Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/99

 wish expressed in the will which he made three days before his death. The cost of the funeral was not to exceed 200l. The will was proved on 27 Oct., and a large and elaborate monument was erected on the north side of the chancel in the church. This was moved into the Pakington chapel when the church was restored in 1858–9. Pakington's effigy, by J. Rose, reclines on the marble tomb, and an inscription—prepared, as the will shows, beforehand—states that he was an indulgent father, a kind master, charitable and loyal; ‘he spoke his mind in parliament without reserve, neither fearing nor flattering those in power, but despising all their offers of title and preferment upon base and dishonourable compliances.’ Charles Lyttelton [q. v.], bishop of Carlisle, afterwards alleged that, as a matter of fact, Pakington had a secret pension from the whig minister of 500l. a year, charged on the Salt Office; but this is hardly probable, and Lyttelton was not a friendly critic.

By his first wife Pakington had two sons—John, who died at Oxford in 1712, aged nineteen, and Thomas, who entered Balliol College in 1715, aged nineteen, and died at Rome in 1724—and two daughters, Margaret and Frances, the latter of whom married Thomas, viscount Tracey (cf., vi. 382; Wentworth Papers, 93; Tatler, No. 40, ed. Nichols, 1786, ii. 50, v. 364–6). Other children of Pakington died young. By his second wife he had a son, Herbert Perrott, who succeeded his father as baronet and M.P. for Worcestershire, and who had two sons, John and Herbert Perrott, afterwards sixth and seventh baronets. The title became extinct upon the death of Sir John Pakington, eighth baronet, in 1830, but was revived in 1846 in favour of John Somerset Russell, son of Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the seventh baronet [see, first ].

Pakington is best known, not as a typical high tory and churchman, but as the supposed original of the Sir Roger de Coverley of the ‘Spectator.’ He seems, however, to have no just claim to that distinction. The name of the famous country gentleman was taken from the old country dance, and Tickell, Addison's editor, says that the whole of the characters in the periodical were feigned; while the Spectator himself said (No. 262), ‘When I place an imaginary name at the head of a character, I examine every syllable and letter of it, that it may not bear any resemblance to one that is real.’ It is true that Eustace Budgell vaguely asserted, in the preface to his ‘Theophrastus,’ that most of the characters in the ‘Spectator’ existed among the ‘conspicuous characters of the day;’ but it was Tyers (An Historical Essay on Mr. Addison, 1783) who first said that it was understood that Sir Roger was drawn for Sir John Pakington, a tory not without sense, but abounding in absurdities. It is difficult to understand how this story arose, for the two characters have remarkably few points of resemblance beyond the fact that they were both baronets of Worcestershire. Sir Roger was a bachelor, because he had been crossed in love by a perverse widow, while Pakington married twice. In March 1711, when the ‘Spectator’ was commenced, Pakington was 39, and an energetic and militant politician; Sir Roger was 55, had no enemies, and visited London only occasionally, when his old-world manners seemed strange to those who saw him, though in his youth he had been a fine gentleman about town. Sir Roger had, indeed, been more than once returned knight of the shire; but Pakington sat continuously in the house. Sir Roger was not given to lawsuits, though he sat on the bench at assizes, and at quarter sessions gained applause by explaining ‘a passage in the Game Act;’ but Pakington was a lawyer and a recorder, and able to take proceedings with success against opponents like Bishop Lloyd. Sir Roger would hardly have opposed a bishop, though he were Lloyd or Burnet. Both came into their estates when they were young; but Sir Roger, unlike Pakington, was a much stronger tory in the country than in town. Near Coverley Hall were the ruins of an old abbey, and the mansion was surrounded by ‘pleasing walks … struck out of a wood, in the midst of which the house stands;’ and there had been a monastery at Westwood, and the house was surrounded by two hundred acres of oak-trees; but the description of Coverley Hall would apply to many country houses besides Westwood. Even if the idea of Coverley Hall were taken from Westwood, there would be no sufficient ground for saying that Pakington was the prototype of Sir Roger.

George Hickes [q. v.], and others who would not take the oaths to William III, found a temporary refuge at Westwood in 1689. There Hickes wrote a great part of his ‘Linguarum Septentrionalium Thesaurus’, and he subsequently dedicated his ‘Grammatica Anglo-Saxonica’ to Pakington.

[Nash's History and Antiquities of Worcestershire, i. 186, 350–3, 536–40 (with views of Westwood); Lipscombe's History of the County of Buckingham, ii. 14, 15; Burke's Peerage and Extinct Baronetage; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses; State Papers, Treasury, 1697–1702 lxii.