(Vol iii., pp. 224, 249.)
P. C. S. S. believes that a reference to almost any Peerage or work on
British genealogy, would {281} have saved Mr. F. B. RELTON the trouble of
addressing the inquiry at Vol. iii., p. 224. Katherine Sedley, daughter of
Sir Charles Sedley, commemorated in Johnson's line--
"And Sedley cursed the form that pleased a king"--
was created Countess of Dorchester by James II., and subsequently married
David Collyer, first Earl of Pontmore in Scotland. She died in 1692, having
had by King James a natural daughter, to whom, by royal warrant, that
monarch gave the rank and precedence of a duke's daughter; she was styled
Lady Catherine Darnley, and married first, in October 1699, James, third
Earl of Anglesey, from whom, on account of alleged cruelty on his part, she
was separated by act of parliament in the following year. The earl died in
1701, and his widow married, secondly, in 1705, John Sheffield, first Duke
of Normanby and Buckingham. She died on the 13th of March, 1743, and was
interred with almost regal pomp in Westminster Abbey. By her _first_
husband (the Earl of Anglesey) she had an only daughter, the Lady Catherine
Annesley, married to Mr. William Phipps, father of the first Lord Mulgrave,
and, consequently, great-grandfather of the present Marquis of Normanby,
who on his recent elevation to that dignity, has, it appears, preferred to
take one of the ducal titles of a nobleman from whom he does _not_ descend,
and of whose blood there does not flow a single drop in his veins, to the
just assumption of the title of one from whom he _does_ descend, and whose
sole representative he undoubtedly is.
Of the Duchess of Buckingham's inordinate pride, there are some curious
stories in Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann (_sub anno_ 1743). But
perhaps the most remarkable instance of it is to be found in a periodical
paper called the _British Champion_, which was published at that time, and
which is now not commonly to be met. In the No. for April 7, 1743, there is
the following anecdote:--
"I have been informed that a lady of high rank, finding her end
approaching, and feeling very uneasy apprehensions of this sort, came
at length to a resolution of sending for a clergyman, of whom she had
heard a very good character, in order to be satisfied as to some
doubts. The first question she asked was whether in heaven (for she
made no doubt of going thither) some respect would not be had to a
woman of such birth and breeding? The good man, for such he really was,
endeavoured to show her the weakness of this notion, and to convince
her that there was, where she was going, no acceptance of persons, and
much more to the same purpose. This the poor lady heard with much
attention, and then said with a sigh, 'Well, if it be so, this heaven
must be, after all, a strange sort of a place!'"
P. C. S. S. is unwilling to believe this painful story--the more so, as it
must be recollected that the author of the paper was an inveterate Whig,
and the Duchess (jure paterno) as inveterate a Jacobite.