Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/352

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336 BROOKE self " and his lawful descendants, being Earls of Warwick." On 3 Feb. 1767 he presented a petition to the House of Lords that he and his heirs should be enabled to use the title of Earl of Warwick o«/y, with the rank of the patent of 7 July 1746, w'z. that which conferred the Earldom of Brooke of Warwick Castle.^) F.S.A. 4 Feb. 1768. He m., 15 May 1742, at Park Place, in Remingham, Berks (spec. lie. at Fac. Off.), Eliza- beth, da. of Lord Archibald Hamilton, by his 3rd wife, Jane, da. of James (Hamilton), 6th Earl of Abercorn [S.J.C") He d. 6 July 1773, at Warwick Castle, aged 53. Will pr. July 1773. His widow m. Gen. Robert Clerk, whose will, dat. 24 Dec. 1796, was pr. 26 May 1797. She d. in Dover Str., 24 Feb., and was bur. 6 Mar. 1 800, in her 80th year, in Westm. Abbey. Will dat. 6 Feb., pr. 6 Mar. 1800. EARLDOM. n. BARONY. IX. 2 and 9. George (Greville), Earl Brooke OF Warwick Castle, Earl of Warwick, ^c, -1773. s. and h., b. in Warwick Castle, 16 Sep., and bap. 10 Oct. 1746, at St. Mary's, Warwick, the King, George II, being (by proxy) one of his sponsors. Matric. at Oxford (Ch. Ch.) 24 Sep. 1764, and subsequently at Edinburgh. (') F.R.S. 17 Dec. 1767; F.S.A. 14 Feb. 1768; nostra voco." J. Horace Round remarks that the grant is based on the precedent of a similar one to the Dudley Earls of Warwick, by whom the well-known Bear and Ragged Staff was borne as a crest; and calls attention to the fact that the "Bear and Ragged Staff was not the Crest of the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick (which was entirely different) but their Badge and the Supporter of their coat of Arms." With respect, however, to Ambrose (Dudley), Earl of Warwick, the case seems very different, as he was not only a descendant, but the senior representative of Richard (Beauchamp), Earl of Warwick, and was actually in rem. to the Earldom of Warwick, granted, in 1450, to (Richard Nevill) the said Earl Richard's son-in-law. It is to be observed that the crest of Beau- champ {viz. the demi swan, issuing out of a crest coronet) was early adopted, in lieu of that of Greville, by the Lords Brooke. (^) See Lords' Journals. No further proceedings appear to have been taken in the matter of this (not unreasonable) petition, though the granting thereof would remedy the anomaly of the family styling themselves " Earls of Warwick" (only) whilst taking precedence as " Earls Brooke." C') "Lord, Lord! what strange creatures there are amongus women. Lady War- wick has come to England, was refused admittance at her Lord's House in Hill Street, and has taken lodgings in Kensington." (Letter of Lady Dalkeith, 20 Aug. 1765)- V.G. (') " A very great and singular attention was paid to the education of this noble- man by his late father, who, fearful of the corruptions which disgrace our great seminaries of learning, consigned him to the care of the first historian of the age [Robertson? or possibly Hume], to complete his moral as well as political character. From Scotland he returned so well informed, and such an amiable manliness about him, that the most flattering prognostications were made of his future eminence. His travels did not in any great degree either improve or corrupt him, and he has since remained a quiet inoffensive domestic character, little known but by persons of taste and virtu." [Royal Register, 1780, vol. iv, p. 129). V.G.