294 ;Euttetmete district. 



took up his abode at the house of one Robinson, the father 

 of Mary, who kept a small ale-house at the foot of the lake. 

 This gentleman arrived in his own carriage, though without 

 servants, and seemed to have been possessed of a distin- 

 guished appearance albeit he was forty-five years of age. 

 Titles are as attractive to the Fair in the recesses of Cum- 

 berland as in that fashionable district which the vulgar will 

 persist in calling Pimlico ; and the courtship of poor Mary 



— the reports of whose beauty, and not the charms 

 of natural scenery, had attracted the gallant Colonel — 

 ended in marriage on the second day of October. A pair 

 of gloves — it is not stated whether they were new or cleaned 



— was the only wedding present he made her. Some doubts 

 of his identity — and what was more, of the genuineness of 

 his cheques — having arisen in Keswick, he drove over there 

 with four horses, confronted his accusers, and while they 

 were procuring a warrant for his apprehension, went a fishing 

 in Derwentwater. The Keswick folks, among whom visitors 

 of quality were much rarer at that time than now-a-days, 

 stuck to their Honourable Colonel and were persuaded, says 

 the chronicler " that, if he was not this great man, would 

 prove to be some other great man ; " but he was not this 

 great man, and, instead of fishing, landed at Lodore, whence, 

 late as it was, he mad-e his way in the dark " across that 

 fearful Alpine pass, the Stake," into Langdale. He was 

 apprehended in December, at Brecknock, in Wales, on the 

 charge of bigamy, and put upon his trial the ensuing August 

 at Carlisle for forging certain bills of exchange, and frank- 

 ing letters in the name of Colonel Hope, M.P., for which 

 he was condemned to death. But the public interest was 

 centred in the fact of his bigamy, which was incontestably 

 estabHshed. On the 31st of August, he was hung; the 

 "noose slipping twice, on account of his great weight, so 



