But from this Sir William and 'Mystresse Margarye' descended Killigrews who have made some noise in the world, as we shall presently find. Besides two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth—both of whom married, but make no figure in our story—they had a son, Sir Robert Killigrew of Hanworth, a wealthy man, and Chamberlain to two Queens of England, viz., Elizabeth and the hapless consort of Charles I. He too kept up the old family connexion with Pendennis Castle—of which he was made Governor in succession to Sir John Parker, on 11th June, 1632, towards the close of his life; and he further served the Crown by going, in 1625, as an Ambassador to the United Provinces. Sir Robert was an original shareholder in the New River Company (incorporated in 1619); and was a great stickler for his rights in the matter of the reclaimed lands in Lindsey Level, Lincolnshire (as to which, see Dugdale's 'History of Embanking'); moreover, Farnaby, the celebrated schoolmaster, dedicated to him the 1624 edition of his translations of 'Martial's Epigrams.' He was once 'sequestered' for a manual scuffle in the House, in 1614, as appears in Spedding's 'Works of Francis Bacon;' and he was mixed up in the story about the poisoned powder administered to Sir Thomas Overbury, though it was clearly proved that Killigrew was not to blame in that matter; but it is nevertheless true that he was sent from the Council Table to the Fleet Prison for talking with Overbury at his prison-window, after having paid a visit to Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower of London.
Sir Robert gave Whitelocke 'a place for Helston,' whereupon Whitelocke caused his brother-in-law Bulstrode to be returned for that place. He must have had a fine seat at Hanworth; for Conway, writing to Buckingham on 3rd May, 1623, says that on that day the King passed Sir Robert Killigrew's, 'and there saw the designment of a fine ground: a pretty lodge, a gracious lady, a fair maid, the daughter, and a fine bouquet. He saw the pools, the deer, and the herondry; which was his errand.'
When he took to himself a wife, he went to a good stock, for he selected Mary Wodehouse, a daughter of Sir Henry Wodehouse, of Kimberley, Norfolk,[78] known as the 'young' or the 'French' Lady Killigrew. She was a niece of one whose name (erroneously as we apply it) is familiar to every Englishman—I mean Lord Bacon. Of Sir Robert himself, little more need be said here than that he died on the 26th November, 1632; but his offspring will detain us much longer.
Sir Robert had six daughters and five sons; and it may be as well to offer first the slight result of my inquiries into the careers of the former.
They were about the Court of Charles II.; and one of them, Elizabeth, who married Viscount Shannon, became one of the dissolute King's mistresses. She died at her house in Pall Mall on 28th July, 1684, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, 'having no Coat-of-arms of her own, as the King had assigned her none.' Mary married Sir John James, Knight; and has a monument at the east end of the north choir aisle in Westminster Abbey. Of the others, I can only learn that they married men of title—one the Earl of Yarmouth; another Berkeley, Lord Fitz-Hardinge; and one married into a grand old Cornish family—the Godolphins. Another, Anne, 'a beauty and a poetess,' was the first wife of George Kirk, and the unhappy lady was drowned at London Bridge, in the Queen's barge, in July, 1641; like so many others of her race, she was interred in Westminster Abbey.
Robert, the eldest son, died young. The only trace I can find of him is the following college exercise on the birth of Charles II.:
'Dum Solis radios abscondit Luna, videmus
Reginæ ex utero surgere Solem alium:
Quid tu, Phœbe, redis? et cur te pœnitet umbræ?
Non deerit, vel te deficiente, dies.'
His brother William, next in age, succeeded him as the representative of the family—a position which he must have held for about seventy years; for he was nearly ninety when he died, in or about 1694. When a Gentleman Commoner of Oxford he wrote some verses, which Henry Lawes thought good enough to set to music; he also wrote four plays; and when he left the University (where he afterwards took the degree of D.C.L.), he was forthwith welcomed at Court, and became a Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber, and afterwards Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Katherine. About 1661 he was made a Baronet, probably on account of his loyal attachment to the late King, whose body-guard he often commanded. At York, when the Civil War broke out in 1642, he commanded a troop of cavalry, composed of servants and retainers of the 1st troop of Life Guards, under Lord Bernard Stuart; and at Edgehill he was one of the foremost in Prince Rupert's fiery charge—a charge which at once began and had almost ended the battle.
Old Sir William kept up the Killigrew connexion with the West-country, by being, in his turn also, made Governor of Pendennis; but he is best known and remembered by two little books which he wrote very late in life, and especially by his 'Artless Midnight Thoughts,' written when he was eighty-two years old, and described by himself as the reflexions 'of a gentleman at Court, who for many years built on sand, which every Blast of Cross Fortune has defaced; but now he has laid new Foundations on the Rock of his Salvation, which no Storms can shake; and will outlast the Conflagration of the World, when Time shall melt into Eternity.'[79]