There is an extraordinary entry in the list of the Welbeck manuscripts:—
“H. Earl of Ogle.
“1665, December 1. An engagement not to marry again so long as he had a son by his present wife, and to settle all his property on his wife and children as soon as he should be free to do so after the death of his father. Signet.”
It is scarcely conceivable that a son should be asked solemnly to bind himself, in the case of his wife’s death, never to marry again so long as a son of hers should be living! Yet, if this summary of the document in question is correct, so it must have been.
It is clear that Newcastle arranged, or endeavoured to arrange, all the marriages and matchmakings of his children and grandchildren. In reply to one of his attempted bargains, in the marriage market, he received the following gentle snub.[150]
[150] Welbeck MSS., p. 149.
“E. Countess of Northumberland to the Duke of Newcastle.
(c. 1671). I have received your Lordship’s letter full of obliging expressions to our family which I am very sensible of, and for the offer you are pleased to make of your grandson. I can only say I have no present exceptions to make against so noble an alliance, but that it is too early days to think of disposing of my grandchild [Baroness Percy], whose tender years are not yet capable of distinguishing what may most conduce to her future happiness. And when she is of age to judge I must be so just as to give her the choice of all those who shall then offer themselves, and possibly none may be more acceptable to her than this young Lord.”
As a matter of fact, when she was “of an age to judge,” the sole heiress of the eleventh and last Earl of Northumberland (of the old Percys) did marry Newcastle’s grandson. And “the age to judge” was fourteen. Her husband died in the following year; so she was a widow at fifteen, which she only remained for two years, as she married a second time at the age of seventeen,[151] and she had been engaged also to another suitor[152] in the interval; but he was assassinated.