45 CHAPTER I PARENTAGE AND DESCENT ROBERT LOWE, Viscount Sherbrooke, was, as will be seen from his own account, of clerical descent on both sides. His father was the Rev. Robert Lowe, Rector of Bingham and Prebendary of Southwell, Notts, and his mother was the daughter of the Rev. Reginald Pyndar, Rector of Madresfield, Worcester. The mere fact that clerical celibacy is the law of the great Latin Church is proof positive that much may be said for it, from a purely sacerdotal standpoint. But England, as a State and as a nation, has assuredly been the gainer by the legalising of the marriage of her priesthood at the Reformation. It would astonish most persons, were the facts fairly placed before them, to find how much of the greatness and stability of our Empire is plainly due to the worth and patriotism of the sons of the clergy.' To go back only a hundred years, it may be doubted if there would now be an independent England at all, save for the little sickly offspring of a Norfolk parsonage, who fell at Trafalgar- but not before he had secured the inviolability of his native shores. In quite other ways, who, in our own day, has done so much by his individual genius to show that England and England's language should ever be foremost in the world, as that gifted and patriotic son of the Lincolnshire rectory-the late deeply lamented poet laureate? 6 These are merely two conspicuous instances. But the number of eminent Englishmen who first saw the light in a quiet parsonage, and received their early and indelible impressions of the world from its inmates and through the medium of its associations, is legion. One of the most notable is the subject of this biography, although it must be admitted that Lord Sherbrooke was among the least ecclesiastical of English statesmen. The so-called law of heredity clearly contains a great truth, Like produces like; and a man of genius or of great talent is, as a rule, the child, or at least the descendant, of gifted and remarkable people. The Rev. Robert Lowe, Rector of Bingham, was a man of distinct ability and of great individuality—qualities which only needed a wider stage for their display, to have made him famous. He was of the oldfashioned type of squire-parson it is the custom to revile nowa-days in the cheap prints, but which Mr. Froude, with the illustration of his own father, the Archdeacon of Totnes, before his eyes, so finely commemorates. The Rev. Robert Lowe was some years older than Lord Byron, and had known him intimately at Southwell in his early youth. The Miss Pigot who was a literary friend of Byron, was a cousin of Mr. Lowe, as was also the Rev. J. T. Becher of Southwell, to whom the poet addressed the verses beginning, Dear Becher, you tell me to mix with mankind.' Mrs. Chaworth Musters, who kindly sends the following letter, adds that her grandfather was naturally excessively annoyed at having been made the mouthpiece of an untruth; and that the coolness which arose in consequence lasted up to the end of Byron's life. Lord Byron to the Rev. R. Lowe. 8 St. James Street: May 15 My dear Sir, I have just been informed that a rep lating in Notts of an intention on my part to sell N. is rather unfortunate, as I have just tied the pro manner as to prevent the practicability, even if me to dispose of it. But as such a report m uncomfortable, I will feel very much oblig enough to contradict the rumour, should i |