LIFE OF ALFRED NEWTON 



CHAPTER I 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL 



If the boundary of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk 

 had not taken a sudden bend to the south near Thetford, 

 so as almost to include the parish of Elveden, it is 

 probable that the Hfe of Alfred Newton, though it would 

 undoubtedly have been the life of a man of distinction, 

 would not have been the life of a naturalist. Fortunately 

 for lovers of Natural History in general and of Orni- 

 thology in particular, his father, as well as owning Elveden 

 Hall in Suffolk, possessed also a small property on the 

 other side of the boundary and was a Justice of the 

 Peace for the county of Norfolk, so that at a critical 

 point of his career Newton was able to establish his 

 claim to be the " son of a Norfolk gentleman." 



WiUiam Newton, at one time M.P. for Ipswich, was 

 the son of a planter, Samuel Newton of St. Kitts, in the 

 West Indies, in the golden days of sugar, who lived in the 

 island of St. Croix until he bought the Elveden estate in 

 1810 from the fourth Earl of Albemarle. He married 

 (1811) Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Slater Milnes, M.P. 

 for York, and aunt of Richard Monckton Milnes, first 

 Baron Houghton, by whom he had six sons and four 

 daughters. The eldest son, William Samuel, was one of 

 the survivors of the Coldstream Guards at Inkerman, 

 and retired with the rank of General. The second son, 

 Robert Milnes, became Recorder of Cambridge and a 

 Metropolitan Pohce Magistrate. Horace Parker was 



B 



