By the Bev. G. S. Master. 28* 



his grandfather as Duke of Kingston, 1726, was K.G., Lord of the 

 Bedchamber, Lieut. -General in the army, and Gustos Rotulorum of 

 the county of Notts, and dying 1773, s.p., was buried at Holme- 

 Pierrepont, when the male line of the family became extinct. By 

 his will he bequeathed his large lauded estates for life, and all his 

 personalty absolutely, to his duchess, an epitome of whose remarkable 

 history, (already noticed in this journal ') is appended. His only 

 sister, Frances, married Philip, son of Sir Philip Medows, Knight, 

 Marshal of the King^s palace, whose second son, Charles Medows, 

 succeeding to the estates, and assuming the surname and arms of 

 Pierrepont, was created Baron Pierrepont and Viscount Newark in 

 1796, and Earl Manvers in 1806, and was grandfather of the 

 present and third Earl. 



Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, the daughter of Colonel Thomas 

 Chudleigh, brother of Sir George Chudleigh,^ of Ashton, Co^ 

 Devon, Bart., was born in 1720, and appointed Maid of Honour 

 to the Princess of Wales, 1738. Betrothed to James, 6 th Duke of 

 Hamilton, she nevertheless contracted a secret marriage in 1744 

 with Capt. the Hon. Augustus John Hervey, R.N., who succeeded 

 his brother a year afterwards as third Earl of Bristol. Separated 

 immediately from her husband, and retaining her maiden name and 

 place at court, she was for some years the leader of fashion, until, 

 upon the Duke of Kingston's offer of marriage, a suit was covertly 

 instituted in the Ecclesiastical Court, and a decree obtained pro- 

 nouncing her previous union null and void. Under the protection 

 of this instrument she married the Duke in 1769,and was undisturbed 

 during his lifetime in her title and position, but after his death Mr. 

 Evelyn Medows, the elder son of his sister Frances, finding himself 

 excluded from the reversion of his uncle's property, preferred a bill 

 of indictment against the Duchess for bigamy. The trial took place 

 in Westminster Hall, in 1776, before the Queen, the Prince of 

 Wales, and others of the Royal Family, the Peers, and an audience 

 of five thousand persons, and terminated in a verdict of guilty ; 

 upon which Her Grace pleading privilege of peerage, was discharged, 



' See this journal, vol. i., p. 274 ; vol. v., pp, 46, 340, 366. 



