Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/408

Rh fresh actions, which were still pending when Germain died in 1718. The litigation then came to an end, Peterborough having already declared that he would withdraw his claim if Germain left the property to his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Germain [q. v.]

During his later years Peterborough resided for the most part near Southampton, in a pleasant cottage with a large garden, known as Bevis Mount, the site of the present Bevois town, but then 'beautiful beyond imagination,' as Pope wrote to Mrs. Knight (Works, ix. 451). He suffered from stone. For some years his death, at frequent intervals, had seemed imminent, and in the spring of 1735 he was advised that an operation offered the only chance of life. His wife, still unacknowledged, but latterly, in deference to her scruples, allowed to wear her wedding ring, was his constant attendant, 'the sunshine' of his home. Before undergoing the operation he assembled a party of his relations in the rooms of his nephew, Stephen Pointz, in St. James's Palace, and formally introduced her as the Countess of Peterborough (, Hist. of Music, iv. 247-9). Shortly afterwards he publicly married her (, Works, ix. 318).

In July he was at Bevis Mount, conscious of his approaching end, and writing to Lady Suffolk that the example of the Emperor Julian showed him 'how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk's ought to die. I want,' he continued, 'to make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few friends more to meet upon the summit of my Bevis hill, and thence, after a speech and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds (as Julian expresses it) to mix amongst the stars.' Pope visited him towards the end of August, and was much struck by the extreme contrast between the vivacity and sprightliness of his mind and the attenuation of his body (ib. ix. 319-20). Peterborough was afterwards in London for a few days, alternating between bed and dinner parties. He had been meditating a journey to the south of France, but he ultimately went with his wife to Lisbon. He died there on 25 Oct. 1735, six days after his arrival. The body was brought back to England by his widow, and buried in the family vault in Turvey Church, Bedfordshire. His second son Henry is separately noticed.

For some years Peterborough had amused himself in writing his memoirs in three manuscript volumes. The countess, in looking over them, was so shocked that she burnt them. A lady who had also seen them told Dr. Burney that Peterborough boasted of having committed three capital crimes before he was twenty. But the memoirs were in all probability wholly or in great part fictitious. In Peterborough's mind there was a strange confusion between imagination and fact, and his unsupported assertions cannot be accepted as trustworthy contributions to his biography. In matters of history, where his character, his reputation, and his interest were at stake, statements emanating from him and known to be false must be held as substantiating the graver charge. He was of untiring energy, restless in mind and body. His parliamentary speeches and letters show him to have been clever, witty, incisive in thought and word. He was a generous and judicious patron of men of letters and science, who gratefully acknowledged his benefactions, and gave him a higher reputation than he otherwise deserved. Swift, however, who had a certain affection for him, calls him with friendly insight 'the ramblingest lying rogue on earth,' and to Macky's unflattering portrait in the 'Memoirs' Swift gave the rare distinction of his approval. He was as foolishly careless of his own as he was culpably careless of the public money; and the common idea that he was a distinguished commander of fleets or armies rests only on his own statements; while the official documents and the reports of the men who were with him in Spain testify to his incompetence. He is described as a little spare man, 'a skeleton in outward figure,' according to Swift's familiar lines, of pleasing appearance and winning manners. His portrait, by Dahl, is in the possession of the Earl of Carlisle; another, by Kneller, belonging to Mr. W. B. Stopford, was engraved by Houbraken. A third portrait belongs to Viscount Boyne.

[Of the biographies of Peterborough, that in the Men of Action Series, by Mr. William Stebbing, is the best. All the other memoirs those by Colonel F. S. Russell (1887), by G. Warburton (1853), by Charnock (Biog. Nav. iii. 314), by Sir Walter Scott (Preface to the Memoirs of Captain George Carleton, 1809), or by Lord Ribblesdale (Fortnightly Review, August 1885), depend on the Memoirs of Captain Carleton, which Mr. Stebbing rightly treats as apocryphal, or on Peterborough's own imaginings. Colonel A. Parnell, in his History of the War of the Succession in Spain (1888), is the only recent historian who has shaken himself clear of Carleton's Memoirs, which he proves to be fictitious, and has based his history of the campaigns of 1705-1706 solely on official and contemporary accounts, which in their estimate of Peterborough's conduct differ considerably from that previously received. In a later article on Carleton in the 