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Lady Ossington died before her sister, so all this wealth came to the Dowager Lady Howard de Walden, furnishing her with the splendid income of 180,000l. per annum. The stake in the Druce claim is not only the Dukedom of Portland and the entailed estates of the Bentincks in the male line; but in the female line too, including this dazzling dowry of 180,000l. a year. Place aux dames.

Full of romance as the Portland peerage was up to recent years, there is still another chapter to be added, in relating some of the statements made in connection with the claims put forward by Mrs. Druce and Mr. G.H. Druce to the honours and wealth of the Bentincks.

Through life he continues to regard the little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing diminutives: he takes charge of them in their father's absence, and, though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late at a riotous supper.

One of the characteristic traits of the Bentincks has been that in founding the fortunes of the family in the past their scions were successful in capturing great heiresses. These brief genealogical details will help to explain future developments in the history of this noble family. Cherchez la femme is a French saying, which has somewhat of a cynical ring about it.

The house in which William was then, during a few hours, a guest, passed long after his death, by female descents, from the Holleses to the Harleys, and from the Harleys to the Bentincks, and now contains the originals of those singularly interesting letters which passed between him and his trusty friend and servant Portland. At Welbeck the grandees of the north were assembled.

This noble mansion was gambled away at a card-party when the stakes were high and the players were the third Duke, grandfather of the eccentric peer, and Earl Harcourt. Thus it came into possession of the Bentincks. During the occupancy of the fifth Duke, the curious freaks of building for which he was so famous at Welbeck were repeated at Harcourt House.

For the first time since the Mutiny it marked a reversion to the spirit in which the Bentincks and Munros and Elphinstones had almost a century earlier conceived the mission of England in India to lie in the training of the Indian people to govern themselves, and for the first time an attempt was made to appraise generously but fairly the position of the Western-educated classes and the part they have come to play in the Indian polity.

William, second Duke, was a Knight of the Garter, as most of the other holders of the title have been, and he died in 1762. It was through his marriage with the grand-daughter of the Duke of Newcastle that the Bentincks became possessed of Welbeck. He was succeeded by his son, William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, third Duke, K.G., who had been M.P. for Weobley.

In these circumstances, if your Majesty took the tone of a Master, gave example to the Princes of the Empire in assembling an Army of Neutrality, would not you snatch the sceptre of Europe from the hands of the English, who now brave you, and speak in an insolent revolting manner of your Majesty, as do, in Holland also, the party of the Bentincks, the Fagels, the Opdams?

Garters, gold keys, white staves, rangerships, which had been considered as peculiarly belonging to the hereditary grandees of the realm, were now intercepted by aliens. Every English nobleman felt that his chance of obtaining a share of the favours of the Crown was seriously diminished by the competition of Bentincks and Keppels, Auverquerques and Zulesteins.