Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/23

 of Lord Rockingham. Watson thereupon changed his name to Wentworth, and from his descendants the present Earl Fitzwilliam derives Wentworth Woodhouse, and many estates in Yorkshire and in Ireland. This disposition of the Strafford property was no doubt a sad blow to the successor in the empty title, and throughout life he seems to have been an open enemy to the more fortunate branch of the family ; of this we shall find evidence enough in the correspondence hereafter to be quoted.

In 1697 the command of the Royal Regiment of Dragoons was conferred upon Lord Raby, and early in the year fol- lowing he accompanied Lord Portland on his embassy to Paris. When King William went to meet the Duke of Zell at the Goor he was one of the few courtiers selected to attend him. " There he escaped a most eminent danger at a great hunt. Being a young man of daring courage, he singly attacked a wild boar, who, at his second thrust, threw him down, ript his breeches from the knee to the waistband, tore his shirt and some part of his flesh, and would have gored him to death had not the king sent two huntsmen to his relief, who with their spears killed the furious animal upon him."

In July, 1699, a commission was issued, with Lord Raby at the head, to inquire into some riots in the Lincolnshire fens, which had led to vast injury to the land there, the banks having been thrown down, and many thousand acres sub- merged by the sea.

Frederick the Elector of Brandenburgh was crowned first King of Prussia in 1701, and William dispatched Lord Raby at the head of a special mission to offer his congratulations, and also to make a reconciliation between the two monarchs in a matter arising from the imprisonment and disgrace of Danckelmann, claimed as a Dutch subject. He left England early in April, but his journey to Berlin was but slow ; for on May 9 Sir Charles Hedges acknowledges a letter from him at Hanover, and on May 20 his first letter from Berlin " with an account of your having had audience of the King and Queen of Prussia, and of the young prince, and of the

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