1909 - The Courts of Europe
This article from The Times Dispatch, out of Richmond, Virginia, dated 21 January 1909, Thursday, page 6, tells the story of the Earl of Warwick, who claimed descent from the Kingmaker. It was written by La Marquise de Fontenoy, "The Courts of Europe."
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Lord Warwick's boast on the subject of his lineage in the interview which he granted to Mrs. George Augustus Sala, and which, printed in a number of American papers, commences, "Yes, I am descended from the Kingmaker, Earl of Warwick." This would be news to most students of history and genealogy, for there were no ties of blood between the house of Greville, of which the present Lord Warwick was the chief, and the Kingmaker portrayed by Bulwer Lytton as "The last of the barons" in the novel of that name, and the only association between them was that of title and of the ownership of Warwick Castle.
It appears that the Kingmaker had no son, but two daughters, one of whom, Lady Anne Neville, after marrying Edward, Prince of Wales, the murdered son of Henry VI, became the consort of Richard III, of England. The other daughter, Lady Isabel, married the Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. By this marriage there were two children, a son and a daughter. The son inherited through his mother his grandfather's earldom of Warwick, and died without issue, a parliamentary attender of his earldom of Warwick following his death, and being, therefore, of a posthumous character. The daughter, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, who was beheaded in the Tower, had a daughter and four sons, one of whom was Cardinal Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury. As the eldest brother of cArdinal Pole left a number of daughters, ti might have been possible that, through some matrimonial alliance of their descendants with he house of Greville, the present Earl of Warwick could have boasted of descent, ever so indirect, of the Kingmaker. But, had the present Earl of Warwick, or any of the other four Earls of Warwick of the house of Greville, been able to discover a descent of this kind, we should undoubtedly have heard of it long ere this, and they would have taken the customary steps to secure a repeal of the attainder, all the more as the Kingmaker earldom of Warwick was a peerage descendable through the female as well as the male side of the house.
Unfortunately for Lord Warwick, his own wife had in her book, entitled "Warwick cAstle and its Earls," demonstrated the fallacy of his pretensions to be a descendant of the Kingmaker, for the volume in question showed, among other things, how it was that her husband had no connection whatsoever, directly or indirectly, with the peer known as "the last of the barons." The book was well worthy of study, for, leaving aside the many legends which are connected with Warwick Castle, it proved the historic pile, which was the bourne of so many American pilgrimages, to have been built by the daughter of Alfred the Great, and to have belonged in turn to the houses of Newburgh, of Beauchamp, of Neville, of Dudley and of Greville; the house of Rich, which for 140 years enjoyed the possession of the earldom of Warwick, having never owned Warwick Castle.
Warwick Castle belonged to the Dudleys when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth, and among its most frequent guests was Amy Robert, wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the heroine of Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Kenilworth." The Dudley Earl of Warwick played a considerable role in the opening up of this country. It was he who furnished Sir Martin Frobisher with the means of making all those discoveries in the northern part of this hemisphere which are commemorated, among other things, by what was then Frobisher's Bay, and by the so-called Countess of Warwick Island, north of Hudson Straits. This Lord and Lady Warwick may be said to have ruined themselves in efforts to explore, develop and colonize this country, and among their fellow-sufferers were Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Queen Elizabeth herself.
It was another of Queen Elizabeth's favorites - namely, Fulke Greville - who obtained from her successor, King James I, a grant of the then half ruined Warwick Castle and dependencies, being raised tot he peerage as Lord Brooke. Stabbed and killed when already on his deathbed by a servant who was angered at finding that he had not been remembered in his master's will, the barony of Brooke and Warwick Castle, with all the other estates, passed, according to a special remainder of the peerage, to his cousin, Robert Greville, as second Lord Brooke, the eighth Lord Brooke and eighth of the Greville owners of Warwick Castle being raised first to the earldom of Brooke, and fifteen years later to the earldom of Warwick, on the death without issue of the last of the Earls of Warwick of the house of Rich. This was in 1758, and the present Lord Warwick (1909) was only the fifth earl of this creation.
The house of Rich may be said to have been founded by that rascally lord chancellor who gave evidence against Sir Thomas More, and who took a personal part in the torture of Anne Askew, among its most notable members having been Penelope Rich, who was the "stella" of Sir Philip Sydney, and Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, who married Addison. The house of Greville itself was founded by a merchant of London of the name of William Greville, who loaned money to Richard II.
Lady Robert Montage, whose death was announced from London, was a grand-aunt of the present (1909) Duke of Manchester, having been the widow of Lord Robert Montagu, a younger brother of the seventh duke. She was Lord Robert's second wife, and was of very humble origin, having, indeed, been a domestic servant up to the time when Lord Robert led her to the altar. She was employed as a housemaid at the house next to that of Lord Robert and, watching her out of the windows of his study while she was scrubbing the house doorsteps of morning, he fell in love with her, and by wedding her transformed her into a sister-in-law of the then Duchess of Manchester and present (1909) and actual widowed Duchess of Devonshire. He had several children by her, who have experienced some difficulty in making both ends meet; for, although his first wife was an heiress, he only retained a life interest in her property, which went at his death to the son she had borne him - namely, Robert Montagu.
The latter's wife, a Miss Annie McMicking, also a great heiress, and owner of Miltonese, one of the first places in Scotland, was convicted in 1892 of having brought about the death of her three-year-old daughter, Mary, by chocking cruelty, and was sentenced to a couple of years' imprisonment for homicide. Robert Montagu, who thus enjoys through his n=mother and through his wife an income of over $100,000 a year and the possession of large estates in Scotland and Ireland, is third in the direct line of succession to the dukedom of Manchester - the first being the present duke's little boy, and the second the late duke's only brother, Lord Charles Montagu, a confirmed bachelor, who had not the slightest idea of marrying, and who inherited a handsome bequest from his stepfather, the late Duke of Devonshire. He made his home with his mother, the widowed Duchess of Devonshire, and was a warm friend of the Late Duke of Clarence.
The late Lord Robert Montagu was a most unpopular man, who died estranged from most of the members of his family, and with relatively few to regret him, for he was as inconstant in his friendships as he was in his political and religious beliefs, having changed backwards and towards between the Church of England and the Church of Rome so many times that it was difficulty to recall then in which of the two he died.
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