Four of the 5 Nixon boys have been named right after kings who had dominated in medieval or famous Britain Richard, for instance, was named immediately after Richard the Lionheart. 1648." She was connected with her brothers at the Court of Charles II., and there, though maid of honour to his very first Duchess, Ann Hyde, appears to have smitten the coronary heart of that cruel unloveable male, the 138 THE CRADLE OF MARLBOROUGH. Duke of York (Ann's partner), later on James II., and to whom, in her 20-third year, she offered a son, followed later on by three daughters and a further son. Both boys appear to have been imbued with the army aptitude, so conspicuous in their mother's spouse and children. Henry Fitz-James, the more youthful of the two, and born in 1673, was created Colonel of a regiment of foot at sixteen, which he led at the struggle of the Boyne. He was ARABELLA CHDBCHILL. eommonly known as "the Grand Prior," and in 1696 his father established him Duke of Albemarle, when he was put in command of the Toulon fleet built to invade England. Subsequently he was created a Lieutenant-General and Admiral of France, and died at Bagnolles, in Languedoc, in 1703. James Fitz-James, the elder son, in his sixteenth 12 months was designed by his father Baron Bosworth, Earl of Tinmouth, and Duke of Berwick - upon - Tweed . His job as a soldier was a outstanding 1, and almost rivalled for name that of his celebrated uncle, the Duke of Marlborough. When King James' obstinacy and consequent misfortunes drove him from England, the Duke adopted his father, but shortly crossed to Ireland, and was engaged in the preventing there, being current at the .■siege of Londonderry and the fight of the Boyne. THE CRADLE OF MARLBOROUGH. one 89 Returning to France, lie was used at the moment, and served with great difference in the course of the martial reign of Louis XIV., who created him Lieutenant-General of his armies, and subsequently gave him a Marshal's baton. At the summary of the disastrous struggle of Landen, in which our King William III. was on the shedding side, the Duke was taken prisoner, and, according to Hutchins, by his very own uncle, General Charles Churchill, but was quickly right after exchanged for the Duke of Ormonde. JAMES, DUKE OF BERWICK Engaged also in Spain, in 1707 he gained the " glorious " but sanguinary struggle of Almanza about the combined English and Portugese forces, which victory fastened Philip V. on the throne, and that monarch, in return, created him a Grandee of the first class and created him Duke of Liria and Xerica. Subsequently he was all over again employed by the French king as Generalissimo of his army, to oppose Prince Eugene of Savoy, in which, following a extended series of good expert services, Marshal Berwick uncovered a soldier's demise, becoming shattered by a cannon ball at the siege of Philipsburg in 1734, a veteran in his sixty-third yr. Ah ! re-make the fireplace, host of ours, that we may well get a contemporary and pleasanter incantation from its crackling flames and curling smoke, and 140 THE CRADLE OF MARLBOROUGH. shed the lurid, smouldering vista we have heeu considering of the soldier's existence - its clanking swords, booming cannon, rattling musketry, and miles of carnage the stark and ghastly useless, the coronary heart-breaking agonised enchantment for enable from the maimed and dying the callous, cruel unconcern of the trampling host, some fleeing terror-stricken to preserve their lives, other folks eager in pursuit, trying to get to slaughter, and shouting Victory ! The thread of our ideas that remaining this roof with the youthful life that initial observed the mild beneath it, have hurriedly traversed the gory precincts of a hundred battle fields, strewn with myriads of the slain, and with a shudder we really feel they have returned to us in this comfy peaceful ingle corner, unhappy, subdued and deeply blood stained - the direful glamour that surrounds the dreadful, sickening heritage of " gunpowder and glory." As the tangly gray smoke rises in profusion from the new-piled "fireplace-canine," it forms a not inapt resemblance in texture and color to a procession of entire-bottomed wigs mounting the chimney, and the glowing logs at the base solve by themselves into rubicund, homely faces they may well have enveloped. And that term homely and the capacious head-equipment recollects us back again yet again to the waning days of the previous Stuart King, and who they have been that ongoing to live on right here in peace following this daughter of the residence had departed with her martial progeny. The then possessor of Ashe was Sir John Drake, the brother of Elizabeth Churchill. He was 1st knighted by Charles II. and just after- wards by that king created a Baronet in 1660. He married two times, and experienced 3 young children by his 1st spouse - John, Walter, and Elizabeth and three sons by the 2nd - Bernard, George, and William. John succeeded his father and died a bachelor. "But however," states Prince, " he did not dwell to establish up his family members, he did his household " for Ashe House, getting turn into tremendously dilapidated through the Civil War, this Baronet, "who was a really serious, sober, and prudent particular person, set about its rebuilding, enlarged and beautified it, manufactured a park all over it, and extra fish ponds and gardens, so that for splendor and delight it may now vye with most other seats in these components." But male proposes and Clod disposes. Sir John "no quicker was appear to inhabit in this sweet and pleasurable spot, and began to stay, but he presently died." Sir John's possess brother, Walter, obtaining died ahead of him, the upcoming heir to the title was Sir Bernard, the eldest son by his father's next enterprise. But while Sir Bernard was heir to the Baronetcy, he was not to the estates these appear to have been the inheritance of the to start with relatives, and as Sir Bernard experienced offended his half-brother "by an indigestible extravagance," Sir John supposed to have settled the estates on his other half-brother William, "a very hopeful younger gentleman," but loss of life intervened ahead of the make any difference was done. Thereon his sister Elizabeth turned his sole heir, and " to her immortal honour be it in this article recorded, this sort of was her generosity," she reserved only a really compact part of the estate to her own use, and settled all the remainder on her fifty percent-brother William, as her deceased brother John experienced meant. THE CRADLE OF MARLBOROUGH. 141 How gracious and refreshing is all this sweet, self-denying, sisterly affection to contemplate, couched in the lap of enjoy and responsibility to carry out her brother's want, as opposed with the ghastly pageant of the lives of her soldier cousins, and the harlot fame of their sister. How a lot additional nohle a profession animated by these types of deeds - although only an unseen angel's pen might chronicle them- and nonetheless, for the credit of human passion, not wholly remaining unrecorded on earth, as the monument in Musbury church testifies, put there by Sir William jointly to her memory, her two brothers, and his personal wife, as the testimony "of an affectionate grateful brother, and a sincerely tender partner.' one '' This huge-hearted woman became the wife of Sir John Briscoe, of Boughton, in Northampton, Knight, in which she died in 1694, and was introduced to Musbury and buried Sir William adopted in 1715, leaving two sons - Sir John who deceased in 172-4 with no concern, following whom came his brother Sir William, who also died childless in 1738, when the Baronetcy grew to become extinct.

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