Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/221

 a post in the Bourbon household, and had been created Baron de Flassons, from a domain of that name presented him by his master. Sophia herself won admiration in annual amateur theatricals at St. Leu, and was loaded with attentions by the Duke of Orleans, his wife, and sister. The revolution of 1830 arrived. Bourbon, now aged 74, anxious both to escape his mistress's tyranny and to avoid the recognition of the new dynasty pressed on him by Queen Amélie, appears to have contemplated a surreptitious flight from France, in which case he would certainly have revoked the will, while Sophia also made preparations for departure for England, and had drawn a bill for half a million francs on London. On 27 Aug. the duke was found dead in his bedroom at St. Leu, suspended by two cravats from the window handle. In a long judicial inquiry some of the duke's servants imputed the grossest profligacy as well as crime to Sophia, who, according to M. Billault, audaciously denied such manifest facts, that, but for express injunctions from the king, she would have been placed under arrest. On 21 June 1831 the judges decided, however, that there was no ground for a prosecution, and the Rohans were equally unsuccessful (22 Feb. 1832) in disputing the will on the ground of undue influence. In the interval between the two decisions James Dawes, returning with his aunt from London, died very suddenly at Calais, and heated imaginations attributed to her a second crime. She became estranged from the Orleans family on their disregarding Bourbon's bequest of Ecouen for a charitable institution for the descendants of the Coblentz and Vendée soldiers, and although entitled for life to a wing of the Palais Bourbon, besides being owner of St. Leu, she could not have found residence in France very agreeable, for legitimists and republicans had a political interest in vilifying her. She accordingly purchased an estate in Hampshire, as well as a house in Hyde Park Square, and gradually disposed of most of her French property. In 1840, suffering from dropsy, she settled in London for medical advice. Her mother, who like herself had entered the Roman catholic church, and was for a time in the Carmelite nunnery, Paris, had died at Hammersmith, and had been described on the register as a spinster. Sophia died in December 1840. A London French paper states that her last moments were peaceful. A London solicitor had prepared a will for her, but she died without executing it. She left, however, a French memorandum, by which, after four thousand francs to each nephew and niece, and a few other legacies, she named as residuary legatee Sophie Thanaron, daughter of her sister Charlotte and of a retired French officer. Sophie was about ten years of age, and had lived almost from infancy with her aunt. The memorandum implored the Duke of Aumale, in return for her zeal for his interests, to carry out his benefactor's last wish, the Ecouen bequest. A complicated litigation followed. The three French lawyers appointed as Sophie's guardians maintained the validity of the memorandum; the Paris hospitals, to whom Baron de Feuchères had assigned his interest, claimed the entire property on the plea that the deceased was illegitimate, and a surviving brother and sister claimed as next of kin to an intestate. A compromise was effected. The hospitals received 13,000l., the brother and sister (Mary Ann Clark) 70,000l. each, and Sophie Thanaron the large residue. Sir H. Jenner Fust, in granting letters of administration, spoke of the deceased as a person of very extraordinary talents, and of her history as the greatest romance of real life within his knowledge.

[Billault de Gérainville's Histoire de Louis Philippe; Louis Blanc's Histoire de Dix Ans, Times, 17 Jan. and 8 July 1843.] 

DAWES, WILLIAM (1671–1724), archbishop of York, the youngest son of Sir John Dawes and Jane, daughter of Richard Hawkins of Braintree, was born in August 1671 at Lyons, near Braintree in Essex. The family of Dawes was an ancient and rich one, but lost much of its property in the civil war through attachment to the royal cause. After the Restoration a baronetcy was conferred upon Sir John Dawes, father of Sir William, ‘in memory of many services conferred, and hardships undergone, by the family in the civil confusion, and in acknowledgment of several sums of money annually transmitted to the royal family in exile.’ Sir William entered Merchant Taylors' School 11 Sept. 1680, where he showed great precocity in his studies; he is said to have been not only a good classical scholar, but also ‘a tolerable master of the Hebrew tongue’ before he was fifteen years of age. His masters were, first, John Hartcliffe, and then Ambrose Bonwicke; but he owed much of his proficiency to the interest which Dr. Richard Kidder, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells, took in his education. Before he was eighteen he wrote a poem on rather an ambitious subject, ‘The Anatomy of Atheisme,’ which, though a raw, juvenile performance, without even any promise of poetical power, shows a certain precocity of talent; and before he was twenty-one he wrote a devotional work entitled ‘The