Countess of Huntingdon

“ It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so at variance with high rank and good breeding." The Countess of Suffolk on one occasion was so incensed at a sermon of Whitfield in the Countess of Huntingdon's drawing room, that she rushed out of the house in a passion, under the impression that the discourse was a personal attack. ”

“ The remains of the castle of Huntingdon, though reduced to banks, ditches, and a mound, nevertheless show how spacious and how strong must have been this chief seat of the broad earldom of Countess Judith and her descendants the kings of Scotland, earls also of Huntingdon. The Danes were encamped here in 921, and the burh which had been ruined was restored by Eadward in the same year. The ditches were fed from the Ouse, which expanded before the castle as a broad marsh, now a fertile meadow. ”

“ The young Earl of Huntingdon came of age in 1750, and the Countess gave up Donnington Park to him, removing her household to Ashby, living there with her other children and two of the Ladies Hastings. Towards the close of 1749 Whitefield desired, if possible, with the aid of Lady Huntingdon, to organise the vast numbers who had been greatly blessed by his evangelistic work, into a corporate body, like that which the clear, practical wisdom of John Wesley had created for the societies which looked up to him as leader. ”

“ What zeal for God perpetually attends her! Had I twenty bodies, I could like nineteen of them to run about for her.' [772]
The good countess was not unworthy of all this esteem. In spite of her little foibles, she was a thoroughly earnest Christian woman. Her munificence was unbounded. 'She would give,' said Grimshaw, 'to the last gown on her back.' She is said to have spent during her life more than 100,000l. in the service of religion.
Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, like John Wesley's societies, drifted away rather than separated from the National Church. ”

“ A severe illness soon laid the Countess low, and brought her to the confines of the grave. She looked back to her past life, but the piety, virtue, and morality in which she had trusted, appeared to be tainted with sin. The report of the earnest preaching of certain clergymen, who were called Methodists, reached Donnington Park; the truth impressed some members of the Hastings family; and through them Lady Huntingdon was directed to the truth as it is in Jesus, and obtained lasting peace. The change in her heart exerted a beneficial influence on her body ”

“ The pulpits were generally supplied by clergymen of the Established Church, procured by the countess's personal influence. But such arrangements became increasingly difficult to make. Their 'irregularity' was disapproved in high quarters. Lady Huntingdon's chaplains were, in fact, as 'irregular' in their labours as Wesley's itinerant preachers. The system that found no place for the one could not long sanction the other; whilst her ladyship's ecclesiastical authority was a still greater anomaly than that of Wesley. ”

“ In 1768 she converted the old mansion of Trevecca, near Talgarth, in South Wales, into a theological seminary for young ministers for the connexion. Up to 1779 Lady Huntingdon and her chaplains continued members of the Church of England, but in that year the prohibition of her chaplains by the consistorial court from preaching in the Pantheon, a large building in London rented for the purpose by the countess, compelled her, in order to evade the injunction, to take shelter under the Toleration Act. ”

“ In an after-conversation the honest King confessed that Lady Huntingdon herself had been painted to him in very odd colours, and, in admitting her to an interview, he was partly influenced by his curiosity to see whether she was so strange a creature as she had been described by her enemies. To his expressions of admiration for herself and her work the Queen added similar assurances ”

“ His mother was Catherine Pole (d. 1576) , a descendant of George, duke of Clarence; and, asserting that he was thus entitled to succeed Elizabeth on the English throne, Huntingdon won a certain amount of support, especially from the Protestants and the enemies of Mary, queen of Scots. In 1572 he was appointed president of the council of the north, and during the troubled period between the flight of Mary to England in 1568 and the defeat of the Spanish armada twenty years later he was frequently employed in the north of England. ”

“ As was only natural, Huntingdon was strongly adverse to the proposed marriage between Mary Queen of Scots and Norfolk. He held meetings at his house to organise resistance to it, and his energetic measures had considerable influence in frustrating the designs of the northern conspirators in 1569. When rumours arose of a possible northern rebellion, precautions were taken by Elizabeth to prevent the escape of the Queen of Scots. ”

“ For no man, be he duke or prince, can be of better blood than we of the House of Rothes, not to speak of Xaintrailles and many other gentlemen of our company.
The Duke, then, put not his noble person in any jeopardy, but, more wisely, he sent messengers after my Lord of Huntingdon that he should bring up the English to aid the Burgundian hare-hunters. But Huntingdon had departed to Rouen, where then lay Henry, King of England, a boy on whom and on whose House God has avenged the Maid with terrible judgments, and will yet the more avenge her, blessed be His name! ”

“ On the return to the palace the King replied to a sympathising observation of the Queen, ‘I am going to bed with a confidence that I shall sleep soundly; and my prayer is that the poor unhappy prisoner who aimed at my life may rest as quietly as I shall.’
The other domestic incidents in the life of the Queen or King are not of sufficient interest to be worth the detail. We may make exception of one, however, which introduces us once more to the earnest and indefatigable Lady Huntingdon. ”

“ It was doubtless felt that the earl’s own title to the crown was a pledge that he would show scant sympathy with the advocates of Mary’s claim. He assisted George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, to remove the Scottish queen from Wingfield to Tutbury, and for a short time in 1569 he was one of her custodians. Huntingdon was responsible for the compilation of an elaborate history of the Hastings family, a manuscript copy of which is now in the British Museum. As he died childless, his earldom passed to his brother George. ”

“ Some disquiets must arise, but I trust not hurtful; for her majesty saith she will know the truth, so as every one shall see his own fault, and so stay.... My lord of Huntingdon is joined with the earl of Shrewsbury for the Scots queen's safety. Whilst this matter was in passing, you must not think but the queen of Scots was nearer looked to than before."
The duke on his arrival was committed to the Tower; but neither against him nor any of his adherents did the queen think proper to proceed by course of law, and they were all liberated after a restraint of longer or shorter duration. ”

“ On 4 July 1479 he gave up the earldom of Pembroke in exchange for the earldom of Huntingdon at the request of the king, who desired to bestow it on his son Edward. He was captain of the army in France, June to September 1475; was appointed justice of South Wales on 15 Nov. 1483, and acted as commissioner of array in Wales, Monmouth, and Herefordshire. He died in 1491. On 28 Feb. 1484 he covenanted to marry Catherine, daughter of Richard III; but the princess died before the time appointed for the marriage, and Huntingdon married Mary, fifth daughter of Richard, earl Rivers. ”

“ The posterity of William, king of Scotland, the prince taken prisoner by Henry II., being all extinct by the death of Margaret of Norway, the right to the crown devolved on the issue of David, earl of Huntingdon brother to William, whose male line being also extinct, left the succession open to the posterity of his daughters. The earl of Huntingdon had three daughters; Margaret, married to Alan, lord of Galloway, Isabella, wife of Robert Brus or Bruce lord of Annandale, and Adama, who espoused Henry, Lord Hastings. ”

“ As if to strengthen the alliance between Northumberland and himself, he married his heir, Henry, to Northumberland's daughter Katherine, 21 May 1553, on the same day as Lady Jane Grey married Lord Guildford Dudley.
Before Edward VI's death Huntingdon signed the engagement of the council to maintain Lady Jane Grey's succession to the crown. On the king's death he joined Northumberland in declaring for Lady Jane; was with his leader at Cambridge on 19 July 1553, and was seized and taken to the Tower of London, by order of Queen Mary, a day or two later. ”

“ Lord Huntingdon’s enquiry went forward, and both ladies were ultimately acquitted of “large treasons.” If the gaoler-soldier Earl did not give his wife a sound verbal drubbing for endangering the peace of his whole house in so gratuitous a fashion it would be strange. From the very first, in spite of his assurances to the Queen, he must have scented his lady’s ambition with regard to any possible semi-royal offspring of the Rufford marriage. The matter weighed on him greatly in after life. ”

“ That simplicity and truth which will always secure esteem from the wise, appears to have gained Lady Huntingdon the respect of many who disagreed with her in principle. Her son, who was unfortunately of the infidel school, still highly reverenced his venerable mother.
At her death, Lady Huntingdon left her chapels to trustees and executors for the continuance of the same plan, which is still pursued, though the property she left for that purpose was seized, on her death, by the Americans of Georgia and Carolina, where it lay. ”

“ I was commissioned by the king to apprehend the Earl of Huntingdon. I brought with me a party of soldiers, picked and tried men, knowing that he would not lightly yield. I sent my lieutenant with a detachment to surprise the earl’s castle in his absence, and laid my measures for intercepting him on the way to his intended nuptials; but he seems to have had intimation of this part of my plan, for he brought with him a large armed retinue, and took a circuitous route, which made him, I believe, somewhat later than his appointed hour. ”

“ Many of the buildings associated with her name and ministers were local trusts, so that the power of the Connexion trustees never extended over more than a portion of the churches which her evangelistic zeal had founded or strengthened. It was almost inevitable that such an arrangement should be fatal to development, and so it has proved.
The latest sketch of Lady Huntingdon's life thus sets forth the present position of the Connexion: "The Fifteen Articles are the bond and doctrinal basis of administration in the Connexion ”

“ If I go to the king without her license, it were in her power to hang me at my return, and that, for any thing I see, it were ill trusting her." Lord Hunsdon "merrily" told the queen what he said. "If the gentleman be so distrustful," she answered, "let the secretary make a safe-conduct to go and come, and I will sign it." On his return with letters from James, Robert Cary hastened to court, and entered the presence-chamber splashed and dirty as he was; but not finding the queen there, lord Hunsdon went to her to announce his son's arrival. ”

“ That was very well for a beginning, but it was nothing to what followed; every branch of the queen's family must be aggrandised without delay. She had five sisters, and each of them was married to one of the highest noblemen in the realm: one to the Duke of Buckingham; one to the heir of the Earl of Essex; a third to the Earl of Arundel; a fourth to Lord Grey de Ruthin, who was made Earl of Kent; and the fifth to Lord William Herbert, created Earl of Huntingdon. Her brother Anthony was married to the heiress of the late Lord Scales, and endowed with her estate and title. ”

“ He bitterly complained of the ill equipment of his troops and want of money, and his energetic personal efforts failed to retain Boulogne. When the Duke of Northumberland obtained full power in 1550, Huntingdon was made a privy councillor, 4 Sept. ”

“ At the end of November 1688 Huntingdon attempted, it is said, to poison the Earl of Bath at Plymouth and seize upon the citadel for James II. He was imprisoned for a time with all the officers of his regiment save Captain Viscount Hatton and excepted from the Act of Indemnity in July 1689 (ib. i. 480, 554; Hatton Correspondence, ii. 117) . Huntingdon was one of the managers of the conference with the commons in February 1689. ”

“ Coronet.—That of an Earl.
[Reusner. ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΩΝ operis Genealogici Catholici Auctarium, illustres Stirpes Comitum continens, etc. Francofurti, 1592.]
Ferdinando Hastings (born 18th January 1608, died 13th February 1655) was the son of Henry, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Ferdinando, Earl of Derby. He succeeded his father in the Earldom in 1643. Lord Huntingdon married Lucy, daughter of Sir John Davis of Englefield, Berks. ”

“ She has reached the highest point of her ambition, and in the foremost rank of the first society in Europe; her husband has made a great speech in the House of Lords; she is still declared to be the most beautiful woman of this gorgeous London season. Their West End house is filled with all the leading people of the time; the Verners are the rage,—the Countess is the one bright particular star in the aristocratic atmosphere of the period. ”