Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/425

DORCHESTER MARQUESSATE. II. 1706. I. Evelyn (Pierrepont), Earl of King: TON-ON-HuLL, great-nephew of Henry, Mai QUESS OF Dorchester and Earl of Kingsto ON-HuLL abovenamed, was cr., 23 Dec. 1706, MARQUESS OF DORCHESTER, co. Dorset, with a spec, rem., failing the heirs male of his body, to his uncle, Gervase Pierrepont, afterwards (17 14) Baron Pierrepont of Hanslape. He was cr., 10 Aug. 171 5, Duke of Kingston-on-Hull, co. York. He d. 5 Mar. 1725/6. [William Pierrepont, sty/ed Marquess of Dorchester, s. and h. ap., b. 21 Oct. 1692; d. v.p., I July 17 13.] III. 1726 2. Evelyn (Pierrepont), Duke OF KiNGSTON- to ON-HuLL, Marquess of Dorchester, &'c., grand- 1773. son and h., being s. and h. of William Pierrepont, sty/ed Marquess of Dorchester abovenamed. He was styled Marquess of Dorchester, :/i3-26; l?. 171 1; d. s.p., 23 Sep. 1773, when all his honours became extinct. 407 3 ^ EARLDOM. II. 1792. I. Joseph Damer, s. and h. of Joseph D., of Winter- bourne-Came, Dorset (M.P. for Dorchester 1722-27, d. I Mar. 1736/7), by Mary, da. of John Churchill, of Henbury in the said co., i>. 12 Mar. 17 17/8, at Dorchester, Dorset ; M.P. (Whig) for Weymouth 1 74 1 -47 ;(^) for Bramber 1 747-54 ; and she said, "Who would have thought that we three w . . . . s should have met here]" The mistresses of three English Kings being present together in the rooms of a fourth was certainly a strange coincidence. " Lady Dorchester," says Lord Orford (vol. iv, p. 319), "said vi^ittily she wondered for what James II chose his mistresses. 'We are none of us handsome, and if we had wit, he has not enough to discover it.' " Charles II used to say with respect to James, that his confessor had imposed such mistresses upon him as Mrs. Williams, Lady Belasyse, "Mrs. Sedley and Mrs. Churchill," by way of pen- ance. Her life was " a long career of undeserved prosperity," and there is notliing in it to show that the well-known reference to her, in Dr. Johnson's fine poem of "The Vanity of Human Wishes," was in fact in any, the least, degree appropriate — " Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring. And Sedley cursed the charms which pleased a King." Her father, a notorious libertine, who d. 20 Aug. 1701, aged 61, having taken part against James II, gave as a humorous reason for so doing that, " the King having made my daughter a Countess, it is fit I should make his daughter a Queen." (*) One of the section of the party who opposed Walpole. "Lord Milton, heir of Swift's old miser and usurer Damer, was the most arrogant and proud of men, with no foundation but great wealth and a match with the Duke of Dorset's daughter. His birth and parts were equally mean and contemptible." (Last Journals of Horace Walpole, Oct. 1773). In the House of Lords he voted against the India Bill of the Coalition in 1783 in the final division, having absented himself from the preceding one. V.G.