DUKE OF BUCKINGHA?^!. 165 



one. When the rinderpest broke out in the county the 

 Duke was indefatigable in carrying out the regulations 

 of the Government as to slaughter of the infected cattle, 

 but he shared all the losses of this dire scourge with his 

 tenants. Again, whilst himself in the East, as Governor 

 cf Madras, there had been on his Wotton estate a terrible 

 outbreak of liver rot, which carried off every sheep in 

 the parish except ten or twelve Welsh ewes ; the Duke 

 ordered his steward to ascertain how much loss each of 

 his tenants had sustained, and on the next rent-day each 

 tenant had the full amount of his loss deducted from his 

 rent, and in most instances the tenants left the steward's 

 ofhce with some scores of pounds more than when they 

 went in. One man told me that above a ;^ioo had 

 been handed to him beyond his half-year's rent. These 

 were noble and disinterested acts, most unostentatiously 

 done, and springing from a kind and considerate heart. 

 In person and manners the Duke was not attractive, but 

 he possessed qualities more valuable than those reflected 

 in the glass of fashion ; his death was not only a grief to 

 his friends, but a loss to the nation, whom he had served 

 as a Minister of the Crown. He had raised himself from 

 real poverty by his assiduity and careful personal 

 management, he had succeeded in freeing his estate 

 from encumbrances, refurnished Stowe, buying back, 

 wherever he could find them, everything that had been 

 sold at the great sale, and he left behind him something 

 like ;/^ 1 20,000 for his daughters and their husbands. 



The family estate of Wotton went at his death to his 

 nephew, Mr. Gore Langton, heir to the title of Earl 

 Temple ; his eldest daughter, Lady Mary, the wife of 



