Spencer Perceval, born in Audley Square, London, in 1762, was the second son of the second Earl of Egmont. At only ten years old he was sent to Harrow School, and then to Trinity College, Cambridge, where in December, 1781, he graduated M.A. In 1790 he married Jane, second daughter of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson, and then had six sons and six daughters. Mr. Spencer Walpole, son of the fourth daughter, wrote, in 1874, a full biography of Spencer Perceval. When first married Spencer Perceval and his wife lived in lodgings in Bedford Row; but in about 1793 they bought a good house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and it is just a little curious that I bought this book, with his bookplate in it, but a few yards from Lincoln’s Inn Fields close on thirty years ago. Spencer Perceval, England’s Prime Minister during the Peninsuula War, was shot dead as he passed through the lobby to the House of Commons on May 11th, 1812, and Bellingham, his assassin, was hanged a week afterwards.
The ex libris here reproduced looked at first a puzzle; but Mr. Procter, at the British Museum, soon read the riddle. He made it an Earl of Guildford, and then it was very easy sailing for me to come to anchor at Frederick North, fifth Earl of Guildford, born 7th February, 1766, Chancellor of the University of the Ionian Islands, and Knight Grand Cross of the Ionian Order. There is a good account
THE EARL OF GUILDFORD
of him by J. M. Rigg in the D. N. B. At Oxford he became an accomplished Grecian, and an enthusiastic Philhellene. In 1791, on the conclusion of the peace of Galatz, he evinced his accomplishment in classical Greek by a scholarly and spirited Pindaric ode in honour of the Empress Catherine.
In 1814 he was elected the first president of a society for the promotion of culture, founded at Athens. Later he was active in the formation of the British Protectorate over the Ionian Islands, in the scheme to form an Ionian University. In 1824 the University, with him as Chancellor, was established in Corfu. He lived there, spending money on the University, and giving valuable printed books, manuscripts, and other treasures to it.
In 1827 his state of health caused his recall to England. As a child he had been exceedingly delicate. In England he still wore constantly the classical costume, which had been adopted as the academic dress. He died on October 14th, 1827. “He was a brilliant conversationalist, and ... wrote and spoke German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Romaic with ease; he read Russian, and throughout life maintained his familiarity with the classics unimpaired.”
The next surname we come to in bookplates has been most familiar to the present and immediate past generation, in the person of Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. These few following remarks are from private recollections. In the power of getting through a day of hard labour, of mind and body, he was unequalled, and to the end of the hard day’s work, with similar laborious days preceding and following, he could display a marvellously ready wit. One evening at a dinner-party at Cuddesdon Palace, the two lady guests on each side of the Bishop were suddenly startled by the crashing fall of a pile of plates. The Bishop, utterly unmoved, instantly remarked, “Oh, it’s nothing; it’s only the coachman going out with the brake.” It was the coachman, and the brake was the vehicle in frequent use. He would do some hours’ work no doubt after his guests had retired, and do some good work before breakfast the next morning. At Bisham Abbey, meeting at dinner two irrepressible spinsters who would argue of ages, he drily remarked, as if addressing the moon, the extraordinary fact in nature, that ladies’ ages always ran thus: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, and so on.