Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/331

Rh On the 15th March, 1782, a motion of want of confidence, though negatived by a majority of nine, proved fatal to the Administration, and the Premier resigned. Then, after twelve years passed in "the cold shade of opposition," the Whigs were again in power; and one of the first steps taken by the Marquess of Rockingham, who now became Prime Minister, was to reward John Dunning with a coronet. His patent of nobility bore date April 8th, 1782, and thus the misshapen but clever son of the little Ashburton attorney became the first Baron Ashburton. None when in opposition had denounced more vigorously, and with greater display of righteous indignation, the bestowal of pensions on a large scale; but no sooner had he passed out of the Opposition into place than he exacted for himself the enormous pension of .£4000 per annum, a sum to him quite unnecessary, as he had amassed a huge fortune.

By this time, however, his health had begun to fail, and he died on August 18th, 1783, of paralysis, leaving a son, Richard Barre Dunning, to succeed him in the title, and to inherit a fortune of £180,000. The second Lord Ashburton married a daughter of William Cunninghame, of Lambshaw, and through her became allied with the Cranstoun family, to whom a large portion of his ample possessions passed at his death without issue in 1823.

Ashburton, in the Tudor period, seems to have possessed a school of wood-carving. The Church-wardens' Book shows that much work was done in