[95] Her great-uncle on her mother’s side.
[96] 4th Baronet and his second wife.
[97] 1st Earl of Harrington.
LORD WALLINGFORD’S DEATH
Lady Wallingford was attacked by smallpox at this time, but had it very favourably. In a letter to Mrs. Robinson, Elizabeth says—
“She never had three hundred all over her, and was at the heighth, I believe, in seven days. Her Lord dyed very suddenly of a quinsy before she had been downstairs, so she had not even the melancholy consolation of a last farewell; she laid up two pairs of stairs, and he below, so they told her he was removed, and died at Kensington. He has left everything to her.... Lord Wallingford certainly caught his death with attending her, a sad aggravation of the affliction; he died with the greatest courage imaginable. Sandys, who with several Physicians and Surgeons was called in, begged him to settle his affairs, upon which he made his will (that he had by him, being very deficient in points of Law), and took leave of his friends. There was no hopes from the first, for this convulsive Quinsy is always mortal.”
In another she says he died of “cramp in the throat,” which sounds more likely. It has been stated that Lord Wallingford died in France, but his death occurred at Whitehall.
The duke and family, including Elizabeth, left Whitehall in June for Bullstrode.[98] In a letter of June 24 to Mr. Freind and his wife, she says—
“The rural beauties of the place would persuade me I was in the plains of Arcadia, but the magnificence of the building under whose gilded roof I dwell, has a pomp far beyond pastoral. We go to chapel twice a week, and have sermons on Sunday, for his Grace of Portland values the title of Christian above that of Duke, and the chaplain may preach against every vice in fashion without fear of offending either his Patron or Patroness.”
[98] Bullstrode was originally in the Shobbington family before the Conquest. Judge Jefferies bought it, and built the house here mentioned in 1686. His son-in-law sold it to the Earl of Portland. In 1807 it was sold to the Duke of Somerset.