Horace Walpole: A memoir

Horace Walpole: A memoir - With an appendix of books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press

The Walpoles of Houghton.Horace Walpole born, 24 September, 1717.Lady Louisa Stuart's Story.Scattered Facts of his Boyhood.Minor Anecdotes.'La belle Jennings.'The Bugles.Interview with George I. before his Death.Portrait at this time.Goes to Eton, 26 April, 1727.His Studies and Schoolfellows.The 'Triumvirate,' the 'Quadruple Alliance.'Entered at Lincoln's Inn, 27 May, 1731.Leaves Eton, September, 1734.Goes to King's College, Cambridge, 11 March, 1735.His University Studies.Letters from Cambridge.Verses in the Gratulatio.Verses in Memory of Henry VI.Death of Lady Walpole, 20 August, 1737. The Walpoles of Houghton, in Norfolk, ten miles from King's Lynn, were an ancient family, tracing their pedigree to a certain Reginald de Walpole who was living in the time of William the Conqueror. Under Henry II. there was a Sir Henry de Walpol of Houton and Walpol; and thenceforward an orderly procession of Henrys and Edwards and Johns (all[2] 'of Houghton') carried on the family name to the coronation of Charles II., when, in return for his vote and interest as a member of the Convention Parliament, one Edward Walpole was made a Knight of the Bath. This Sir Edward was in due time succeeded by his son, Robert, who married well, sat for Castle Rising,[1] one of the two family boroughs (the other being King's Lynn, for which his father had been member), and reputably filled the combined offices of county magnate and colonel of militia. But his chief claim to distinction is that his eldest son, also a Robert, afterwards became the famous statesman and Prime Minister to whose 'admirable prudence, fidelity, and success' England owes her prosperity under the first Hanoverians. It is not, however, with the life of 'that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot, and statesman,'to borrow a passage from one of Mr. Thackeray's graphic vignettes,that these pages are concerned. It is more material to their purpose to note that in the year 1700, and on the 30th day of July in that year (being the day of the death of the Duke of Gloucester, heir presump[3]tive to the crown of England), Robert Walpole, junior, then a young man of three-and-twenty, and late scholar of King's College, Cambridge, took to himself a wife. The lady chosen was Miss Catherine Shorter, eldest daughter of John Shorter, of Bybrook, an old Elizabethan red-brick house near Ashford in Kent. Her grandfather, Sir John Shorter, had been Lord Mayor of London under James II., and her father was a Norway timber merchant, having his wharf and counting-house on the Southwark side of the Thames, and his town residence in Norfolk Street, Strand, where, in all probability, his daughter met her future husband. They had a family of four sons and two daughters. One of the sons, William, died young. The third son, Horatio,[2] or Horace, born, as he himself tells us, on the 24th September, 1717, O. S., is the subject of this memoir. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 53649
Author: Dobson, Austin
Release Date: Dec 2, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English