PREFACE
In the Biographical Sketches contained in this volume, I have pursued the same system as in my two former Catalogues, of the Galleries of Hinchingbrook and Longleat,—devoting especial attention to the immediate members, or to personages in any way connected with the family in question. In the historical characters, I have purposely made the details of public and official life (which are elsewhere recorded) subservient to those of a private and domestic nature, although it is obvious that in some cases the two cannot be disentangled. In fact, I have preferred painting my portraits in the costume worn at home, rather than in robes of office and suits of armour. I have refrained from mentioning the innumerable authorities to which I have had recourse, in the British Museum and other Public and Private Libraries, from a dread of adding to the weight of a volume already, I fear, too bulky. For help in my labours, I am indebted to the noble owner of Panshanger himself, for the able papers on Charles James Fox, Lord Melbourne, and the brothers De Witt,—while the author of that delightful memoir, ‘Fifty Years of my Life,’ so well known to the reading public, contributed the interesting sketch of his ancestor, the first Earl of Albemarle.
The good services of Mr. Elliot Stock procured me the assistance of Monsieur Charles Rueles, the learned Keeper of Manuscripts in the Royal Library at Brussels, when at a loss for information regarding the Marquez de Leganes, a commander little spoken of by English writers. On the kindness of friends my impaired sight has compelled me to rely for details of dress and descriptions of many of the portraits, and, on this account, my especial thanks are due to a fair member of the Cowper family. In other respects, the work, it may be ‘a poor thing, is mine own,’ and, although in some respects arduous and difficult, I have found it on the whole an undoubted labour of love.
Michaelmas 1885.