Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/563

 my request to you for my pore sone to beg on you to give him your letor to Mr. Cadugan or treasarer, ben it is not in your Lordship waye to write to duek Malbrow. He has ben in the hotest of sarvis this year to wich the duek of Orgile haes bene a witnes and haes given him his

promis to do him all the kindnes he can He is in the Lord

Orerie's regiment in Bruseles."

Ann Cecil was the daughter of William Oglethorpe (of Oglethorpe, Tadcaster, one of a distinguished family), who married the widow of the last Savile, of Northgate Head, Wakefield. Oglethorpe died in 1674, but his widow or family occupied the old house in Northgate till Mrs. Cecil's death about 1718 ; one of his sons, William Oglethorpe, rose to be Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and died in 1707.

About Ann Oglethorpe's marriage there is a mystery. It is registered as having taken place in 1673 at East Ardsley with John Plantagenet, an historical surname to which the husband, according to an entry in Oliver Heywood's Diarj', had no claim ; and he appears, after a time, to have deserted his wife. It seems likely that his real name was afterwards discovered to be Cecil, for there is no probability of a second marriage with another person. In a collection of Hopkinson's Pedigrees of West Riding Gentry (now in the British Museum but formerly belonging to Colonel Smyth, of Heath), to which a few additions have been made in a later hand, it is stated that she was married to " John Cecil, of Sutton, Wilts, one of the Exeter family." Her only child, William, had a com- mission given him by Lord Raby in his own regiment ; in a letter written by him to his lordship on March 3, 1703-4, he mentions his having quitted that regiment for another, and refers to the death of his grandmother on the preceding Monday. Other evidence shows that Mrs. Oglethorpe died on March i in that year.

On December 28, 1709, John Bromley, Lord Raby's agent, writes from Wakefield : — "Poor Captain Cecil was sadly mawled at the Battle, I am told, his arme was all shattered to peeces, the splent bones are still comeinge oute ; he was also shoot through the side. He is at Brussells now." In April, 1709, Lord Raby, when writing to General Cadogan urging Cecil's advancement, says, " his mother lives in a house of mine and I have some small obligations to her and her family." In April, 1 7 12, Bromley writes, " Major Cecil has not been here this winter." Cecil was afterwards Colonel and Equerry to George I., and later in life became the Jacobite agent. In 1744 he was arrested with Lord Barry- more and put under examination. It was then alleged of him that he was an intimate companion of the Duke of Argyle and of Lord Orrery, had been a zealous champion of the Whigs in the latter end of the Queen's reign, and Equerry to the late King ; but for several years past it was well known that the greatest part of the Jacobite correspondence had gone through his hands. Nothing definite was however proved against him, and he was set at liberty.

��2 N

�� �