Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/304

 284 CLEVELAND MARQUESSATE. i. William Harry ^ (Vane), Earl of Dar- lington, only s. and h. of Henry, 2nd Earl of I. 1827. Darlington, by Margaret, sister of James, Earl of Lonsdale, da. of Robert Lowther [which Henry DUKEDOM. was s. and h. of Henry, ist Earl of Darlington, by Grace, sister of the whole blood of William, and IV. 1833. 1st da. of Charles (FitzRoy), Dukes OF Cleveland abovenamed], was b. 27 July, and bap. 18 Aug. 1766, at St. James's, Westm.; matric. at Oxford (Ch. Ch.), 25 Apr. 1783; was M.P. (Whig) for Totnes, 1788-90; for Winchelsea, 1790-92; being then j/j/^^ Viscount Barnard. On 8 Sep. 1792, he sue. his father as Earl OF Darlington. Lord Lieut, of co. Durham, 1793 till his death ;('') Col. in the Army (during service), 1794. On 5 Oct. 1827, he was cr. MARQUESS OF CLEVELAND,(^) and, on 29 Jan. 1833, cr. BARON RABY OF RABY CASTLE, co. DURHAM,C') and DUKE OF CLEVELAND. ('^) He was bearer of the 3rd Sword at the Coronation of William IV, 8 Sep. 1831. K.G., 17 Apr. 1839. He w., istly, 17 Sep. 1787, at Hackwood, Hants, his maternal cousin, Katherine, 2nd da. and coh. of Harry (Powlett), 6th and last Duke of Bolton, by his 2nd wife, Katherine, sister of James, Earl of Lonsdale, and da. of Robert Lowther (^) He was bap. as " William Harry" but seems generally to have been known as « William Henry." (*>) He was, though the owner of 6 borough seats [vix. 2 for Ilchester, 2 for Camelford, and 2 for Winchelsea), a zealous supporter of Reform. It is said of him that " he bought his boroughs to be made a Marquess, and gave them up to be made a Duke." He obtained the former title under the Ministry of Viscount Goderich, and the latter under that of Earl Grey. He was a keen sportsman and a Master of Fox Hounds. G.E.C. and V.G. (') It is a cause of wonder that the head of the historic house of Vane of Raby, himself the holder of a peerage of some antiquity (1699), should have so prided him- self on a bastard descent from an infamous adulteress, that when he obtained a step in the Peerage, he changed his title to that of " Cleveland" a peerage conferred on his notorious ancestress as the actual wages of her prostitution, and one which had stunk in the nostrils of the nation during the 40 years she enjoyed it ; one, too, which had not been redeemed from the slur thus attached to it by any merit of her successors, of whom the one was a fool and the other a nonentity. The selection is more remarkable as the Earls of Darlington do not appear to have inherited any of their vast estates from this woman. ("^) As to the Barony of Raby, when the celebrated Sir Thomas Wentworth (then Viscount Wentworth) was cr. Earl of Strafford (1640), he was at the same time cr. " Baron of Raby, a house belonging to Sir Henry Vane, and an honour he made account should belong to himself, which was an act of the most unnecessary provocation that I have known, and, I believe, was the chief occasion of the loss of the Earl's head." See Clarendon, vol. i, p. 150. The limitation of this Barony was (unlike that of the Earldom) with a spec, rem., under which it lasted till 1799, when, on the death of Frederick Thomas (Wentworth), 3rd Earl of Strafford and 5th Baron of Raby, it became extinct. It was, some thirty years afterwards, not unnaturally, revived in favour of the family of Vane, the actual owners of Raby.