“The choice unfetter’d fondly turns to thee:
Still to thee turns, all-confident to find
The features but the index of the mind,
Glowing with truth, sincerity, and ease,
Stamp’d with the surest attributes to please.
Intelligent and gay, the joyous smile
Speaking a bosom free from art or guile,
Pure as the consciousness of well-spent life,
Perfect as friend, as daughter, sister, wife.”
VI
MRS. GLADSTONE
“Fate grants not passionless repose
To her who weds a glorious name.”
I
Catherine, elder daughter and third child of Sir Stephen Glynne, eighth Baronet, by his wife, Mary Neville, daughter of the second Lord Braybrooke, was born at Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, on 6th January 1812. Lady Glynne was a granddaughter of George Grenville—Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge was a member of this family—the Minister whose Government was responsible for the “Stamp Act” (1763), which led to the loss of the American Colonies, and niece of Lord Grenville, Prime Minister in 1806–7, and head of the Cabinet of “All the talents,” which abolished the Slave Trade. His only sister became the wife of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and the mother of William Pitt, the Younger. Thus Catherine Glynne was related by birth with four famous Prime Ministers of England, and was destined to become the wife of a fifth.
MRS. GLADSTONE (ON THE LEFT) AND HER SISTER, LADY LYTTELTON, ON THE LAWN AT HAWARDEN
The families of both parents were of great antiquity, and directly descended from Crusaders; the names of Sir Stephen and Lady Glynne are on the Plantagenet Roll. Ancestors had been settled at Glynllifon, Carnarvonshire, in very ancient times. The founder of the Hawarden branch of the family, Sir John Glyn (1603–66), won distinction as a lawyer both under Cromwell—he was Lord Chief Justice from 1655 to 1659—and Charles II. Notwithstanding his support of the Parliamentary party, he seems to have been a Monarchist at heart and to have urged Cromwell to take the title of King; and we know that he served quite happily as King’s Serjeant under Charles II., even acting for the Crown in the prosecution of Sir Henry Vane for high treason in 1662. It was through him that Hawarden came into the Glynne family, for he purchased it at a nominal sum when it was sequestered in the Civil Wars. The castle itself was nearly in ruins and was never rebuilt. In 1752 Sir John Glynne, Mrs. Gladstone’s great-grandfather, acquired through marriage the adjoining property of Broad Lane, and the house belonging to it, with much rebuilding and various additions, became the Hawarden Castle with which the name of Gladstone is always associated. The ruins of the old original castle still exist and form a picturesque object in the grounds.