Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/10

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIL JAN. 5, 1901,

cost him upwards of 1,600., small part of which ever found its way back into his purse. But he always felt justly proud of his handiwork. It is said by his descendants that except as an actor, when he was fairly hooted off the stage he never failed in aught he undertook ; and he played the flute so skilfully that Nicholson, the flautist of the day, was glad to play duets with him. He was also intimate with the elder Charles Ma thews.

He married a Miss Murgatroyd, with a fortune of 20,000/. invested in the shares of the Aire and Calder Navigation Company, made descendible as land by Act of Parlia- ment, as the writer of these lines knows to his advantage; for thus a part of Miss Mur- gatroyd's 20,000/. eventually found its way into his pocket.

He grieves to say that his great-grandfather eyed the family pedigree with deep distrust, and would "poke fun" at it across the walnuts and the wine. The Lever crest is a cock perched on a trumpet and crowing to salute the rising sun a pun on the name (lever). Darcy Lever affirmed, over his cups, that the cock should have been a goose, because the founder of the family, a nameless vagabond, stole a goose from a common and was caught in the act by her owner, who gave chase, shouting, " Leave 'er ! Leave 'er!" whence his surname and that of his posterity.

The novelist Charles Lever claimed kin- ship with the Alkrington Levers ; but they proudly rejected his claim Heaven knows why and there is no trace of his name or ancestors in the pedigree, which is remark- ably meagre. A Mr. John Orrel Lever went so far as to claim descent from Sir Ashton, who, though married, died without issue, as we have seen.

John Lever died without issue, and Darcy outlived both his sons, the elder of whom, John, a midshipman in the navy, was drowned off Cadiz during the Peninsular War. The younger, too, named Darcy, died young, c&lebs et sine prole.

Mrs. Lever, born Murgatroyd, held the motherly rein so tight that two of her daughters ran away from her as soon as they had a chance. The eldest, Mary Isabella, ran away with the solicitor son of a wealthy hop -dealer named Springett, of Finchcox, near Goudhurst in Kent, and, in wedlock, bore him two children : a son who married, but whose posterity is extinct, and a daughter named Stephana, who in 1837 married John Clarke Kent, only son of Benjamin Goolden Kent, of Levant Lodge, Worcestershire. Mary Isabella Springett (bora Lever) married, after

her first husband's death, Major Austen, of Taywell, Kent, and, when again left a widow, Lieut. George Adams Nares, a son of Dr. Edward Nares, rector of Biddenden, Kent, and sometime Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford^ He wrote, as every reader of Macaulay's 'Essays' knows full well, that * History of Burleigh and his Times' which weighed so many pounds avoirdupois in Macaulay's scales. He also wrote it is an open secret now 'Thinks I to Myself/ and a book called 'Heraldic Anomalies.' He was a son of Mr. Justice Nares, a puisne judge of the old Court of Common Pleas, who had two other somewhat distinguished sons : one, Archdeacon Nares, author of the well-known 'Glossary of Old English Words and Phrases' that bears his name ; the other that doctor of music whose anthems are sometimes still heard in our churches and college chapels. But Dr. Edward Nares enjoys the unusual distinction of having been, before his second marriage with a Miss Adams, the hero of a little tale of true love that Macaulay little dreamed of when he laughed at the heaviness of the doctor's style. The tale is brief and will bear telling. When first ordained Ed- ward Nares took a curacy near Woodstock, and visited the then Duke of Maryborough and his household at Blenheim Palace. One of the duke's daughters, Lady Charlotte Spencer Churchill, fell in love with the young curate, who shortly afterwards trans- ferred himself to the curacy of Heridon, Middlesex, then a sweetly pretty country village, far from the smoke and din of the ever- waxing leviathan, London. One day as Mr. Nares returned from his afternoon walk, his landlady met him at the door of his lodgings and told him with an air of mystery that a lady was waiting for him in his sitting-room, in he walked, and there sat Lady Charlotte. The duke wisely hastened the marriage now inevitable ; arid the brides fortune of 20,000/. was, of conrse settled on herself for life, arid, subject to her husband s life-interest should he survive her on the children born to them. There was but one a gii-L who afterwards married her cousin Lord Henry Spencer Churchill, and after his death, Mr. Whately, Q.C some time eader of the Oxford Circuit, till Mr Huddleston "pushed him from his stool," and poor old Mr Whately travelled the circSt lie formerly led without receiving even a single brief. Such are the chafces and changes of life at the Bar.

Another of Darcy Lever's daughters - Be^ie, the beauty of a bevy of g eaut iful