Mr. G. F. Barwick has lent me three quite different Wrest Park bookplates. In an ornamental frame, which forms the lower part of one, is engraved “Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey, Wrest Park.” Two fearful-looking dragons support the shield, or rather seem bent on devouring the shield and then each other. Above is an earl’s coronet, and below the motto, “Foy est tout.”
Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey, was born in 1781, and was the elder son of Thomas Robinson, second Baron Grantham, and his wife the second daughter of Philip York, second Earl of Hardwicke. He was therefore a descendant of Henry Grey, ninth Earl of Kent. In 1833 his maternal aunt, Amabel Hume Campbell, Countess de Grey of Wrest, in Bedfordshire, dying, he became second Earl de Grey and Baron Lucas of Crudwell, Wiltshire. From 1841 to 1844 he was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and achieved great success in his administration there. In 1844 he was made a Knight of the Garter.
The second of these plates consists of two crests, a dragon and a stag, encircled by the garter. Above is the earl’s coronet, and over that the inscription “Wrest Park.” Neither of the other plates has the garter.
In what, for distinction, may be called the third plate, the outspread and double-headed black eagle holding the shield-of-arms is the most prominent object, and in each beak it holds what, as argent, no doubt is a silver coin, but looks rather like an Osborne biscuit.
Mr. Barwick has also two bookplates of “Sir John William Lubbock. Bart.” Below the shield is the happy motto: “Auctor pretiosa facit.” John William Lubbock was born in 1803, and in 1840 succeeded his father in the baronetcy. He died in 1865. His scientific tastes and cultivated habits were just such as his own son, Sir John Lubbock, has pursued happily for so many years, in the knowledge of many now living. The other plate is evidently what he used for his books in his earlier years. The bloody hand of Ulster is absent from the shield, and below the shield is simply the monogram “J. W. L.”
The Sir John Frederick, Bart., plate of Mr. Barwick’s is quite a change from the customary conventions. The shield fills a very small part of an oblong oval frame. The arms are by Burke, or on a chief azure, three doves argent. Crest on a chapeau azure turned-up ermine, a dove, within the beak an olive branch.