UN CALIFORNIAN HORACE WALPOLE: A Memoir. CHAPTER I. 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 HE 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 ' 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 6 1 Another member for Castle Rising was Samuel Pepys, the Diarist. |