Note 205 — Chapter XXIII

“Many Peers (says Horace Walpole) were absent. Lord Foley and Lord Jersey attended only the first day; and Lord Huntingdon, and my nephew, Lord Orford (in compliment to his mother, as related to the prisoner), withdrew without voting. But never was a criminal more literally tried by his Peers; for the three persons who interested themselves most in the examination were at least as mad as he—Lord Ravenscroft, Lord Talbot, and Lord Fortescue. Indeed, the first was almost frantic. The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full. Lady Coventry was there, I sat next but one to her, and would not have thought she had been ill; yet they are positive she has but a few weeks to live. Lady Augusta was in the same gallery; the Duke of York and his young brothers were in the Prince of Wales’s box, who was not there, no more than the Princess, Princess Emily, nor the Duke. It was an agreeable humanity in the Duke of York, who would not take his seat in the House before the trial, that he might not vote on it. There are so many young Peers, that the show was fine even in that respect. The Duke of Richmond was the finest figure; the Duke of Marlborough, with the best countenance in the world, looked clumsy in his robes; he had new ones, having given away his father’s. There were others not at all so indifferent about the antiquity of theirs. Lord Huntingdon’s, Lord Abervagenny’s, and Lord Castlehaven’s, scarcely hung on their backs; the two former, they pretend, were used at the trial of the Queen of Scots.”

Horace Walpole, in this note, refers to the mother of his nephew: she was Margaret, Countess Dowager of Orford, who had married the uncle of Lord Ferrers, the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, Comptroller of the Household to Queen Charlotte, and M.P. for Brackley and Callington. The Lady Coventry, to whose illness he refers, died on the 1st of October in the same year. (See Mason’s elegy on this celebrated beauty in his poems). She was the eldest daughter of John Gunning, Esq., and sister to the Duchess of Argyle. Lady Coventry left two daughters, who were both married, and, strange to say, both divorced on the ground of ill conduct.