Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/424

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Marriage Act (12 George III) having declared that marriages of descendants contracted without the royal assent should be invalid. Two children were the fruit of the marriage: Ellen Augusta, who in 1845 married Sir Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro, and the above-named Augustus Frederick. The name of D'Este, anciently belonging to the house of Brunswick, was given to the two children, and their mother, on separating from the duke in 1806, assumed the name of De Ameland. D'Este was born in 1794, and entered the army as lieutenant in the royal fusiliers, which regiment he accompanied to America, where, as aide-de-camp to Sir John Lambert, he participated in the attack on New Orleans. In 1817 he received the command of a troop in the 9th lancers, and five years later was appointed major in the 4th royal Irish dragoons. In 1824 he was promoted to a lieutenant-colonelcy, and became full colonel in 1838, the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. From William IV in 1830 he received a knight commandership of the Hanoverian Guelphic order, a pension of 500l. a year out of the civil list, and the appointment of deputy-ranger of St. James's Park and Hyde Park. ‘The chancellor,’ writes Greville in 1831, ‘told me that the young man Sir Augustus d'Este had behaved very ill, having filed a bill in chancery, into which he had put all his father's love letters, written thirty years ago, to perpetuate evidence; that it was all done without the Duke of Sussex's consent, but that D'Este had got Lushington's opinion that the marriage was valid on the ground that the Marriage Act only applied to marriages contracted here, whereas this was contracted at Rome. He said Lushington was a great authority, but that he had no doubt he was wrong. The king is exceedingly annoyed at it.’ In 1834 he presented to the Duke of Cambridge, viceroy of Hanover, a memorial entreating his ‘powerful intercession’ with the king for the restoration of his rights as a legitimate son of the Duke of Sussex. Nine years later, in 1843, when the Duke of Sussex died, D'Este preferred to the House of Lords a claim to succeed to his father's honours. The house, after consulting with the judges, resolved that the claim was not established. D'Este died unmarried on Thursday, 28 Dec. 1848, at the age of fifty-four.

[Gent. Mag. 1849, i. 203–4; Dillon's Case of the Children of the Duke of Sussex; Times, 29 Dec. 1848; Greville Memoirs, 1875, ii. 195.]

R. H.

DE TABLEY, Lord. [See Leicester, John Fleming, 1762-1827.]

DETHICK, Sir GILBERT (1519?–1584), Garter king-of-arms, was probably born in 1519 or 1520, although according to the inscription on his portrait the date is as early as 1500. The Dethicks pretended that they were descended from a family of that name seated at Dethick Hall, Derbyshire. Ralph Brooke, York herald, asserts, on the other hand, that their origin was derived from Robert Dericke, a Dutchman, who came to England with Erasmus Crukenez, yeoman armourer to Henry VIII, and whose wages amounted to only tenpence a day. It is said that this Robert married Agatha, daughter of Matthias Leydendecker, a Dutch barber of Acon [Aachen?] in Germany, who also became an armourer to Henry VIII; the issue of the marriage being three sons, Dericke, Matthias, and Gilbert. The latter procured for himself and his brothers denization by parliament; and by the daughter of one Leonard, a Dutch shoemaker, at the sign of the Red Cock, in St. Martin's Lane, London, became father of Sir Gilbert. There can be little doubt that the Dethicks were of Dutch extraction, but it is improbable that their connections were as mean as Brooke suggests. The three brothers Dericke, Matthias, and Gilbert were all opulent. The younger Gilbert entered the College of Arms at the age of sixteen, being created Hampnes pursuivant extraordinary, 16 June 1536, at Hampton Court, then called York House. He was appointed Rouge Croix pursuivant in December 1540, and Richmond herald on the 25th of the same month. William Fellow, Norroy king-of-arms, dying shortly before Christmas 1546, Dethick was nominated to succeed him in Henry VIII's reign, and he obtained from Edward VI, on 16 Aug. 1547, a patent confirming the appointment. After the death of Sir Christopher Barker he was created Garter king-of-arms on 20 April 1550, and on 14 April 1551 he received the honour of knighthood.

He was employed in public affairs by several sovereigns, and Henry VIII rewarded him with the grant of a mansion and an acre of land at Poplar, in the parish of Stepney, where his descendants resided for nearly two centuries. In Henry's reign he went several times to the court of Denmark to claim ships; he was also sent to the Duke of Cleves concerning the royal marriage; and he attended the diet of Ratisbon. In 1547 he accompanied the lord protector Somerset in the expedition against the Scots, and in 1549 he was sent to deliver to the rebels in Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk a summons to surrender. It has been stated that he was the envoy who, in July 1549, boldly pro-