Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/53

 union the distinguished representative of Chelsea in Parliament is lineally descended.

The Dukes were probably of Danish origin, and are to be found settled at Kirby Mallory, in Leicestershire, as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.

Fisher Dilke was a Puritan of the Puritans, much given to angling, and piety of an extravagant kind. He was a Fifth Monarchy man, and, like his sect, would have prepared the ways of King Christ, and made the paths of his speedy return straight by first abolishing all existing authority and cancelling all bonds of human allegiance. He was doomed to sore disappointment. His co-sectaries mustered strong in Barebone's Parliament, but in the eyes of the pious Lord Protector did no good whatever, though they never deliberated without meanwhile setting apart a committee of eight of their number to seek the Lord in prayer. Their mittimus came speedily from the Protector in the memorable words, "You may go elsewhere to seek the Lord, for to my certain knowledge he has not been here for many years."

At the restoration of the monarchy Fisher Dilke is said to have died of sheer grief, having first dug his own grave.

Of all Sir Charles's ancestors, however, the most remarkable was Peter Wentworth, the grandfather of Sybil, wife of Fisher Dilke, leader of the Puritan opposition in Parliament in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and brother-in-law to the famous Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham. This Peter and his brother Paul were seldom out of trouble. Hallam calls them "the bold, plain-spoken, and honest, but not very judicious Wentworths, the most undaunted assertors of civil liberty in his reign."