Wood, on 3 Nov. 1894. He was twice married: first, on 27 Sept, 1842, to Emily Frances (d. 28 April 1858), eldest daughter of Major Henry Court of Castlemans, Berkshire; and, secondly, on 1 Jan. 1861, to Flora, third daughter of Mr. James Monro Macnabb of Highfield Park, Hampshire. John Balston Walter, eldest son of the first marriage, was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and destined to succeed his father in the management of 'The Times.' After quitting Oxford he travelled round the world, but a few days after his return he was drowned in the lake at Bear Wood, on Christmaseve 1870, while attempting to rescue one of his brothers and a cousin who had fallen through the ice. The present chief proprietor of 'The Times' is Mr. Arthur Fraser Walter, Walter's second son by the first marriage.
Walter's task in the conduct of 'The Times' was a less arduous one than that of either his father or his grandfather, but it was marked by the same qualities of sobriety, sagacity, independence, unswerving honesty of purpose, and disinterested devotion to the public welfare. Few men of his time exercised a greater or more continuous influence on public affairs, and none could have wielded it more unobtrusively. He was naturally of serious temper and retiring disposition, and, though in parliament and in the discharge of other public duties he could not but be conscious of the immense influence he wielded, he never presumed in his own person on the power he derived from 'The Times.' He spoke with gravity, as became one who directly or indirectly had made more public opinion than any man of his time; but he claimed no authority for his own opinions higher than that which intrinsically belonged to them, and he always regarded his relation to 'The Times' as a matter for which he would answer only to his own conscience.
[Personal knowledge; the authorities cited in the text; information communicated by Mr. Arthur F. Walter.]
WALTER, LUCY (1630?–1658), mother of the Duke of Monmouth, was the daughter of William Walter (d. 1650) of Roch Castle, near Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, by Elizabeth (d. 1652), daughter of John Prothero and niece of John Vaughan, first earl of Carbery [see under Vaughan, Richard, second Earl]. She is said to have been born at Roch Castle in 1630. In 1644, the castle having been taken and destroyed by the parliamentary forces, she sought refuge in London, whence she took shipping for The Hague. Algernon Sidney told James, duke of York, that he had given fifty gold pieces for her, but, having to join his regiment hastily, had missed his bargain. His brother, Colonel Robert Sidney [see Sidney, Robert, second Earl of Leicester, ad fin.] secured the prize, but did not retain it long. During the summer of 1648 this 'private Welshwoman,' as Clarendon calls her, 'of no good fame, but handsome,' captivated Charles II, who was at The Hague for a short while about this time. He was only eighteen, and she is often spoken of as his first mistress, but there seems good reason to suppose that he was déniaisé as early as 1646 (cf. Gardiner, Hist. of Civil War, iii. 238; Boero, Istoria...di Carlo II,Rome, 1863). James II admits Lucy's good looks, adding that, though she had not much wit, she had a great deal of that sort of cunning which her profession usually have. In August 1649 the respectable Evelyn travelled with her in Lord Wilmot's coach from Paris to St. Germain, and speaks of her as 'a brown, beautiful, bold but insipid creature.' During July and August 1649 she was with Charles at Paris and St. Germain, and she may have accompanied him to Jersey in September. In June 1650 he left her at The Hague upon embarkation for Scotland. During his absence Lucy intrigued with Colonel Henry Bennet (afterwards Earl of Arlington), and Charles on his return terminated his connection with the lady, in spite of all her little artifices and her attempts to persuade Dr. Cosin that she was a convert (Macpherson, i. 76). She now abandoned herself to a life of depravity. Early in 1656 she was at Cologne, whence the king's friends, by a promise of a pension of five thousand livres (400l. a year), persuaded her to repair to her native country. She sailed from Flushing and obtained lodgings in London over a barber's shop near Somerset House (Thurloe, State Papers, v. 160, 169). Cromwell's intelligence department promptly reported her as a suspected spy, and at the close of June 1656 she and her maid, Ann Hill, were arrested and clapped into the Tower. On 16 July, after examination, she was discharged and ordered to be deported back to the Low Countries (Mercur. Polit. No. 318). She found her way to Paris, still lovely, according to Evelyn. There, in September or October 1658, her wretched life came to an end, her death being attributed by Clarendon and James II to a disease incidental to her manner of living.
She is known to have had two children: (1) James, born at Rotterdam on 9 April 1649, who was on 14 Feb. 1663 created
