family which had been raised to the Baronetage in 1618, was born on the 25th January, 1770, and educated at Westminster School and the University of Oxford. He lived in France during the revolutionary times, and was an eye-witness of many of the horrors that were then perpetrated. His continental experience greatly liberalised his political opinions. His history is not yet forgotten. As a politician he was far in advance of his day; a reformer before the time of Parliamentary reform; an energetic and effective advocate of those wise measures which have placed our country in the van of progress, and which made the British throne stable in the midst of the almost universal instability of European dynasties during the first portion of this century.

Long before young Burdett reached manhood, associations of various kinds for promoting Parliamentary reform had begun to be formed in England. One of the earliest, if not the very first of these, was established in 1779 by the celebrated Major Cartwright, of whom Fox, in presenting to the House of Commons one of his petitions for the remedy of existing abuses, said, "Major Cartwright is one whose enlightened mind and profound constitutional knowledge place him in the highest rank of public characters, and whose purity of principle and consistency of conduct through life command the most respectful attention to his opinions." The society founded by him was called. The Society for Constitutional Information. Its first chairman was the Duke of Richmond, but that noble patriot, having received from Government the post of Master of the Ordnance, took an early opportunity of deserting his colleagues in the society, and was afterwards the bitterest opponent of all such political associations. Among the other members of Cartwright's society were the Duke of Norfolk, Lords Camden and Surrey, Earl Stanhope, Lord Mahon, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, and Sheridan, besides many other influential and celebrated men. Pitt and Fox, however, did not long remain members, neither did the Duke of Norfolk.

After his University education had been completed, Burdett spent several years in travel. It was the period of the first French revolution, and the young aspirant to Parliamentary honours came home deeply. impressed with the conviction that unless a rapid and radical change in the administration of English affairs should be effected, the streets of London and other English cities would ere long be scenes of horror and blood, as those of Paris had recently been.

By this time the Society for Constitutional Information and its metropolitan coadjutor, the Corresponding Society, one of whose most active members was Horne Tooke, had spread their branches over the whole country, and were acting as propaganda of Liberalism everywhere. Mr. Burdett became a leader in these societies, advocating, both at their

meetings and in public, measures which at that time were regarded as revolutionary, but most of which have since been adopted.

In 1794 the famous trial of Hardy, Tooke, and others took place, and desperate efforts were made by the Government to get them found guilty of treason, and thereby to strike a death-blow at all Liberal political associations. As is well known, the arbitrary proceedings of the Crown officers recoiled upon themselves. Hardy and his associates were one by one triumphantly acquitted of the charge of "constructive" treason, and freedom of discussion and liberty of the press were established on a firmer basis than ever.

Mr. Burdett took strong ground on the Liberal side during these proceedings. Lord Campbell, speaking of a period seven years later, when Horne Tooke had retired to Wimbledon to spend the latter years of his life, gives a curious glimpse of the sort of society which Burdett frequented. "The ex-Chancellor," he says, "would likewise occasionally dine with the ex-parson, † and joyously meet the motley company there assembled,-Hardy, the shoemaker, sitting on one side of him, and Sir Francis Burdett on the other." ("Lives of the Chancellors," vii., 284, 4th edition, 1857).

We have already said that Mr. Burdett married Miss Sophia Coutts in 1793. In 1796 he was elected member of Parliament for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, and in 1797 he succeeded his grandfather in the baronetcy. In the House of Commons he was a vigorous opponent of the Government, especially on the war question, and an ardent advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, in favour of which he introduced bill after bill, struggling perseveringly against a large but constantly decreasing majority of the House.

In 1802 he was a candidate for the representation of Middlesex, but he was afterwards unseated; and in 1806, when he again contested that constituency, he was unsuccessful. Next year he fought a duel with Mr. James Paull, who had contested Westminster in the preceding year, and in 1807 he was elected member of Parliament for Westminster, his colleague being Lord Cochrane.

In 1810 he was imprisoned in the Tower under most memorable circumstances. In that year Parliament met on the 23rd January, and Lord Porchester immediately moved for an inquiry by a committee into the policy and conduct of the recent Walcheren Expedition, which had proved. so disastrous to the country, and to nearly all the ill-fated men who had embarked in it. Lord Porchester expressly stated that his object not a select and secret committee before whom garbled extracts might be laid by ministers themselves, in order to produce a partial decision, but a

* Thurlow.

†Tooke was in holy orders.

committee of the whole House, by which oral evidence might be examined at the bar." The motion was carried by a majority of nine in a House of 381 members.

The House of Commons was occupied in this investigation from the 2nd February till the 26th March, the result being that Lord Porchester's resolutions censuring the advisers of the expedition were negatived; but Lord Chatham, who was in command of the troops, was censured for having laid a narrative directly before the King vindicating his own conduct as commander-in-chief, and condemning that of the naval part of the expedition.

During the whole investigation the standing order against admitting strangers to the House had been rigidly enforced, and much public indignation was excited against the member (Yorke), on whose motion the people had been excluded.

On the 19th of February Yorke complained to the House that his Parliamentary conduct had been made the subject of discussion in a debating club called the British Forum, managed by a certain Mr. John Gale Jones, and demanded that Jones should be summoned to the bar for breach of privilege. This was done, and the unfortunate owner of the "British Forum" was committed to Newgate under a Speaker's

warrant.

Sir Francis Burdett was not present when this took place. He held that the House of Commons "had no right to imprison the people of England." On the 12th March he moved that Jones should be discharged, his imprisonment being illegal. The House held fast to its prerogative, and the motion was negatived by an overwhelming majority.

Sir Francis immediately published his speech on the motion, and prefixed to it a letter to the electors of Westminster, in which he repeated his assertion that the Commons had no right to imprison an Englishman. This letter was held by the House to be a scandalous and libellous paper, and after a protracted debate on the course to be taken to vindicate their rights, the Commons resolved by 190 votes against 152 that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed to the Tower.

The warrant to commit was signed by the Speaker and handed to the Serjeant-at-Arms at the close of the debate at seven o'clock in the morning of the 6th April, and Sir Francis was allowed to retire to his mansion in Piccadilly, on stating that he would be "ready to receive" the Serjeant next morning. The reception that officer met with next morning was not what he expected.

Sir Francis's house was barricaded, and its owner, maintaining that the warrant against him was illegal, refused to proceed to the Tower unless taken by force. With the aid of a strong body of police and a detachment of troops an entrance was ultimately effected, and the prisoner was driven to the Tower under their escort. A dreadful riot ensued. Vast crowds

assembled in the vicinity of the barricaded house, and the troops which had accompanied the prisoner to the Tower were attacked by the mob on their return, two or three lives being lost, and several persons wounded. The Parisian newspapers reported that there was a revolution in London. Sir Francis remained a prisoner till the prorogation of Parliament released him. He took legal measures against all parties to the arrest, his determination being to show through the law courts that the House of Commons had exceeded its powers. But he was unsuccessful in all the actions he raised, and the House still retains the right he fought so persistently to wrest from it.

In 1819 he was again prosecuted for publishing a letter to his constituents condemning the conduct of the magistrates and yeomanry in dispersing the great Reform meeting at Manchester, on which occasion several lives were lost, and many hundreds of the crowd more or less severely injured. He was fined £2,000, and also imprisoned for three months. The disappointment of the extreme Tories of those days at the mildness of the sentence may be gathered from a letter addressed by Mr. C. W. Wynn to the Marquis of Buckingham on February 10, 1821, in which he says:—

"I agree with you in considering the sentence on Burdett-a sentence so unexpected as to call for the plaudits of all the Radicals who surrounded the Court, and the congratulations of his friends-as most calamitous; and unfortunately it is not the first instance in which the Court of King's Bench, or rather the present judges of it, have shown that they are not proof against popular clamour and the apprehension of personal danger."*

Sir Francis represented Westminster for thirty years. In later life he went over to the Conservative party, and sat for Wiltshire. In the early part of his career he was the idol of the London populace. No political speaker of the day could sway a mass meeting more powerfully than he could. Perhaps the Toryism of his old age was a natural consequence of the ultra-Liberalism of his youth.

Such was the father of Miss Angela Burdett; such the school of politics in which she was reared. Her early infancy saw the end of the mighty struggle which had long convulsed Europe, and which closed with the battle of Waterloo; in her opening womanhood the great Reform agitation in which her father had taken so active a part culminated in the bill of 1832, and piping times of peace one more revisited the weary land. As a natural consequence party contests became less bitter. Old animosities were forgotten, or at least buried, and a regenerated populace set themselves earnestly to the development of industry and art. Character is moulded by circumstances to a larger extent than is gene

* Duke of Buckingham's "Memoirs of the Court of George IV.", vol. i. p. 121.

rally supposed, for which reason we have given a more detailed account than we should otherwise have done of Miss Burdett's family, and of their connection with the history of the times.

The death of the Duchess of St. Albans took place, as has been said, in 1837, when the Derbyshire Baronet's daughter suddenly found herself the richest woman in England. Untold wealth was at her command. She might have chosen a life of pleasure or of ambition. She chose one of never-ceasing beneficence, and great riches were never employed to more noble ends than the riches of Miss Burdett.

By the will of the Duchess she was bound to assume the name and arms of Coutts. She was therefore now known as Miss Burdett-Coutts. Of Holly Lodge, which became one of her residences on the death of the Duke of St. Albans, in 1849, William Howitt says, in his "Northern Heights of London,"-" In the house and grounds of the late Duchess of St. Albans now resides Miss Burdett-Coutts, famous for her wealth, her extensive benevolence, her erection of dwelling-houses for the poor, churches for churchgoers, and bishoprics for the colonies. A daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, she has not appeared ambitious to follow in his democratic steps, but rather to become a nursing mother to the Church of England. I suppose no other woman under the rank of a queen ever did so much for the Established Church; had she done it for the Catholic Church, she would undoubtedly be canonized as St. Angela. But perhaps the noblest and most enduring of her works is seen in the clean and smiling hearths of hitherto too much neglected and illhoused poverty."

People who are not thoroughly acquainted with London have generally the idea that Westminster is a district of palaces and mansions. They have read of the venerable Abbey, of the Houses of Parliament, of the new Government offices. Perhaps in the course of a hurried visit to town they have seen these splendid edifices. The Londoner knows that around and behind these, not many yards away, lies one of the most wretched, squalid, and poverty-stricken portions of the metropolis.

In this miserable locality Miss Burdett-Coutts began her great work of charity. She chose it for her first public effort in remembrance of her father's long connection with the borough. In 1850 she erected in Rochester Row the Church of St. Stephen the Martyr, a fine specimen of Gothic architecture. She afterwards built a parsonage-house and three school-houses, and crowned her munificent gift by amply endowing the whole. The Duke of Wellington presented an altar-piece to the Church.

This is only one of the least of Miss Burdett-Coutts's beneficent deeds. During the time when the Church of St. Stephen was building, her bountiful hand was providing for the religious wants of more than one of the colonies. In 1847 she endowed the Bishopric of Cape Town; the Rev.