Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/49

Rh embarrassments about this time, and in spite of a ruined constitution, and of increasing age and infirmities, he felt himself unable to enjoy that repose to which his career in India ought to have justly entitled him. He had to seek employment, and being offered the post of Governor and Commander-in-Chief in Malta, he accepted it in March 1824. There he devoted himself with his habitual energy to the affairs of the island, but soon his health gave way, and having fallen from his horse early in November, 1826, he sustained a serious injury to which he speedily succumbed. He was put on board H. M. S. Revenge, and was taken for a cruise in the Mediterranean; but he never rallied. After lingering a short time, showing great fortitude and resignation, he breathed his last, surrounded by his wife and four daughters, on the 28th of November, 1826, on board ship, in Baia Bay near Naples, in his seventy-second year. His body was brought to Malta and buried on the ramparts. He had desired that his right hand should be cut off and buried with his wife when she died; this wish was complied with, and now it rests clasped with hers in the family vault of the Loudouns at the old kirk of Loudoun, in Ayrshire.

When his grandson, the late Lord Hastings, well known in the racing world, died, the Marquessate and many of the other honours became extinct; but the Scotch Earldom of Loudoun and the old English Baronies descended to his grand-daughter, whose son, the present Lord Loudoun, represents the family.