Claudes, two fine Rembrandts, Rubens's landscape of 'The Chateau de Stein,' Wilson's 'Mæcenas's Villa' and 'Niobe,' and Wilkie's 'Blind Fiddler.' To one of the Claudes, now No. 61 in the National Gallery, he was so attached that he requested to have it returned to him for his lifetime. It was this picture probably, and not the 'Narcissus' (No. 19), as recorded by Cunningham, that he used to carry with him whenever he changed his residence from Coleorton Hall to Grosvenor Square, or vice versa. Sir George Beaumont died on 7 Feb. 1827, aged 74.
[Cunningham's Lives, ed. Heaton; Redgrave's Dictionary; Annals of the Fine Arts; Wordsworth's Poems (1813); Byron's Poems; Boswell's Life of Johnson; Lockhart's Life of Scott; Catalogues of the National Gallery; Burke's Peerage; Annual Register, 1827.]
BEAUMONT, JOHN (fl. 1550), master
of the rolls, was great-grandson of Sir Thomas
Beaumont, of Bachuile, in Normandy, and
great-great-grandson of John de Beaumont,
baron, knight of the Garter, who died in
1396. The barony, however, with which
this unfortunate judge's family had thus been
collaterally connected, had already fallen
into abeyance in his time through the death
of the seventh baron and second viscount
without issue in 1507, the viscounty then
becoming extinct. The sixth baron had
been distinguished as the first viscount ever
created in this country. The barony was
claimed, but unsuccessfully, in 1798 by
Thomas Stapleton, who traced his descent
to Joan Beaumont, sister and heir of the
seventh baron. His grand-nephew, Miles
Thomas Stapleton, father of the present
baron, was successful in asserting his claim
in 1840. The earliest mention of John
Beaumont appears to be a memorandum in
the books of the corporation of Leicester,
under date 1529-30, to the following effect:
'Agreed to give to John Beaumont, gent.,
6s. 8d. fee to answer in such causes as the
town shall need and require.' In 1534, on
the abbot of Leicester subscribing to the
king's spiritual supremacy, a commission
was appointed to take an ecclesiastical survey of the county, and Beaumont was placed
thereon. In 1537 he was appointed reader at
the Inner Temple, and in 1543 double reader
(duplex lector), as a person appointed for
the second time was then called. In 1547
he was elected treasurer of that society. His
name is not to be found in the year books
of Henry VII's reign, nor in any of the reports belonging to the reign of Edward VI.
In 1550 he was appointed recorder of Leicester, and in the same year master of the
rolls, in succession to Sir Robert Southwell.
In this capacity he was commissioned to
hear causes for Lord Chancellor Rich, 26 Nov.
1551, and for Lord Chancellor Goodrich,
21 Jan. 1552. He had not, however, long
sat on the bench before he abused his position for his own advantage in the grossest
possible manner. He concluded a corrupt
bargain (known to lawyers as champerty)
with Lady Anne Powis, who was suing in
his court to recover possession of land to
which she claimed to be entitled from Charles
Brandon, duke of Suffolk, by which Lady
Anne Powis agreed to sell the benefit of her
suit, if she should be successful, to the judge
for a sum of money. The selling of titles by
persons not having possession of the lands is,
even as between private individuals, a corrupt practice by English law, and a statute
of Henry VIII renders either party to the
contract liable to forfeit the full value of
the lands. Beaumont, however, did not stop
short at champerty. He endeavoured to corroborate Lady Powis's title by forging the
signature of the late Duke of Suffolk to a
deed by which that nobleman purported to
grant the lands in question to the lady. He
was also guilty of appropriating to his own
use funds belonging to the royal revenues
coming into his hands in his capacity of
judge of the court of wards and liveries
(established by Henry VIII in 1540-41) to
the amount of 20,871l. 18s. 8d., and of concealing a felony committed by his servant.
On 9 February, i.e. when he had been in
office little more than a year, he was arrested on these charges and put in prison.
He subsequently (4 June) admitted their
truth, but retracted his confession on the
16th, only again to acknowledge his guilt on
the 20th. Of that, however, there appears
to have been no doubt from the first. His
successor, Sir Robert Bowes, was nominated
as early as 10 May. Beaumont formally surrendered his office, and admitted his defalcations on 28 May, and by the same document
assigned all his manors, lands, goods and
chattels, with the issues and profits of the
same, to the king in satisfaction of his claims.
On 4 June he acknowledged a fine of his
lands, which were entailed upon himself and
his wife, and signed a covenant to surrender
his goods. By what may have been either a
curious oversight or an intentional act of
grace, his wife was not made a party to the
fine, and by consequence on Beaumont's
death her estate tail never having been
barred 'survived' to her. She entered within
five years thereafter upon the estate of Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, which Henry, earl of