earl, having been raised a step in the peerage in 1801.
The enterprising Earl married, thirdly, in 1800, the divorced wife of the eighth Duke of Hamilton, and died May 1, 1804, aged fifty; but his third wife survived until January 17, 1837. In the billiard-room of Burghley House is a portrait-group of “the Lord of Burleigh” and his wife, Sarah Hoggins, by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
“Bolas Villa” was given by the Earl to his godson. It has since been enlarged, and is now styled “Burghley Villa.” The church of Great Bolas is a grim-looking brick building of the eighteenth century, when many of the Shropshire churches in that district were rebuilt.