44 



Murder in the Seventeenth Century. 



attending 1 on the King, during the negotiations for peace at that 

 place. He was succeeded by his son Baptist, who raised and kept 

 a troop for the Royal cause. For this he had to pay to the 

 Parliamentary sequestrators " £9000, and £150 a year to the ministry 

 of the day." He was happier perhaps in winning four noble wives, 

 in the .course of his long* life, and being blessed with eighteen 

 children, fifteen of whom survived. 1 



But the Civil War was heavy on them, for in May, 1645, 

 Campden House was completely destroyed, by fire and otherwise, 

 possibly at the instance of its owner, lest it should fall into the 

 hands of the Parliament. u Tout lien ou rien " is the family motto. 

 The devastation was complete, and the kindly beacon lantern, 

 which the philanthropic Baptist Hickes had erected on the housetop 

 to guide benighted travellers to the hospitalities of Campden was 

 for ever extinguished. Besides this family calamity, there was the 

 death of Lord Campden's brother Henry in prison. Whether the 

 dowager Juliana, Lady Campden, or her son Baptist, ever again 

 resided in the neighbourhood may be doubted as they both died at 

 Exton, Rutland, but at any rate the former, who was a very grand lady, 



1 We would wish he might not be the governor of Campden House whom Lord 

 Clarendon mentions, p. 551, Ed. Oxon., 1843. A.D. 1645, May, before the Battle 

 of Naseby. The King in passing from Oxford (May 7th, 1645) to Evesham, 

 withdrew his garrison from Campden, " which," says Clarendon, "had brought no 

 other benefit to the public than the enriching the licentious governor thereof ; 

 who exercised an illimited tyranny over the whole country, and took his leave of 

 it, in wantonly burning the noble structure, where he had too long inhabited, and 

 which, not many years before, had cost about thirty thousand pounds the building." 

 Baptist, Lord Campden, married, first, Lady Ann Fielding, second daughter of 

 "William, Earl of Denbigh, by whom he had three children, who died in infancy ; 

 secondly, he married the widow of the Earl of Bath, a daughter of Sir R. B. 

 Lovet. There was a still-born child of this union. For his third wife he had 

 Hester, one of the four daughters and co-heiresses of Lord Wootton. She gave 

 him two sons — Edward, his successor, afterwards created by Charles II, Earl of 

 Gainsborough, a second son, Henry — and four daughters. On her death he married 

 Elizabeth Bertie, eldest daughter of Montague, Lord Lindsay, by whom he had 

 six sons, who lived, two who were still-born, and three daughters. Lord Campden 

 died at Exton, in Kutlandshire, 1682. He is mentioned in Wood's " Fasti,'' 

 page 83, together with the Electoral Prince Charles, William, Marquis of Hertford, 

 Earl of Strafford, William Lenthall, John Selden, &c, as a subscriber towards 

 the publication of Dr. Audrew Walton's (Bishop of Chester) " Biblia Polyglotta." 



