The Dukedom of Dorset is mostly forgotten today, a title that had only five holders between 1720 and 1843. Yet their surname, Sackville, is well remembered, particularly as borne by Vita Sackville-West, one of the leaders of the Bloomsbury Group of the early 20^th century. The surname also probably inspired Tolkien in his choice of a ‘typical’ double-barrelled surname for posh folks, which he assigned to the pushy relatives of the Hobbit Bilbo: the Sackville-Bagginses. Looking back further in the history of the dynasty, the Sackvilles of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age were courtiers par excellence, and left behind possibly the greatest of all over-the-top aristocratic portraits.

As is normal for the English peerage, you won’t find much evidence of the history of the dukes of Dorset in Dorset, the county from which they took their name. This is instead a story of Sussex and Kent, in particular of Buckhurst Park and Knole, both set in the hilly area south of London known as the Weald, on either side of the border dividing these two counties. Though they have claims to go back to the Norman conquest (with genealogists pressing for the town of Sauqueville, near Dieppe in Normandy, as their point of origin), they are essentially a great example of one of the families of the new Tudor aristocracy that burst onto the scene in the sixteenth century and made lots and lots of money through royal favour.

Early Norman ancestors listed on probably embellished Victorian genealogies include Herbrand de Sackville (d. 1079) and his son, Jordan, described as ‘Sewer of England’, which isn’t as bad as it sounds (a ‘sewer’ was a household servant responsible for the lord’s table). His son, Sir Jordan Sackville is said to have married Ela de Dene, great-granddaughter of a cupbearer of Edward the Confessor and heiress of Buckhurst in Sussex. A manorhouse did exist here at least as early as the 1270s, and there have been Sackvilles buried in nearby Withyham parish church since that time.

The first really prominent member of the family was Richard Sackville of Buckhurst, a Member of Parliament for Sussex and financial officer in the government of Henry VIII. He had pretty excellent connections: one ancestor was household treasurer for Henry VI in the previous century, one of his aunts was related by marriage to Sir Thomas More, but most importantly, his mother was Margaret Boleyn, aunt of Queen Anne, which meant that his family would be cousins to Queen Elizabeth I. Richard was appointed chancellor of the Court of Augmentations, an office set up by Henry VIII in the 1530s to handle the management of church lands recently secularised by the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Unsurprisingly, much of this money and land found its way into his coffers. In 1535 he made a very good marriage, to the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London, the wealthy draper Sir John Brydges, and in the next decades he was given a knighthood himself and reached the top of the world of finance as his cousin Elizabeth’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, from 1559 till his death in 1566.

Thomas Sackville took the family to the next level, as one of the favourites of Queen Elizabeth. She promoted him to the peerage as Baron Buckhurst in 1567, and gave him a fantastical house, Knole, about which more below. Lord Buckhurst was a trusted diplomat, travelling to France to negotiate the Queen’s possible marriage to the Duke of Anjou in 1571, then being selected to present the news to Mary, Queen of Scots of her sentence of execution in 1586. As a typical courtier of the Elizabethan age, he wrote poems and plays, but also held an office within the royal administration, attaining the post of Lord High Treasurer in 1599. James I confirmed him in this post early in the next reign, and further honoured him by creating him earl of Dorset, in 1604. By the time of his death in 1608, Thomas Sackville had acquired properties all across the south of England, and established his family as one of the premier noble houses of England.

From 1605, this premier noble house moved into one of the premier country houses of the Kingdom: Knole, near Sevenoaks, in Kent. This house is still today one of England’s largest private houses and maintains a famous and significant deer park. The estate was held by various Kent gentry families in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, then was acquired by Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, who donated it to his diocese in 1480. Knole served as the country house of the next four archbishops, then was given to the Crown by Thomas Cranmer in 1537. Elizabeth gave it to her cousin Lord Buckhurst in 1566, and it was significantly rebuilt by his heirs in the early 17^th century—giving it the look and layout we see today, one of the few Jacobean country houses in England that has not been significantly remodelled or refashioned in later periods. There are approximately 365 rooms, causing some to call it a ‘calendar house’. The Sackville-Wests still live there, but since 1947 it has been managed by the National Trust.

The 2^nd earl of Dorset, Robert, did not survive his father by long (only a year), and didn’t make as significant a mark (though he had served for much of Elizabeth I’s reign as an MP). He did solidify the dynasty’s entrée into the highest circles of the nobility by marrying Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. The same is true for their elder son, Richard, the 3^rd Earl, who also is known in part for a great marriage, to Lady Anne Clifford, the heiress of vast lands and estates in Cumbria and Yorkshire. They had two daughters, so this inheritance went elsewhere, and Richard Sackville is known mostly as a gambler and womaniser, something that can perhaps be detected in his fantastic portrait, by William Larkin (c1613), seen above.

An almost identical portrait of his brother, the 4^th Earl of Dorset, also suggests an extremely colourful character, a notorious dueller in his youth. In 1613, he travelled to the Netherlands to duel Lord Kinloss over the beautiful Venetia Stanley (it was illegal to duel, so they had to go abroad). He killed Kinloss, but royal favour allowed him to escape punishment.

In the 1620s, he was a prominent supporter of the efforts to establish colonies in the New World, in particular as governor of the Bermuda Islands Company, and contributor to funds for the Virginia Company and the exploration of Canada (giving his name to Dorset Island in the far north). He was also a major patron of the theatre scene, and built his own theatre next to his London residence, Dorset House on Fleet Street, called Salisbury Court—this burned down in the Great Fire of 1666 and was rebuilt as the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1671 (later called the Queen’s Theatre, then demolished in 1709).

Later in life, the playboy 4^th Earl of Dorset emerged as a solid royalist and statesman in the government of Charles I, serving as Lord Chamberlain of the Household and Lord Privy Seal and President of the Council, in the difficult years of the Civil War after 1644. He had already been serving as Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household since the late 1620s, and his wife had held the post of Governess of the royal children from the 1630s until her death in 1643. Mary Curzon was the heiress of one of the branches of the Curzon family, from Derbyshire, bringing Croxall Hall into the landholdings of the Sackville family. This Elizabethan manor house was used from time to time by their successors, but less and less in the 18^th century, and was sold in 1779.

The 4^th Earl and Countess were survived by only one son (a second son had been killed during the war). Richard, the 5^th Earl, continued the family tradition by holding the post of Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, but added to the portfolio the similar post of Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex from the start of the Restoration. He had married the heiress of the earls of Middlesex (Lady Frances Cranfield), and those properties were added to the ever growing landed wealth of the Sackvilles after the death of her brother, the 3^rd Earl of Middlesex in 1674.

Their son, Charles, was created Earl of Middlesex (and Baron Cranfield) before he succeeded his father as 6^th Earl of Dorset. Like his grandfather, he was Lord Chamberlain of the Household, for William & Mary (1689-1695), and he served as one of the Lord Justices of the Realm when the King was overseas in the 1690s. But he was better known as a poet and spirited courtier—also like his grandfather in his youth—and a typical libertine of the Restoration court. He was a patron of the playwright Dryden and other writers. His love for the theatre also brought him into contact with Nell Gwynn, the actress, who called him her ‘Charles the Second’, as the second of her lovers with that name (King Charles II was in fact ‘the Third’). Charles died in 1706, but his royal favour carried on into the reign of George I in the person of his son, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, 1^st Duke of Dorset.

The 1^st Duke, created in 1720, had been named a Privy Councillor right away in the new reign (1714), and Groom of the Stole, one of the most intimate posts in the royal household. His wife, Elizabeth Colyear, was named Lady of the Bedchamber to the new Princess of Wales (Caroline of Ansbach) in the same year, and would serve her for the rest of her life (as Princess and as Queen-Consort), becoming Mistress of the Robes in 1723. Two years later, the Duke was promoted to the office of Lord Steward of the Household, acting as Lord High Steward of England at the coronation of 1727, then being sent to Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant (or Viceroy) in 1730. His eight years there was uneventful, so he was sent back in 1750—this time he got involved in political infighting in Dublin and became so unpopular he was recalled in 1755, and was given the post of Master of the Horse as compensation. He died in 1768, at the ripe old age of 77.

The first Duke also set about rebuilding Buckhurst Park as a summer retreat, much cooler than Dorset House in London. The house, sometimes known as Stoneland, was mostly a new build on the site of the old manor house. It would be renovated again in the early 19^th century along fashionable ‘Jacobethan’ lines, and the park landscaped by Humphrey Repton. The estate would later be augmented with formal gardens designed by the leading designer Edwin Lutyens in 1902. The estate borders the Ashdown Forest, and some of the woods at Buckhurst were frequented in the 1920s by local writer, A. A. Milne, who used this as a setting for Winnie-the-Pooh’s adventures in the ‘Hundred Acre Wood’.

The 2^nd Duke of Dorset, Charles, was part of the clique of the Prince of Wales in opposition to his father, George II, in the 1730s-40s (as the heir he was known as the ‘Earl of Middlesex’), and an MP for East Grinstead and then for Sussex. He was also an opera impresario, having acquired the taste on his Grand Tour, and he tried to re-launch Italian opera in London (and his Italian mistress), with only limited success—like Handel, he found that Italian opera was no longer favoured in England in the 1740s.

The 2nd Duke was only duke for four years, following his father to the grave in 1769, and was succeeded in the dukedom by his nephew John, the only son of the unfortunate Lord John Sackville who had been committed to an asylum, c. 1746, then sent to Switzerland where he died. The 3^rd Duke served the very delicate and important position of Ambassador to France in the tumultuous years between the end of the War of American Independence (which was won with French support) and the outbreak of the French Revolution. He correctly identified the disturbances of July 14 as a ‘revolution’ (still a fairly new concept at the time) in his dispatches back to London, and returned to England in August when events started to heat up, particularly against the nobility—though he was not formally replaced until the next summer. Like his uncle, he was also interested in the Italian arts, and had a long-term mistress, Giovanna Zanerini, a ballerina at the King’s Theatre Haymarket.

Dorset spent the 1790s as Steward of the Household, and died in 1799, succeeded by his son, George, 4^th Duke, who died young in 1815 (not yet 22). The latter left two sisters, Mary, Countess of Plymouth, who inherited Knole and the estates in Kent, and Elizabeth, Countess De La Warr, who inherited Buckhurst and the lands in Sussex and Middlesex. Mary died with no heirs, so Elizabeth inherited the lot, and was created Baroness Buckhurst in her own right in 1864. We will pick up her story again below.

The Dukedom of Dorset, without the lands and houses, passed to Charles Sackville-Germain, son of George, Viscount Sackville of Drayton (cr. 1782), the youngest brother of the 2^nd Duke. Lord George had been a prominent soldier in the Seven Years War, and commander of British Forces in Europe in 1758, until he was dismissed and court martialled in 1759 for refusing to follow orders. He was nevertheless rehabilitated by his friend the new king, George III, in the 1760s, and became Secretary of State for America in 1775, as part of the ministry of Lord North. A few years before, Sackville had been adopted by the widow, Lady Elizabeth Germain, of Drayton. As it turned out, Lord George Sackville-Germain was rather uninformed about the situation in America, and his bungling of much of the war forced his retirement in an effort to save the North ministry (which it didn’t)—he died a few years later. Despite not being a tremendous success in the New World, he left the name Sackville in several towns, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and in New South Wales (Australia).

The last male heir of the House of Sackville was Viscount Sackville’s son, Charles, who became the 5^th Duke of Dorset in 1815. He served as Master of the Horse under two Tory governments of the 1820s and 30s, and died unmarried in 1843. His seat was Drayton House, near Kettering in Northamptonshire, an early 18^th-century house built around a 14^th-century core. When he died, this house and the Germain estates passed to his niece Caroline Stopford, whose descendants took the name Stopford-Sackville.

This takes us back to the other female heirs of the Sackvilles, the sons of Elizabeth, Baroness Buckhurst. She had married in 1813 George West, 5^th Earl De La Warr. The West family were also from Sussex, with roots in the 14^th century, created barons in 1402. They inherited the lands and titles of the La Warr family in 1427 (and were given precedence of the original La Warr barony of 1299). The Wests had plenty of aristocratic blood, marrying a cousin of the Plantagenets in the 1380s and a cousin of the Tudors (Anne Knollys) in the 1570s. The La Warr family were Normans who settled in Gloucestershire in the Middle Ages and gave their name to the village of Wickwar, but more famously lent their name to the evolving maps of the New World, lands being explored to the north of the new colony of Virginia—what is now known as Delaware: the state, the river, and the native people who inhabited the region. Thomas West, 3^rd Baron de la Warr—the barony being re-created in the 16^th century, when the original, and the West barony too, passed to female heirs—was the first Governor of Virginia, from 1610, and actually went there to get the colony going, returned to England, then died in 1618 on a return trip. His brother Francis (whose wife bore the wonderful name of Temperance Flowerdew) had been commander of the fort at Jamestown since the start, and became acting governor in 1627. Another brother, John, married the daughter of Virginia governor George Percy, and was named governor himself in 1635—he left descendants, the Wests of West Point, Virginia.

Over a century later, John West, 7^th Baron de la Warr, was named governor of another colony, New York, in 1737, and was later elevated to an earldom (De La Warr, with the viscountcy of Cantelupe) in 1761. Subsequent earls held prominent positions in the military and the royal households of the Hanoverian monarchy, with the 5^th rising in the hierarchy to the position of Lord Chamberlain of the Household (1841-46; 1858-59). It was he who had married the Sackville heiress, and they changed their surname by law in 1843 to Sackville-West. They had six sons: the first, ‘Lord Cantelupe’ (named for an ancient West family property in Devon, Cauntelow) died before his father, in 1850; the second, Charles, 6^th Earl De La Warr, committed suicide in 1873, leaving the earldom and the Buckhurst estates to the third son, Reginald, who had been his mother’s designated heir (and originally held the title Baron Buckhurst)—he had also been a clergyman, and served as Chaplain to Queen Victoria from1846 to 1865, before marrying and continuing the Sackville family line (he changed his name from West to Sackville in 1871). The 9^th Earl was given the name Herbrand—in line with the fashion of the late Victorians to revive ancient Norman names (recall the first Herbrand de Sackville, at the start of this post). He became an eminent courtier and politician, a Lord in Waiting to George V in the 1920s, and Chairman of the Labour Party in the 1930s. He was appointed Lord Privy Seal, 1937-38, Envoy to the Emperor of Ethiopia, 1944 (in the wake of Haile Selassie’s restoration behind the forces of Great Britain), and Postmaster General in 1951. Today’s Earl De La Warr, the 11^th (William, since 1988), splits his time between the City and raising livestock at Buckhurst, and in particular, developing the perfect sausage. You can find the Buckhurst Sausage at the Dorset Arms pub in Withyham and at Waitrose!

http://speldhurstqualityfoods.com/our-story/

This leaves one final line, the Sackville-Wests, the family of the writer Vita. The fourth of the six sons mentioned above, Mortimer, was supposed to inherit the barony of Buckhurst when his older brother succeeded to the earldom (by the slightly weird terms of the creation of his mother’s title), but didn’t. So in compensation, he was given the Sackville estates, including Knole, and created 1^st Baron Sackville of Knole in 1876. He held a number of prominent places at court and died in 1888, leaving the barony and Knole to the fifth brother, Lionel. The 2^nd Baron Sackville was a diplomat, spending much time abroad where he acquired a mistress, Pepita de Olíva, an internationally famous Spanish dancer. Her origin story is so incredible it is worth quoting from her online biography from the Real Academia de la Historia: ‘Officially the daughter of Pedro Durán [a barber or a butcher] and Catalina Ortega, there were rumors that she was the illegitimate daughter of Francisco de Borja Téllez-Girón y Pimentel, 10^th Duke of Osuna. … Catalina Ortega, daughter of a gypsy who made sandals in Malaga, had worked in a circus. …’. She even had a waltz named for her by the Viennese composer Johann Strauss, the ‘Pepita-Polka’. Pepita and Lionel spent several years together in various settings, she touring as a dancer, he working in British embassies; they had five children, called themselves ‘Comte et Comtesse West’ at their Villa Pepa in France, and when she died in 1872, he considered that she was legally his wife. He served as ambassador to Spain, 1878-81, then to the United States, 1881-88 (when he succeeded as Baron Sackville). When he died in 1908, his children tried to claim that their parents had been legally married, but the case was thrown out of the British courts in 1910.

The eldest daughter of Lionel and Pepita, Victoria, did however become Lady Sackville, by marrying her cousin, another Lionel, son of the sixth of the Sackville-West sons (William, d. 1905). They had only one child, the Honourable Victoria (‘Vita’) Sackville-West, who married the Honourable Harold Nicolson (third son of the 3^rd Baron Carnock). Denied possession of her cherished childhood home, Knole, because of her gender, Vita purchased the nearby derelict Elizabethan manor of Sissinghurst Castle (which had belonged to one of her distant ancestors), in 1930, and she and Harold transformed it into the marvellous garden showpiece beloved by tourists today. I first visited in 1993, sang with my college choir in the rose garden, and was privileged to receive a guided tour of the house by Vita and Harold’s son, Nigel Nicolson. It’s an incredible sensation when you browse the books in someone’s library and nearly every book is either written by that person’s mother or father. An unforgettable experience.

Later that day we also visited Lionel, 6^th Baron Sackville, at Knole, and wondered at the number of courtyards that make up this very complex house, and at the expanse of parkland populated by hundreds of deer. Since 2004 the house and its park has been looked after by his nephew, Robert Sackville-West, 7^th Baron Sackville, a businessman in the world of publishing, who has himself published a history of the Sackville family, and an intriguing book, The Disinherited (2015), about the failed claims of the children of Lionel and Pepita. It would be equally intriguing if a descendant of the 18^th-century Sackvilles, in Buckhurst or Knole, ever tried to reclaim the earldom or the dukedom of Dorset, long since forgotten.

(images Wikimedia Commons)

Last summer I drove the lush green valleys of eastern Wales, in the region that was once the ancient Kingdom of Powys, ruled in the early Middle Ages by the Gwerthrynion dynasty until the 850s, then as divided principalities. As we passed by the market town of Welshpool, one of the former princely capitals, we drove by the imposing medieval Powis Castle and its impressive cascading gardens. I was reminded that this was the seat of the one and only dukedom based in Wales—and this only a Jacobite dukedom, so not officially recognised at all in the peerage of the United Kingdom.

The ephemeral ‘Duke of Powis’ was a member of the powerful Herbert family, whose various branches have exercised control over different parts of Wales since the 15^th century: Pembrokeshire in the far southwest, Monmouthshire in the southeast, and this area of Powys that was once known as Montgomeryshire. Today the family still thrives in two main branches, the earls of Pembroke & Montgomery, and the earls of Carnarvon—the latter have received much media attention in recent years as hosts of the globally successful television drama ‘Downton Abbey’, in their seat Highclere Castle. This branch of the family are also famous for the 5^th Earl’s funding of the expedition that excavated the tomb of King Tutankhamun in the 1920s (and possibly incurring the wrath of its curse), and more recently for the close friendship between the 7^th Earl (known as ‘Porchey’) and Queen Elizabeth II, as manager of her racing horses. More recently, the other branch of the family have opened their home, Wilton, to film crews for ‘Outlander’, to serve as a stand in for scenes set at Versailles, not to mention scenes in ‘The Crown’ and ‘Young Victoria’.

I thought it would be a great addition to this collection of short histories of ducal families to be able to include one from Wales, even if it is slightly cheating since the Jacobite dukedom, even if formally recognised, only lasted from 1689 to 1748. And it seems that the Herberts aren’t Welsh in origin anyway, but came—like most of the ruling lords in this region—from northern France. Or at least that is how traditional histories always portrayed them. More recent studies (perhaps with a nationalist bias?) name them as descendants of a cadet prince of the royal house of Gwent (extinct by the 1070s). Other stories say they were the offspring of one of the many illegitimate sons of King Henry I of England (perhaps with Nesta, the Welsh princess of Deheubarth). But if we stick with the traditional version, we get the fascinating idea that this was one of the very few Anglo-Norman dynasties who descended not from the Norman warlords, nor from the Frankish feudal nobility, but from the royal house of France itself.

One of the great-grandsons of Emperor Charlemagne, Pepin II, was not given a royal throne like most of his cousins, but instead a clutch of lordships in the north of France, what is now eastern Picardy, which were then formed into a county, Vermandois. From him descend the line of the counts of Vermandois, which lasted until the 11^th century (or beyond, in the form of the house of Saint-Simon, or so it was claimed—see the entry for the Dukes of Saint-Simon). Several of these counts were known as Heribert, and the last one, Heribert V, had (it is claimed) a younger brother, Pierre, whose son Herbert came to England to make his fortune, and served as Lord Chamberlain to the Conqueror’s son, King William Rufus. His son, Herbert FitzHerbert, was Lord Chamberlain of King Stephen, followed by still another Herbert FiztHerbert, Lord Chamberlain for King Henry II. These latter two made important marriages with women connected to the Welsh borderlands of Hereford and Shropshire: Sybil Corbet and Lucy of Hereford. By the early 14^th century, the FitzHerberts were created barons, though the main line died out by the end of the century.

One of their younger sons, Peter FitzHerbert of Chewton (d. 1323), is the claimed link between the Frankish (or Carolingian) FitzHerberts and the Welsh Herberts, which I am not going to attempt to untangle here. Peter married a daughter and heiress of the Lord of Llanllowell in Monmouthshire, and their descendants began to use Welsh naming practices (‘ap’ meaning ‘son of’): Gwyllim ap Jenkin of Gwarinddu (alias Herbert) (living 1350) is seen as the progenitor of the modern house of Herbert. This puts him in the right place (Monmouthshire), to be possibly descended from the Welsh princes of Gwent, as above, but also to become established in the environs of Raglan Castle, the Herbert stronghold for centuries.

Raglan, or the “Great Tower of Gwent” was one of the chief fortresses on the borders between England and Wales. It is still a sight to behold, though in ruins since the 17^th century, and one of the great models of fortification of the late Middle Ages. It was acquired and rebuilt by Gwyllim’s grandson, Sir Gwyllim ap Thomas, ‘Y marchog glas o Went” (the Blue Knight of Gwent) , who had risen through the ranks first as steward of the lordship of Abergavenny and Sheriff of Cardigan, Carmarthen and Glamorgan, then named as Chief Steward of the Duke of York’s estates in Wales, 1442, and member of the Yorkist military council, before he died in 1446. His wife was Gwladys ferch Dafydd Gam, known as the ‘Star of Abergavenny’, praised by Welsh poets, of whom she was an important patron. Their son, another William (‘Black William’), who adopted the surname Herbert, in the English style, continued the family’s loyal support of the Yorkist cause, and was rewarded, first with a barony (Herbert of Raglan), then the Order of the Garter and possession of the Pembroke Castle (in southwest Wales), all in 1461. He was also, importantly, given wardship of the young Henry Tudor (the future King Henry VII), who was born at Pembroke, and in 1468, created Earl of Pembroke, one of the oldest Welsh earldoms, first held by Gilbert de Clare in the 1130s.

The first Herbert earl of Pembroke was named Justiciar of all of South Wales, but within a year was captured and executed by the Lancastrians at the battle of Danesmoor (or Edgecote Moor). His son the second Earl was forced to give up the lands and title of Pembroke, in exchange for another earldom, Huntingdon. He was confirmed in his father’s office as Justiciar of South Wales, and even married the sister of the Queen, Mary Woodville. But he had only a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Charles Somerset, 1^st Earl of Worcester, and took both the barony of Herbert and Raglan Castle to the Somerset family (later Dukes of Beaufort) where they stayed until the 1980s.

But a son of the 2^nd Earl’s illegitimate half-brother, Sir William Herbert, miraculously raised the family’s fortunes once more as an ally and friend of Henry VIII—he even became yet another royal brother-in-law, like his uncle, through marriage to Anne Parr, sister of Queen Katherine. He served as the King’s Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Receiver of the King’s Revenues, and was rewarded with confiscated monastic lands at Wilton Abbey, near Salisbury, and was named as one of the guardians of King Edward VI when King Henry died in 1547. Young Edward created him Baron Herbert of Cardiff (the castle there had also been given to him by Henry VIII), and 1^st Earl of Pembroke in 1551. In the 1540s and 50s, he occupied himself with the rebuilding of Wilton Abbey.

Wilton House was a large Tudor mansion—today only the tower of that house survives. In the 1630s, Inigo Jones replaced one of the wings, and more of it was renovated in the early 19^th century by James Wyatt. A Palladian bridge built on the grounds in the 1730s has been much copied at other English country houses. It is still the Pembroke family seat.

The first Earl of Pembroke of this second creation had two sons. The elder, Henry, continued the family tradition of marrying royal in-laws, this time Catherine Grey, sister of Queen Jane, in 1553. This of course turned out to be a very bad idea, and the marriage was swiftly annulled after Jane was removed from power. The younger son, Edward, purchased the lands of another branch of the Grey family, including Powys Castle, so it is important we return to his line below.

The 3^rd Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chancellor for King James, and Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and had a new college (Pembroke College) named for him. His brother was one of James’ favourites, and was created Earl of Montgomery in 1605, then succeeded as 4^th Earl of Pembroke—his descendants have ever since been the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, two Welsh earldoms for one family. The 8^th Earl was First Lord of the Admiralty and Lord Privy Seal in the 1690s under William & Mary, then Lord President of the Council, Lord High Admiral and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under Queen Anne. It is surprising to me he wasn’t created a duke, in this period when loyal supporters of the Glorious Revolution were being promoted in relatively large numbers.

This brings us to the cadet branches. One of these, Herbert of Chirbury, had been separate since the mid-15^th century, and maintained their lands in the borderlands of Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. They held the castle of Montgomery itself, and were often appointed sheriff of the county. The senior line were created Baron Herbert of Cherbury (or Chirbury) in 1629, while the second line became more prominent, briefly, as both supporters and enemies of King James II. Of the two sons of Sir Edward Herbert, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal for Charles II, the younger, also Sir Edward, became attached to James when he was Duke of York, and was subsequently raised by James once he became king to Lord Chief Justice of England, 1685. He fled England with his master in 1689, and served as Lord Chancellor of the exiled Jacobite court in France (and was created Earl of Portland). In contrast, the older brother, Arthur, had been dismissed as an admiral by James, and went to Holland to encourage William of Orange to invade and take the throne—he was named commander-in-chief of the fleet, and Baron Herbert of Torbay (where William landed in 1688), then Earl of Torrington and First Lord of the Admiralty. Neither Portland nor Torrington left descendants, so these titles became extinct. But another Jacobite of this generation did.

This was the ‘Duke of Powis’, a descendant of the cadet branch noted above, founded by Sir Edward Herbert of Powys Castle. This castle, noted as one of the only major castles built by the Welsh in that great era of great castle building by the English in Wales (think Carnarvon, Harlech, etc), was built in the late 13^th century by Welsh prince Gruffydd ap Gwen Wynnwyn, a supporter of Edward I, who convinced him to give up his royal title in exchange for an English barony (La Pole, or Pool, later renamed Welshpool). Soon after, this barony passed to the Charleton family, and then in the 1530s to the Greys, who sold it to this branch of the Herberts—notably, Catholics—in the 1580s. Pole Castle became known as Powys or Powis Castle, and the family were raised to the peerage as Baron Powis in 1629.

The 3^rd Baron Powis, William Herbert, was created Earl of Powis and Viscount Montgomery in 1674, and was one of the Catholic Lords accused of treason in the Titus Oates Plot and spent six years in the Tower of London from 1678. After his release, he became close to the Catholic king, James II, who raised him a notch to Marquess of Powis in 1687. When James was deposed the following year, Powis followed him into exile and was created Duke of Powis, and served as Lord Chamberlain and Lord Steward of the household and one of the King’s principal advisors until his death in 1696. His wife, Lady Elizabeth Somerset (of the family who now owned Raglan Castle), had helped him spirit Queen Mary and the infant Prince of Wales out of the country to France, and would serve as her principal Lady in Waiting at the court at Saint-Germain, and governess of the Prince of Wales, until she died in 1691.

Their son William, known as ‘Viscount Montgomery’ during all of this turmoil, was at most a lukewarm supporter of James and the Jacobites—unlike some of his more avid sisters—and was arrested a few times, but released as being seen as ‘not dangerous’. He was restored to his father’s title Marquess of Powis, in 1722, and the confiscated estates, including Powis Castle, as well as Powis House, their London residence on Great Ormond Street (demolished at the end of the 18^th century). He was known to Jacobites as the ‘2^nd Duke of Powis’, and indeed he made some weak claims in Parliament to request recognition of this title, but without success. He died in 1745, followed by his son, another William, in 1748. The heiress, Barbara, married her cousin from the Chirbury line (see above), Henry Herbert, who was re-created Earl Powis in 1748 (and Viscount Ludlow, in Shropshire).

This line too came to an end, in 1801, and the estates passed (and titles again re-created) to another son-in-law, Edward, Lord Clive, son of the famous ‘Clive of India’, one of the founders of the British Raj. Their descendants took the surname Herbert, and continues to present. Powis Castle is their seat, and one of its centrepieces is the Clive Collection of artefacts from India. The current Earl of Powis (the 8^th), John Herbert (b. 1952), also bears the titles Baron Clive of Plassey (in County Clare, Ireland) and Baron Herbert of Chirbury (among others). A junior branch have been earls of Plymouth since 1905 (with the surname Windsor-Clive).

This brings us to the 20^th century, and back to the main senior lines of the House of Herbert. The brothers Sidney and David Herbert were part of the fashionable set of the interwar years—Sidney (who later succeeded his father as 16^th Earl of Pembroke) was Private Secretary and Comptroller of the Duchess of Kent (the very beautiful Princess Marina of Greece), while David was a socialite and designer, known as ‘the Queen of Tangiers’, intimate with fashionable writers like Paul Bowles. Henry Herbert, the 17^th Earl, was a film and television producer…which leads conveniently to their cousins, the Earls of Carnarvon, who opened their castle, Highclere, to the ITV production team for ‘Downton Abbey’.

Highclere, in Hampshire, is mostly a 19^th-century creation, a ‘Jacobethan’ fantasy constructed around an earlier house built in the 1670s by Sir Robert Sawyer, Attorney General for Charles II (whose daughter married the 8^th Earl of Pembroke). There had been a residence here much earlier, ‘Bishop’s Clere’, which belonged to the Bishop of Winchester in the Middle Ages. Charles Barry, builder of the Houses of Parliament, rebuilt it in the 1840s for the 3^rd Earl of Carnarvon.

This branch of the Herberts had been created Baron Porchester in 1780 and Earl of Carnarvon in 1793 (though I don’t think there is any actual connection to that county in Wales). The first Earl was Master of the Horse for George III, 1806-07, and the horsey connection would continue with ‘Porchey’ as seen above. the 4^th Earl was Secretary of State for the Colonies in the 1860s-70s, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1885-86. His sons both had a very colonial outlook, perhaps, and while the elder son (the 5^th Earl) became a premier Egyptologist (as noted above), the younger, Lord Aubrey, became an avid orientalist and travel writer, and an advocate for Albanian independence from the Ottoman Empire (and was indeed offered the throne of Albania two times, in early 1914 and in 1920). The Queen’s racing manager succeeded his father as 7^th Earl, and died in 2001. The current Earl of Carnarvon, George, and his son, Lord Porchester, realised the great financial windfall a television company could bring by using the house as a set, and particularly to a house badly in need of refurbishing by the end of the 20^th century. Downton may not be set in Wales, and its owners not dukes, but it does seem a residence suitable for a family descended from ancient Welsh kings, and maybe even from Charlemagne himself.

(images Wikimedia Commons or other public domain)

If you want to see how many dukes and princes are in the ancestry of the second in line to the throne of Great Britain, it is useful to look at both sides of the family: not just the royal ancestors of Prince William’s father the Prince of Wales, but also the lineage of his mother, born Lady Diana Spencer. While one of her great-grandfathers was the Duke of Abercorn (see my post on the Hamilton family), her paternal ancestors, the Spencers, were earls, a few rungs down from dukes and princes; but if you jump over to the senior branch of the family, the Spencers were dukes of Marlborough and today go by the double-barrelled surname Spencer-Churchill. They acquired the Churchill name and title in 1733 as descendants and heirs of John Churchill, one of the greatest generals in British history. Some sources claim they also inherited a princely title, that of Mindelheim in Bavaria, and although that is not correct, the legacy does remain, in that the current Duke of Marlborough still uses an Imperial double-headed eagle in his coat-of-arms, topped with a princely coronet of the Holy Roman Empire. So in this way, the Spencers are dukes and princes.

It is therefore somewhat ironic that compared to most of the ducal families in Great Britain, neither the Spencers nor the Churchills have an ancient pedigree. Both were relatively new families when they received their titles, the Spencers rising to wealth and power as part of the new Tudor aristocracy in the sixteenth century, and the Churchills not till the following century. There’s an often repeated anecdote from the 1620s, whereby the snobbish Earl of Arundel, with an ancient Howard pedigree, teased Lord Spencer for boasting about his ancestors’ great achievements: “My Lord, when these things you speak of were doing, your ancestors were keeping sheep.” Spencer instantly replied, “when my ancestors (as you say) were keeping sheep, yours were plotting treason.” Both families, Spencers and Churchills, therefore felt the need to embellish their ancestry, especially in the Victorian era, when such ‘imagined histories’ were all the rage.

A number of beautifully illustrated nineteenth-century family histories therefore invented interesting progenitors for the Spencers and the Churchills. Especially so for the latter, said to be descended from somebody called Gitto de Leon, an exiled heir to the Duchy of Aquitaine (or maybe the Kingdom of León?) who took refuge at the court of the Duke of Normandy, then accompanied him (or perhaps his son did) on his conquest of England in 1066. He either came from a town in Normandy called Courcil, or was given lands in Somerset called Courcil or Curcelle, which later corrupted into the Anglo-Saxon Church Hill. Other stories give the original rise of the family from the fortuitous marriage of Roger Churchill, a blacksmith in Catherston, a village in western Dorset, to the daughter of the local landlord of Bradford Peverell in the middle of the 16^th century. But they remained tenant farmers in Dorset. The real start of the family’s rise comes a few generations later when John Churchill established himself as a prominent lawyer in London, then returned to the West Country to marry Sarah Winston, of Gloucestershire, in 1618, and rented a sizeable manor house in Dorset, Minterne House.

Subsequent generations were born in this house, and adopted the name Winston. The first Winston Churchill was a fervent royalist during the Civil War, an MP from Dorset, an officer in the household of Charles II, and, like his distant descendant and namesake, a passionate lover of history: he wrote a history of English kings and was a fellow of the Royal Society. He even married a descendant of the famous Elizabethan sea captain Sir Francis Drake. But his wife’s more important relative was the Duke of Buckingham, a royal favourite, and this connection opened doors for the family that led to their spectacular rise to the top of the court hierarchy by the end of the century.

In a similar manner, the Spencers claimed to be descended from the powerful medieval Despencer family, and even adopted a modified version of their coat-of-arms, with its distinctive golden ‘fret’. The Le Despencer family were major landowners in the 13^th century who enjoyed unparalleled royal favour, especially Hugh the Younger, the favourite of King Edward II, executed by the jealous barons in 1326. The rest of the Despencer clan were gone by the 1420s and the first historical Spencer does not appear in the records until 1470—so a link is of course possible, but unproven. This was Henry Spencer who owned the estate of Badby in Northamptonshire, and this county in the heart of England would remain the Spencer headquarters for the next five centuries.

Henry Spencer’s son John raised livestock—here is where the sheep come in—which was a very profitable venture, with wool being shipped across the North Sea to the great burgeoning weaving cities of Flanders and Holland. With this money he was able to purchase the nearby estate of Althorp and one further to the west, Wormleighton, in Warwickshire, around 1510, and by the time of his death had established a family burial spot in Great Brington and rebuilt the manor house in nearby Althorp.

Althorp, about 6 miles outside the county town of Northampton, gradually became the family seat, more so after extensive damage to Wormleighton during the Civil War, and was enlarged in the 1680s, and again a century later, when it was transformed into a more fashionable neoclassical style. By the mid-18^th century it had become a major social setting for the Spencer political set, and a place of display for the family’s great collections of art and books—the library was one of the largest of its day and today forms one of the cores of the Rylands Library of the University of Manchester. One of the other great treasures of the inside of the house was its grand oak staircase. The gardens were also redesigned in the 18^th century, by notable designers like Henry Holland, and remain mostly intact, with the well-known addition in 1997 of the Diana Memorial on an island in an oval lake.

Much of these estates had been developed in the early 17^th century by Robert Spencer, reputed to be the richest man in England—thanks to all those sheep—and raised to the peerage in 1603 as Baron Spencer of Wormleighton. His sons were active royalists during the Civil War, and his grandson Henry was rewarded for service at the Battle of Edgehill (and for his requisite financial ‘contribution’ to the Crown treasury) with the earldom of Sunderland in 1643. Like so many earldoms in England created in this period, the family had no links to the actual town of Sunderland in the far northeast, near Newcastle. The second Earl of Sunderland led a prominent if a bit unruly political life as an ambassador then secretary of state for Charles II, then a key advisor to James II until they fell out and he fled abroad—returning in the 1690s to become again a key advisor to William III and one of the founders of the Whig Party (with four other lords known as the ‘Whig Junto’ in the reigns of William and then Queen Anne).

One of the key factors of politics in the 18^th century was the importance of family alliances, and the Spencers would remain a cornerstone of the Whig aristocracy, alongside families related by marriage, the Cavendishes and Russells. Charles, the 3^rd Earl of Sunderland, took over this role when his father died in 1702. After a brief marriage to a Cavendish, he married in 1699 the daughter of another prominent member of the inner circle of the court, John Churchill.

The son of Sir Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Drake, John Churchill became one of the greatest supporters of James, Duke of York, later King James II, and leader of his troops, until the fateful moment in November 1688 when he abandoned the King in favour of the invading William of Orange. The entire family had benefitted at first through the relationship of John’s sister, Arabella, with the Duke of York in the 1660s. Arabella became mother to four of James’s illegitimate children (called the FitzJameses), and though the Duke’s patronage, John and his younger brothers all benefitted, with positions in the household and in the army. Brothers John, George and Charles all became close to the new husband of James’s daughter, Princess Anne, and when Anne became Queen in 1702, their rise was further solidified, all three becoming leading military figures in the War of Spanish Succession. It helped too that John’s wife, Sarah Jennings was particularly close with Anne—and the story of their tumultuous relationship has become quite famous now through the film The Favourite. John had been raised to the peerage as Earl of Marlborough in 1689 by a grateful King William, and he was now raised further to a dukedom in 1702. Anne also created him Captain-General of the British Army, and he would lead the Allied Forces in Europe to great victories in the war against France, with famous victories at Blenheim, Ramillies and Malplaquet. His wife was at the same time appointed Mistress of the Robes and head of the Queen’s Household. When Sarah fell from power, then so too did John, and he was removed from command just as he was on the verge of defeating France in 1711.

John and Sarah retired to a building site known as Blenheim Palace, a few miles north of Oxford, an estate (and funds) given by Queen Anne as a gift from the nation after the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Blenheim was built at Woodstock, a village that would provide a parliamentary seat for various Churchills and Spencers for the next two centuries, and designated as a ‘palace’, the only non-royal, non-episcopal residence in England with this label. Built between 1705 and 1722 by the controversial architect Sir John Vanbrugh—controversial since he had no formal training, but was a playwright—the palace ran into severe financial difficulties and ‘creative differences’ between the architect and the Duchess. In the end it emerged as one of the most majestic buildings in Britain, with its double suites of state and private apartments, its great hall with amazing ceiling paintings by Thornhill, a grand library and chapel, and extensive gardens and fountains.

Even after his disgrace, the 1^st Duke of Marlborough had not been forgotten. Still celebrated in Europe, he had been given a sizeable estate in southern Germany, Mindelheim, which the Emperor wished to transform into a semi-sovereign principality of the Empire in 1705. It was a tiny state, about 15 square miles, and the Duke visited it only once, in 1713. Diplomatic politics got in the way, however, and Mindelheim was restored to its previous owner (the Duke of Bavaria) in 1714, and the Emperor’s proposed replacement, Nellenburg (a bit further to the south, on Lake Constance), was blocked. Still, the title ‘Prince of the Empire’ was retained by the British duke (as were the heraldic elements, seen above), and, more importantly, the Emperor’s personal favour helped restore Marlborough to favour with the accession of an Imperial ally, Prince George of Hanover, to the British throne in 1714. The new King George I restored Marlborough to his position as Captain-General of British Forces which he retained until he died in 1722.

A duke needs a male heir however, and the Marlboroughs had only one son, the Marquess of Blandford (the courtesy title for their heir), who died of smallpox when still in his teens. The Duke had two brothers, both prominent as generals and admirals, but neither of them had a legitimate son. Several daughters remained, and Parliament passed a special act allowing for the dukedom to pass to a female heir (the Imperial princely titles however could not be passed to women). All four Churchill daughters had married well into the most solid names of the political aristocracy—Egerton, Montagu, Spencer and Godolphin—and the latter of these, Henrietta, Countess Godolphin, succeeded as 2^nd Duchess of Marlborough in her own right. Her son, another Marquess of Blandford, was expected to succeed, but he too died relatively young, and the title passed instead to her sister’s son, Charles Spencer, 5^th Earl of Sunderland. Here we see therefore, that fate had removed two young men from the succession, and brought about the union of the two houses, Spencer and Churchill.

The 3^rd Earl of Sunderland, Marlborough’s son-in-law, had already taken over from his father the role as leader of the Whig Junto in the reign of Queen Anne. Under George I he was promoted to cabinet positions including Lord Privy Seal and First Lord of the Treasury, making him in essence the Prime Minister, until he fell from power in the wake of the financial speculation scheme, the South Sea Bubble, bursting in 1720. His older son died a few years later, so it was his second son, Charles, the 5^th Earl, who succeeded to the Marlborough estates in 1733 (and handed over the Spencer estates to his younger brother, John, who started his own dynasty, the earls Spencer … which we’ll come to). The third Duke of Marlborough seemed set to rise to both of his grandfathers’ heights, in politics and in the military, but he died on campaign in the Seven Years War in 1758 without reaching his full potential.

The Spencers also inherited the main London residence of the Churchills, Marlborough House, one of the string of grand houses along the Mall leading up to Buckingham Palace. Built primarily by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, to designs by Christopher Wren, from the early 19th century it became a residence of various members of the Royal Family, notably the Prince and Princess of Wales in the 1860s and Queen Mary after 1936. Today it houses the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The family continued to dominate Whig politics for the rest of the century: the 4^th Duke of Marlborough was Lord Chamberlain and Lord Privy Seal in the 1760s, while both of his brothers held seats in the Commons. The younger of these, Lord Charles, was also a key member of the court of King George III, from being appointed Comptroller of the Household in 1763 to dying as one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber in 1820. His grandsons led interesting lives working for the Church of England across the British Empire, the elder as bishop of Newfoundland then Jamaica, and the younger as bishop of Madras. Their cousin, Augustus Spencer was Commander in Chief of the British Army in Bombay in the 1870s. This junior line were created Baron Churchill of Wychwood (Oxon), in 1815, raised to Viscount Churchill in 1902, but since 2017 reverted to the barony when it passed to a distant cousin.

Having conscientiously chosen to employ both Spencer and Churchill names, the 5^th Duke of Marlborough formally changed the family surname from Spencer to Spencer-Churchill in 1817. He had been a party boy in the early 19^th century, the height of the Regency, and sold off much of the family collections. The next Duke, George, spent most of his life as an heir, first as earl of Sunderland, then marquess of Blandford, and only the last 17 years of his life as duke. Before he became a peer, therefore, he had a long career in the Commons as MP for Woodstock, and demonstrated a remarkable about-face for the family by his devotion to the Tory Party, a trend his successors would continue throughout the 19^th century, notably his son the 7^th Duke. Again having a long Parliamentary career as Sunderland, then Blandford, and still holding the family seat at Woodstock, he then served, as duke, in the Conservative Cabinet of Disraeli.

From this point, the family divided somewhat, and elder sons inherited the titles while the younger sons took leading positions in politics. While the 8^th Duke of Marlborough was getting involved in divorce scandals, his younger brother Lord Randolph took a leading position in British politics in trying to steer the Conservative Party towards progressive reformist policies rather than simply reacting against those being pushed by the Liberal Party. As Secretary of State for India he supported the annexation of Burma in 1886, and the next year he reached the pinnacle of his career as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the Commons. But his success was brief and his antagonism of party leaders led to his ostricization, and he died relatively young, leaving the ultimate glory of becoming Prime Minister to his son Sir Winston Churchill, and the political line carried on to Winston’s son and his grandson (another Winston) into the 1990s.

One thing Lord Randolph and his brother the 8^th Duke of Marlborough had in common was that they both married Americans. The Duke married Lily Warren Price whose great wealth helped finance badly needed repairs and upgrades to Blenheim Palace; Randolph married Jennie Jerome. This was the age of Edith Wharton’s ‘Buccaneers’, wealthy American heiresses ‘sold’ by their parents to obtain glittering European titles. The greatest of these, perhaps, was Consuelo Vanderbilt, whose 2.5 million dollar dowry (plus shares in New York Central Railroad Company) helped the 9th Duke complete the restoration of Blenheim and its gardens. The marriage was not a great success and ended in acrimonious divorce in 1921.

Despite the influx of American dollars, the Blenheim estate struggled to keep up with the rising costs of maintaining a country house in the 20^th century. The 10^th Duke of Marlborough and his wife were therefore amongst the first aristocrats to open their homes to the public in the 1950s, and though Blenheim Palace remains in private hands, rather than as part of the National Trust or English Heritage, it is still one of the crown jewels of British tourism and attracts nearly a million visitors a year. It is run as a trust, with the current 12^th Duke, known as ‘Jamie Blandford’ before he succeeded in 2014, keeping a fairly low profile both in terms of the estate and on the national stage.

In contrast, the younger branch of the family, the earls Spencer, have become more prominent in the 20^th century, firstly as close members of the royal court and more recently as the family of the global superstar that was Diana, Princess of Wales. The current earl, the 9^th (Charles), was already a page in the royal household before his sister married the Prince of Wales in 1981, and the links go back much further. Their father (‘Johnny Spencer’) was Equerry to George VI, 1950-52, then to Elizabeth II, 1952-54; and their grandmother, Lady Fermoy—as seen in episodes of the new season of ‘The Crown’—was for many years a Woman of the Bedchamber and close friend of the Queen Mother. In fact, Diana’s other grandmother, Cynthia Hamilton, was also a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen Mother for many decades. So any attempt to portray Lady Diana Spencer as an uninformed outsider to court circles I think needs to be seen as dramatic licence.

Going back to the origins of this line, the nephew of the 3^rd Duke of Marlborough, was given the Spencer lands (as well as those of Sarah Jennings), and was created Earl Spencer in 1765. His daughter Lady Georgiana was the famous Duchess of Devonshire—famous in her own day as a fashionista and leader of the London social set, and again famous today for Keira Knightley’s portrayal of her in the 2008 film, The Duchess. One of the key scenes in that film demonstrated the power of aristocratic women in this century—when women did not have the right to vote—to influence politics through public appearances, and also as society hosts of political groups like the Whigs. Key to playing host to social elites was having a grand London residence, so the 1st Earl commissioned the monumental Spencer residence in London, on St James’s Place, in grand Greek neoclassical style. It is still owned by the family, but in recent decades has been rented out as a business site, to Christie’s, then The Economist, and now Lord Rothschild.

As with their senior Marlborough cousins, the Spencers (and the Devonshire Cavendishes) were at the epicentre of the liberal Whig Party, with the 2^nd Earl serving as Lord Privy Seal, 1^st Lord of the Admiralty and Home Secretary in the 1790s-1800s (in coalition governments), then the 3^rd Earl (John) rising to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1830s and being especially instrumental in the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, under the Whig Prime Minister Earl Grey—interestingly, though not that surprisingly given the persistent interconnections between British politics and family ties—the same man who had been romantically involved with his aunt the Duchess of Devonshire. The 3^rd Earl left a real legacy of reform, nicknamed ‘Honest Jack’ for his reputation as politically incorruptible.

After the Whig Party transitioned into the Liberal Party in the 1850s, the 5^th Earl (also named John) held top government offices for even longer than his grandfather, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord President of the Council, and First Lord of the Admiralty. The ‘Red Earl’ (due to the colour of his beard, not his politics) made a name for himself for his reforms of the Irish government and even advocating Irish home rule in the 1880s, and was several times asked to be Prime Minister, but preferred to stay in the House of Lords as leader of the Liberal Party until he retired in 1905.

It is interesting to see the two branches of the family by the end of the 19^th century dominating both rival political parties, Liberal Spencers and Conservative Churchills. The Spencers also maintained its close links with the royal family in the 19^th century, with various members holding posts like Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales, Lord Chamberlain of the Household (twice) and Lord Steward. They were successive lords lieutenant of Northamptonshire, and made their home, Althorp, a centre of county society. They also maintained an estate much closer to London and to court: Wimbledon Park (part of the inheritance of Sarah Jennings). Here the 2^nd Earl Spencer built a new house in about 1800, sold in 1846, and demolished in the 1950s. Not until 1996, however, did the current Earl sell the title of the lordship of the manor of Wimbledon—a title with a few vague rights over common lands, at least until recent legislation abolished even those vestiges of feudalism.

The more modern Charles, 9^th Earl Spencer, spent the early years of his career as a journalist, gave Althorp its first major overhaul since the 18^th century, and opens the house for visitors in the summer months, as well as for an annual literary festival in the autumn. This two-pronged family, Churchill and Spencer, each line emerging from obscurity to lead the reforming party of the British politics for much of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, continues to act as guardians of the legacy of two of the finest examples in 18^th-century English country house buildings, Blenheim and Althorp, hopefully for generations to come.

(images from Wikimedia Commons or other license free sites)