Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/142

 92 COMPLETE PEERAGE albemarle by Reinira Anna Gertruyde, da. of Johan van Lintello tot de Mars. He was b. 1670, and attended the Prince of Orange, in 1688, to England as a page of honour, who, soon after his accession to the throne of England (as William III), made him (1691) Groom of the Bedchamber 1691-95, and Master of the Robes 1695-97. He also granted him an enormous amount of forfeited Irish lands, though Keppel was then but a handsome lad, under age, who had rendered no service whatever to his adopted country. (") He attended the King in his several campaigns, and (having been in 1692 admitted into the Knighthood of Zutphen, and, subsequently, into that of Holland and West Friesland), was, on 10 Feb. 1696/7, cr. BARON ASHFORD, of Ashford, Kent ; VISCOUNT BURY, co. Lancaster ; and EARL OF ALBEMARLE. C) Major Gen. 1697. Col. of ist troop of (*) " Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning manners and a quick, though not a profound, understanding. Courage, loyalty, and secrecy, were common between him and Portland." See Macaulay's History of England, where also it is mentioned that of nearly three-quarters of the 1,700,000 acres that had been forfeited in Ireland, " though a small part had been bestowed on men whose services to the state well deserved a much larger recompence " {e.g., the Earl of Athlone and the Earl of Galway), the rest had been given to " the King's personal friends. Romney had obtained a considerable share of the royal bounty. But of all the grants the largest was to Woodstock, the eldest s. of Portland ; the next was to Albemarle. An admirer of William cannot relate without pain that he divided between these two foreigners an extent of country larger than Hertfordshire. " The facts are as follows. To his discarded concubine, to six foreigners, and three others, the upright monarch allotted over 600,000 acres in Ireland, besides an immense acreage in England of which no precise estimate is available. It is not surprising that Pari, should have refused to sanction all these grants, which were without parallel since the reign of Ric. II. The list of the principal grants is as under : — acres Viscount Woodstock, (s. and h. ap. of the Earl of Portland) 133,820 Arnold van Keppel, afterwards cr. Earl of Albemarle 108,634 Elizabeth Villiers, afterwards Countess of Orkney 95,649* Richard Coote, cr. Earl of Bellomont 77,291 Henry Sydney, afterwards cr. Earl of Romney 49,518 William Nassau de Zulestein, afterwards cr. Earl of Rochford 39,871 Henri de Ruvigny, afterwards cr Earl of Galway 36,148 Godert de Ginkell, afterwards cr. Earl of Athlone 26,481 Marquis de Puissar 25,753 Lady Gravemore 21,006 Valued at ;^337,943 ! Total 614,171 Of the above grants even more outrageous than that to his mistress, is the colossal donation to the young Dutchman, Keppel, with which the Royal Corydon rewarded the public (?) services of a handsome lad then barely of age, who was shortly after to be adorned with an English Earldom. No wonder that Portland was jealous, that mutinous Tories talked of Piers Gaveston, and that even Macaulay is driven to express the above pained disapprobation of his hero's conduct. V.G. ('') The late Lord Braybrooke (1825-58) states [erroneously] that he was rr.