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Updated: May 25, 2025
His family had been a good as it was an old family. But it had come down in the world. It had grown poorer and poorer as the generations rolled on, and that manor of Daylesford which had been in the family in the days of the second Henry had passed in the year of Sheriffmuir into the hands of a Gloucester merchant.
There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate which had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and as his fortune rose.
He played in the fields which his fathers had owned; and what the loyal and brave Hastings of Daylesford HAD been, was ever in the boy's thoughts.
Hastings was to be Lord Daylesford. For, through all changes of scene and changes of fortune, remained unchanged his attachment to the spot which had witnessed the greatness and the fall of his family, and which had borne so great a part in the first dreams of his young ambition. But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the thirteenth of June, Mr.
Still if Hastings had practised strict economy, he would, after all his losses, have had a moderate competence; but in the management of his private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his heart had always been to regain Daylesford.
The expenses of the trial nearly ruined him; but the East India Company granted him an annual income of four thousand pounds, which he spent in ornamenting and enriching Daylesford, the seat which had once belonged to his family, and which he purchased after his return from India.
He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford.
His second was the pleasurable anxiety of negotiating for the purchase of Daylesford, the realization of his youthful dream. He was made a little anxious too, later on, by the delay in the awarding to him of those honors which he so confidently expected.
His family was ancient and illustrious; but their vicissitudes of fortune and ill-requited loyalty in the cause of the Stuarts, brought them to poverty, and the family estate at Daylesford, of which they had been lords of the manor for hundreds of years, at length passed from their hands.
His masters predicted for him a brilliant University career, and it is possible that Hastings may have seen Daylesford Manor awaiting him at the end of such a career, and have welcomed the prospect. But the life of Warren Hastings was not fated to pass in the cloistered greenness of a university or in the still air of delightful studies.
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