“The murderer of her, whom he preferred, far preferred to life, suspects the hand from which he has just received, such an offer as he neither desires, nor deserves. His wishes are for death, not life. One wish he has: Could he be pardoned in this world, by the man he has most injured? Oh, my Lord, when I meet her in another world, enable me to tell her—if departed spirits are not ignorant of earthly things—that you forgive us both, and that you will be a father to her dear children.”
He suffered death calmly, and thus ended the career of a man, who seemed formed for better things.
Mr. Cradock, who was sincerely attached both to Lord Sandwich, and the unfortunate cause of so much sorrow, tells us that on the day following the murder, he went to the Admiralty, and saw old James, the black servant, whom he found overwhelmed with grief. It was he who began to break the terrible news to his master, when Lord Sandwich interrupted him, by bidding him “allude no more to the ballads and libels, of which he had heard enough.” “Alas,” said the faithful old man, “it is something more terrible than that.” Others then came in from the theatre and related the dreadful intelligence. Lord Sandwich, stood for awhile transfixed with horror, then raising his hand exclaimed, “I could have borne anything but this,” and rushed upstairs, desiring that no one should follow him. He shunned society, for a long time after the dreadful catastrophe, and his friend Cradock tells us, that he went to see him, and found him terribly depressed one day, sitting under the portrait of Miss Ray, “a speaking likeness;” doubtless the one in question.
By Miss Ray, Lord Sandwich had four children, viz., Admiral Montagu, Basil Montagu, Q.C., John Montagu, and Augusta, married to the Comte de Viry, of Savoy, an Admiral in the Sardinian Navy.
This beautiful portrait by Gainsborough, belonged to Admiral Montagu, and was purchased by John, seventh Earl of Sandwich, in 1857, of a picture dealer, at the instigation of Mr. Green, of Evans’s Rooms, who told him he much wished to possess it himself, having a collection of portraits of celebrities, but the price was beyond his mark.
Lady Louisa Corry, Afterwards Countess of Sandwich:
By HAMILTON.
Small Half-length.