200 Calne. 
Lansdown is the well-known hil! above Bath. Why did the Irish 
family of Fitzmaurice go there for the title? As I knew that they 
do not and never did possess a foot of land upon the hill I once 
asked our old Marquis the reason of their taking the name. He 
said it was because it had been formerly a title in the family of his 
father’s first wife. To explain this. At the farther end of Lans- 
down Hill, beyond the race course, there is a fine monument, 
marking the spot where Sir Bevill Granville, a royalist leader, was 
killed at the Battle of Lansdown, in the reign of Charles I. In 
honour to the father’s gallantry the son was created Viscount 
Lansdowne: and from him ultimately descended the first wife of the 
Earl of Shelburne. In compliment to her he adopted the title. 
Another thing not generally known is that the name Lansdown 
is a corruption of Laurence Down—often spelled in old deeds Launce- 
down. The hill above Bath was called after Saint Laurence, and to 
this day there are upon it the remains of a chapel dedicated to that 
Saint. 4 ‘ 
The title of Lansdowne, originally bestowed upon a Granville as 
a mark of honour, has lost none of that honour since borne by the 
Fitzmaurices: and most undoubtedly the brilliancy of the coronet is 
no wise tarnished on the head of him who wears it now. 
To go into the history of your former venerable neighbour, 
Marquis Henry, who died in 1863, is utterly useless before a Calne 
audience, to whom all that related to him is so familiar. You know 
that he was a lover of literature, a great patron of the fine arts, that 
every thing in Bowood (as he left it) had been collected by him: that 
he added largely to the estate: that in London for sixty years he was 
one of the foremost leaders in Society: that having been (as I have 
already mentioned) Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of 23, 
he became, by long experience, the sagacious leading statesman to 
whom, as the head of his own political party, as to the great Duke 
of Wellington on the other side, Her Majesty immediately referred 
for advice whenever changes in the’ Government were required. 
Lansdowne House, in London, and Bowood, in Wiltshire, were the 
centre and resort, not only of his fellow-countrymen, hut of foreigners 
of rank and ability, not only of persons of his own but of humbler 
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