A QUEER OLD PEER.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3090, 13 January 1879, Page 1

A QUEER OLD PEER.

[ The Oddities of ak Oct«c«nabiax I Bbitise Miskb.

The Earl of Dysart, who died last week, led a curious life. Like the 7 Duke of Portland, he was avers? to be seen. He had lodgings in Norfolk street; no one was ever admitted in his room, and ! all correspondence with the outer world was carried on by means of a small slit cut in the door, through which messages; and their answers were passed; As he was rich and penurious he managed to accumulate an enormous sum of money, a large portion of which he had invested in the debentures of the London and Southwestern Bailway Company. The title of Earl of Dysart was originally granted to one William Murray, who was the whipping boy of Charles I. The lad rose to be a Gentleman of the Bedcham* ber, when a committee of the House of Commons memorialised the King to "remove that rile person from his councils." " William Murray left one daughter, who, ""ieceired a patent as Countess of Dysart from Charles 11., and married Sir Lionel Tollemache, and, on his death, the Duke of Landerdale. The Jady used to boast to her second husband that she had saved his life, when taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, by " submitting to the familiarities of Oliver Cromwell." Before I had heard of this, I confess that I had never thought of the great protector in the light of a flirt. The father of the Earl just deceased was engaged, before he inherited his peerage, in some carious electioneering practices. • He bought a number of small houses at Ilchester. which then returned two members. In 1802 most of these tenants were bribed to vote against him, so he pulled down 240 houses and erected a workhouse, in which their late occupants were lodged* But in 1818 a majority of the remaining electors voted against his candidates, on which he turned 160 of the inhabitants out of his work-house in midwinter into the streets, pour encourager hi autres. At the. next election there was still a majority against his candidates, when he gave up the straggle. His will is to be contested on the ground that the late Lord Huntingtower made a will during Lord Dysart's lifetime, bequeathing all he could to his illegitimate family. The law of wills is somewhat complicated, and it would require, a dozen columns of this journal to explain why Lord Dysart's will should be attacked because of the testamentary dispositions of Lord Huntingtower. Every day Lord Dysart had sent to him in Norfolk street the number of cabbages out, of peaches on the trees, of eggs laid and of chickens hatched on his estates. He made his investments through an aged domestic servant. One day an old lady walked into the Southwestern Bailway Company's office and asked whether there was not an issue of some sort of guaranteed stock. The clerk said that there was. " Quite safe? " said she. " Oh, yes, old lady, you need not be afraid of your money. Do you want to put your quarter's wages in itf'\ "Well," she answered, "if you please, be good enough to give me £60,000 worth of it, and here's the money " and with' that she untied a big pocket from under her dress, containing notes to that amount, and presented the pocket to the Clerk. A year or two ago his lordship thought he would go out, a thing that he had not done for many a long day. "Bring me my boots," he said to the aged domestic. She brought him the only pair he had. They were Hessians. " Now call a hack* ney coach," he continued. When he went down and found a cab before his door, driven by a man without a large cape, he was in a state of utter amazement. He directed himself to be taken to Hampstead. When he reached Regent's Park he insisted that the driver was going the wrong direction. "This is not the way to Hampsteacl," he said. " Where are the covers in which I used to shoot pheasants?" Sad and astounded, he 1 returned co Norfolk street, from which he nevar again emerged alive.