Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/224

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208
french protestant exiles.

beauty of holiness in the Church of England, was not quite waxed cold The attention of the noble donor to the honourable and graceful celebration of the Eucharist could not have been directed to a place where is a more becoming propriety and precision in the observation of the rites and ceremonies of our most excellent church.

(Signed) T. Ford.”[1]

The eldest son and successor of this venerable peer, William, third earl, was eminent as a leading nobleman of the Whig party; his politics, then called extravagant, would now be regarded as moderate; he was born 11th May 1779, and died 9th April 1869, in his ninetieth year. He was succeeded by Jacob, the present and fourth Earl of Radnor (born 18th September 1815), his eldest son by his second wife, Anne Judith, daughter of Sir Henry Paulet St. John Mildmay, Bart. The heir of the fourth Earl is William, Viscount Folkestone (born 19th June 1841), M.P. for South Wilts.

The Earls of Radnor have a prominent place among the descendants of French refugees as governors of the French Hospital of London. The first earl was elected to that presidential seat on 3d October 1770, and held it for five years. The second earl was elected on 28th January 1779, and officiated for thirty-nine years. The third earl was elected at the death of his father, and officiated for forty-one years. The fourth earl was elected a director of the hospital on 6th August 1842, in his father’s life-time, and on his accession to the earldom he was elected governor.

III. Earl of Clancarty.

Richard Trench, Esq., of Garbally (born 1710, died 1768), was a member of the Parliament of Ireland in 1761, representing county Galway. His wife, Miss Frances Power, whom he married in 1732, was the heiress of the wealthy families of Power and Keating, and the blood of the heir of the King of Cork, MacCarty-More, Earl of Clancarty, flowed in her veins; she also represented the Barons of Le Poer. The heir of Richard was William Power Keating Trench, Esq., a popular country gentleman, who represented the county of Galway in the Irish Parliament from 1768 to 1797. At the latter date (on 27th Nov.) he was transferred to the Upper House as Baron Kilconnel of Garbally, and was further promoted in the Peerage of Ireland, on 3d January 1801, as Viscount Dunlo, and Earl of Clancarty in the county of Cork. The earl died on 27th April 1805, having had (by his wife Anne, eldest daughter of Right Hon. Charles Gardiner and sister of Luke, first Viscount Mountjoy) seven sons and seven daughters. His heir, Richard Le Poer Trench, the second earl (born 1767, died 1837), was our ambassador at the Hague, and one of our representatives at the Congress of Vienna; his portrait appears in the historical picture of its members. He was elected M.P. for Rye in the British House of Commons in 1807 and 1812. He brought to his family the additional honours of peerages of the United Kingdom, and a hereditary seat in the House of Peers — receiving the title of Baron Trench in 1815, and of Viscount Clancarty in 1824; he also was offered and permitted to accept the title of Marquis of Heusden in the Netherlands. He married Henrietta Margaret, daughter of Right Hon. John Staples, and was the father of William Thomas, third Earl of Clancarty (born 1803, died 1872), an excellent and influential nobleman, and zealous Protestant. The present and fourth earl is Richard Somerset Le Poer Trench, Earl of Clancarty, eldest son of the third earl, by Lady Sarah Juliana Butler, daughter of Somerset Richard, third Earl of Carrick. The present earl was born on 13th January 1834, and married in 1866 Lady Adeliza Georgiana Hervey, daughter of Frederick William, second Marquis of Bristol; his heir apparent is William Frederick, Viscount Dunlo, born in 1868. The family motto for Le Poer is “Consilio et prudentia,” and for Trench, “Dieu pour la Tranche, qui contre?”

IV. Baron Ashtown.

Frederic Trench, Esq. of Moate, county Galway (son of Very Rev. John Trench, Dean of Raphoe, by Anne, daughter of Richard Warburton, Esq.), succeeded his father as head of his branch of the Huguenot refugee family in 1725, and died in 1758. He was succeeded by his son, Frederic of Moate and Woodlawn, born in 1720. This gentleman showed his zeal for religion by munificently supporting the Dublin Society for promoting English Protestant Working Schools in Ireland. The report of this society for 1773 states, under the heading, Woodlawn, county of Galway: “Frederick Trench, Esq., in order to have a school erected in this place, hath pro-

  1. Nichols’ “Illustrations of Literature,” vol v. p. 229.