1883] DEATHS OF LORD VERNON AND MR. BASS. Ill 



neighbours. There never was a more conscientious nor 

 fairer-minded man, and if his motto had been, " Fiat 

 justitia, mat cceluni," instead of " Ve7'non semper viret," 

 every one would have recognized the appropriateness of it. 

 When the Duke of Richmond and Gordon took the chair at 

 a meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society, immediately 

 after Lord Vernon's death, he said of the latter : " All his 

 colleagues appreciated his great virtue, his excellent habits 

 of business, and his great courtesy of demeanour on all 

 occasions. He had always found Lord Vernon the most 

 fervent, honest, straightforward friend that anybody could 

 wish to meet, and, active as he had always been in matters 

 connected with the welfare of agriculture, the sudden ter- 

 mination of his useful career was no less than a national 

 loss. He believed that the energy in the subject which 

 he had recently taken up was the cause of his sudden 

 decease ; the Bill which he had drawn up, and which only 

 on Tuesday he was to have brought before the House of 

 Lords, was too great a strain upon his brain." 



The Bill referred to was the Agricultural Tenancy Bill. 

 Lord Vernon was, apparently, in his usual health on the 

 Tuesday referred to, but he died that night from the rupture 

 of a blood-vessel on the brain. 



The Vernon family is a very ancient one, the title 

 being derived from the town of Vernon in Normandy, of 

 which William de Vernon was proprietor in 1052. Two 

 of his sons came over with the Conqueror. One of the 

 descendants, who lived at Harlaston in the county of 

 Stafford, became Lord of Haddon by marriage with the 

 daughter and co-heiress of William de Avenel. Sir George 

 Vernon, King of the Peak, and father of the celebrated 

 Dorothy, who carried Haddon to the Manners family, 

 was nephew of Sir George Vernon of Sudbury, and of 

 Humphrey, ancestor of the late Lord Vernon. The first 

 Baron was George Vernon of Sudbury, who assumed the 

 additional name of Venables on succeeding to the maternal 

 estates in 1728, and was raised to the Peerage as Lord 

 Vernon, Baron of Kinder ton, in 1762. It was his son, the 



