A Lady of the Last Century
Dr. John Doran
9781465623010
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Elizabeth Robinson, who became so well known, subsequently, as Mrs. Montagu, belongs altogether to the eighteenth century. She was born at York, in October, 1720. She died in the last year of that century, 1800. Miss Robinson was of a family, the founder of which, William Robinson, a London merchant, but a descendant of a line of Scottish barons, bought, in 1610, the estate of Rokeby, in Yorkshire, from Sir Thomas Rokeby, whose ancestors had held it from the time of the Conquest. Her father, Matthew Robinson, was an only son of a cadet branch of the Robinsons. He was a member of the University of Cambridge, where he wooed the Muses less ardently than he did Miss Elizabeth Drake, a beautiful heiress, whom he married when he was only eighteen years of age. The very young couple settled at Edgeley, in Yorkshire; but the husband (owner, through his wife, of more than one estate in the country) preferred the shady side of Pall Mall to fields of waving corn or groves vocal with nightingales. Of the twelve children of this marriage, seven sons and two daughters survived their youth. The daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, were endowed with the same literary tastes. Sarah wrote the more books, but Elizabeth is the better remembered. The church, the law, politics, and commerce attracted one or other of the sons. In 1730, the head of the elder branch of the Robinsons, Thomas, was created a baronet. He was that famous Long Tom Robinson of whom so many well-known stories are told. Chesterfield slightly touched him in an epigram, and Walpole seldom referred to him without a sarcasm. At the coronation of George the Third, Sir Thomas was mock Duke of Normandy, who, with an equally English and mock Duke of Aquitaine, was supposed to indicate that the King of England was as much King of France, by the grace of God, as he pretended to be. Long Sir Thomas was so truly an Englishman that he went to France, and into French society, in his hunting-suit. A satirical French abbé, hearing his name and looking at his marvellous attire, gravely asked him if he were Robinson Crusoe. Long Sir Thomas Robinson sold Rokeby to the Morritts in 1769. When he died, in 1777, his title went to his next surviving brother, Richard. This Richard was an English clergyman, who, in 1731, had commenced a successful career in Ireland, as chaplain to two viceroys, and he was successively Bishop of Killala, of Leighlin and Ferns, and of Kildare. Finally, he was raised to the dignity of Archbishop of Armagh, primate of Ireland. In the year that Sir Thomas died, Richard was created an Irish peer, Baron Rokeby of Armagh, with remainder to Mrs. Montagu’s father, Matthew Robinson. The father did not live to succeed to the title, but his son Matthew did. The present Lord Rokeby is Mrs. Montagu’s great grandnephew, and was born when she was yet living, a. d. 1798. The first lord figures largely in this lady’s letters. His good works made him popular in Ireland, which his Grace found to be a fine country to live out of, as much as was, more or less, consistent with duty. He was one of the best-known characters at Bath during successive seasons; he also suffered much from the gout; but he endured with alacrity all the port and claret that were necessary to keep it out of his archiepiscopal stomach. Thus much for Mrs. Montagu’s family. She derived from it a certain distinction; but she enjoyed greater advantage, for a time at least, from the marriage of her maternal grandmother, who took for her second husband the learned and celebrated Dr. Conyers Middleton. Doctor Middleton’s home was at Cambridge, where a few of Miss Robinson’s youthful years were profitably and curiously spent.
