Page:Men of Kent and Kentishmen.djvu/132

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
118
MEN OF KENT

tinction by Queen Anne, but through disagreement with the Government, he resigned his appointments and retired to St. Lawrence, where he spent the rest of his life in retirement. He died 24th January, 1709, leaving behind him a fortune so moderate that, on making his will, he remarked of it—" I do not leave much; but what I leave was honestly gotten; it never cost a sailor a tear, nor the nation a farthing."

[See "Biographia Britannica."]


Sir Anthony St. Leger,

STATESMAN,

"Is rationally reputed," says Fuller, "a Kentishman, though he had also a Devonshire relation." He was properly the first Viceroy of Ireland, and during his rule Henry VIII, assumed the title of King and head of the Church of Ireland. His administration was vigorous. He caused O'Neil, O'Brien and other Irish chiefs to surrender their lands to the king, and receive them again by letters patent, with the title of Earls, etc., and he gave them residences near Dublin "that they might suck in civility with the Court air." He died in the reign of Edward VI.

[See "Fuller's Worthies," and Bagwell's "Ireland under the Tudors."]


John Sawbridge,

LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 1775,

Was born at Olantigh, his father's seat, near Wye in 1732. Though a country gentleman born to an ample fortune, he