[377] Edward Berkeley Portman, representative of an old Dorsetshire and Somersetshire family, was created Baron Portman in 1837. In 1827 he married Emma, third daughter of the Earl of Harewood, who was at this time one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria.
[378] This high Constitutional doctrine was certain to meet with the approval of a Whig like Lord Melbourne. It has been the secret of ministerial responsibility and of executive power in the Constitution of this country, and its working has been admired by many foreign observers.
[379] Baron Alexander von Munchausen, a Hanoverian diplomatist, was then about twenty-five. He was not the hero of a celebrated romance.
[380] That the Queen always retained a sentiment for her dolls may be realised from the care with which they were preserved. They are exhibited in the London Museum at Kensington, arranged and ticketed with the names given to them by Princess Victoria.
[381] Letitia, wife of Sir Hussey (afterwards Lord) Vivian. The child Lalage married, in 1857, Henry Hyde Nugent Bankes, son of the Right Hon. George Bankes.
[382] See ante, p. 73.
[383] Mr. (afterwards Rt. Hon.) John Arthur Roebuck. A Liberal “free lance,” who earned the sobriquet of “Tear-’em.” Lord John Russell had brought in a Bill for suspending the Constitution of Canada, and Mr. Roebuck, who was not at the time in Parliament, claimed to be heard at the bar of both Houses as agent for the Lower Province. He made a very able but bitter speech.
[384] Catherine, widow of the twelfth Earl of Desmond, died in 1604, having survived her husband seventy years. There seems much doubt about the principal dates of her life, e.g. those of her birth and marriage, but she is said to have attained the remarkable age of 140 years, and to have died by a fall from a cherry-tree. Sir Walter Raleigh records that he knew her and that she “was married in Edward IV.’s time.”
[385] Henry Brooke Parnell had been member for Maryborough in the Irish House of Commons, and was now member for Dundee. He was made Paymaster-General on that office being constituted in 1838. Afterwards created Lord Congleton.
[386] The Duke never allowed political feeling to interfere with what he considered public duty. As a politician he was a Tory; but as a soldier he had no politics.