200 



Calne. 



Lansdown is the well-known Hill abeve Bath. Why did the Irish 

 family of Fitzmaurice go there for the title ? As I knew that they 

 do not and never did possess a foot of land upon the hill I once 

 asked our old Marquis the reason of their taking* the name. He 

 said it was because it had been formerly a title in the family of his 

 father's first wife. To explain this. At the farther end of Lans- 

 down Hill, beyond the race course, there is a fine monument, 

 marking the spot where Sir Bevill Granville, a royalist leader, was 

 killed at the Battle of Lansdown, in the reign of Charles I. In 

 honour to the father's gallantry the son was created Viscount 

 Lansdowne : and from him ultimately descended the first wife of the 

 Earl of Shelburne. In compliment to her he adopted the title. 



Another thing not generally known is that the name Lansdown 

 is a corruption of Laurence Down — often spelled in old deeds Launce- 

 down. The hill above Bath was called after Saint Laurence, and to 

 this day there are upon it the remains of a chapel dedicated to that 

 Saint. 



The title of Lansdowne, originally bestowed upon a Granville as 

 a mark of honour, has lost none of that honour since borne by the 

 Fitzmaurices : and most undoubtedly the brilliancy of the coronet is 

 no wise tarnished on the head of him who wears it now. 



To go into the history of your former venerable neigh hour. 

 Marquis Henry, who died in 1863, is utterly useless before a Calne 

 audience, to whom all that related to him is so familiar. You know 

 that he was a lover of literature, a great patron of the fine arts, that 

 every thing in Bowood (as he left it) had been collected by him : that 

 he added largely to the estate : that in London for sixty years he was 

 one of the foremost leaders in Society : that having been (as I have 

 already mentioned) Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of 23, 

 he became, by long experience, the sagacious leading statesman to 

 whom, as the head of his own political party, as to the great Duke 

 of Wellington on the other side, Her Majesty immediately referred 

 for advice whenever changes in the Government were required. 

 Lansdowne House, .in London, and Bowood, in Wiltshire, were the 

 centre and resort, not only of his fellow-countrymen, but of foreigners 

 of rank and ability, not only of persons of his own but of humbler 



