Lady Huntingdon

“ Nearly all the clever ones lean that way. But I doubt your religious mania is the worst; and a woman must be far gone who fills her house with a mixed rabble of crazy nobility and converted bricklayers. I am told Lady Huntingdon recognizes no distinctions of class among her followers."
"Nay, there you are wrong, Lady Peggy," cried Antonia, "for Mr. Whitefield preaches to the quality in her ladyship's drawing-room, but goes down to her kitchen to convert the rabble."
"Lady Huntingdon models her life upon the precepts of her Redeemer, madam," said Stobart, ignoring this interruption. ”

“ But indeed, sir, I do desire to help the poor."
"I believe it, madam, and that God will bless your desires. 'Tis not easy for a woman in the bloom of youth and beauty to take up the cross as Lady Huntingdon has done—to dedicate all she has of fortune and influence to the service of Christ. ”

“ John Wesley's influence was at the bottom of it all. There's no reckoning the harm those Oxford Methodists have done in high families. Well, there's Lady Huntingdon! There's no need to say more than that."
"But how comes this gentleman to be in poor circumstances, as the St. James's Post states, if his mother is rich?"
"Oh, my lady, the honourable Mrs. Stobart was quite as angry as his lordship, and she married Sir David Lanigan, an Irish baronet, who courted her when she was a girl at Kilrush Abbey. Your ladyship would notice her portrait in the long drawing-room at Kilrush." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lady Huntingdon was rather above the middle size, her mien dignified, her address particularly pleasing, and her mind acute, diligent, and indefatigable. She was so little given to self-indulgence, that a friend used to say, she was one of the poor who lived upon her own bounty. ”

“ They are found at Bath, Bristol, Brighton, Canterbury, Cheltenham, Ely, Exeter, Hereford, Kidderminster, Malvern, Margate, Norwich, St. Ives, Cornwall, Rochdale, Swansea, Spa Fields, Tunbridge Wells, Worcester, and Yarmouth.
X. CLOSING YEARS. Until the close of her long life of eighty-four years, Lady Huntingdon retained much of that vigour of intellect which had marked the whole of her career. In spiritual life also she continued to develop year by year. ”

“ In addition to Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, Romaine, Madan, Venn, and others preached. Among those who were converted by these sermons were the wife and sister of Lord Chesterfield; the latter, Lady Gertrude Hotham, opening her house for the preaching of the Gospel. Lady Huntingdon was no recluse. Uncompromising as she was in every matter where religious principle was involved, she was always ready to avail herself of the true privileges of pleasure which her rank and position enabled her to enjoy. ”

“ He will surely have mercy on him, and not on him only, for many would fall with him."
[Footnote 1: Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, vol. 1. p. 36.]
IV. FAMILY BEREAVEMENTS. Lady Huntingdon at this period of her life was called upon to endure some very heavy domestic griefs. She had to mourn for two of her sons, George, aged thirteen, and Fernando, aged eleven, who died of small-pox. They were both buried in Westminster Abbey. On October 13, 1746, she lost her husband, who was carried off by an apoplectic seizure, in his fiftieth year. ”

“ Lady Huntingdon identified herself the remainder of her long life with ‘the people called methodists,’ and her husband frequently attended with her George Whitefield's preaching, though he never became an actual convert. Lady Huntingdon was mainly instrumental in introducing the ‘new light’ into aristocratic circles, into which it probably would never otherwise have found its way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I look upon Lady Huntingdon as an eminent servant of God, an honest, gracious person, but not above the reach of prejudice; and where prejudice misleads her, her warm heart makes her go rather too fast. It is in your power greatly to break, if not altogether to remove, the prejudice she has conceived against you, and to become all things to her, that you may not cause her to stumble in the greatness of her 179zeal for the Lord. The best way to get the Calvinists to allow us something, is to grant them all we possibly can. ”

“ Wesley had been summoned from London, and no clergyman being available at that moment, he left Maxfield in charge, to pray with the members of the society and to give them such helpful advice as he could. In a letter to Wesley, written either at the close of 1739 or the beginning of 1740, Lady Huntingdon writes of Maxfield: "He is one of the greatest instances of God's peculiar favour that I know: he is raised from the stones to sit amongst the princes of His people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was very anxious to see her daughter, who was her only child, and was now passing out of her youthful days, well married, as the world esteems it; so she was very glad of an opportunity of drawing out Amos Huntingdon, whom she looked upon as a worthy, weak, shy, dull young man, rather depressed by his discouraging home surroundings, and not a likely person to attract or seek the affections of any young lady who might be fortunate enough to combine the allurements of wealth and beauty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ninth Earl of Huntingdon, father of the first Countess of Moira, died in 1746, and was succeeded by his son, brother of the Lady Moira. The tenth earl, however, died without issue in 1789; whereupon the earldom became suspended, and so continued for thirty years, a fact involving matters of very deep interest, but of no importance so far as present purposes are concerned. The tenth Earl of Huntingdon’s heir was his sister, Lady Moira, and upon her descended the ancient baronies of the Huntingdon earldom—namely, Hastings, Hungerford, Botreaux, and Molines. ”

“ Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, whom that day was to make a duchess, and who bore away the palm from the rest as “the best singer and the best dancer” of all the royal ladies, held her place, beaming with smiles, and radiant with rubies and crimson velvet. Next, arrayed in blue velvet, sat the only daughter of York, Constance Lady Le Despenser. Round the hall sat the nobles of England in their “Parliament robes,” each of the married peers with his lady at his side ”

“ Then, on the ninth of July, all at once, as a storm breaks out after a calm, or a tumult after a time of torpor and almost unnatural quiescence, the peaceful quietude of Sion House was broken up by the arrival of an illustrious company with their followers.
Mistress Ellen brought the news to Lady Jane, with whom I was sitting in the drawing-room, that the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Northampton and the Earls of Arundel, Huntingdon, and Pembroke had arrived and were desirous of seeing her. ”

“ Most gladly did he acquiesce in the plans proposed by his sister as to the day and manner of his wife’s return, promising that he would duly restrain himself at the first meeting, and that he would endeavour to erase, by his future consideration and attention to her every wish, any painful scar that might remain from harshness or unkindness in times past. Miss Huntingdon was most deeply thankful that her path had been thus smoothed by the wise and tender hand that guides all the footsteps of the trusting people of God ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah, good! it is very generous of you to put down your own name for so large a sum to the building fund, besides giving the land. Put me down then for fifty pounds, and an annual subscription of three guineas till the concern is self-supporting.”
“May I look at the list?” asked Miss Huntingdon, when their visitor had expressed his thanks to her brother. Having glanced at it, she also signified her willingness to be a helper in the work, and gave the list to Walter to return to the gentleman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are ninety-nine chances to one that she has come to her rest at last. You will feel pleasantly when you see her in her shroud."
His hard face worked painfully, and tears glided down the wrinkled cheek and hid themselves in his grey beard. Mr. Huntingdon was much agitated, but an angry flush crossed his brow as he answered hastily,—
"I am the best judge of my family matters. You are unjust and severe. Of course I love my child better than anybody else." ”