Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/164

 138 THE CECILS

Brownlow, the eighth Earl (1701 1754), and he in his turn by his son, Brownlow, the ninth Earl (1725 1793), a man of more activity and more culture than his immediate predecessors. Besides sitting in two Parliaments as member for Rutland, and acting as Lord Lieutenant of that county, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, and received the degree of LL.D. at Cambridge in 1751. A keen musician, he was one of the directors of the Handel Com- memoration in 1784, and his private concerts were famous. Further, he refurnished Burghley House, and added to the library and to the art collections. Though twice married, he left no issue, and on his death, in 1793, the title descended to his nephew, Henry, whose father, Thomas Chambers Cecil, married Charlotte Gormiez or Gamier (said, by family tradition, to have been a Basque), and lived on the Continent, dying in France in 1778.

Henry, the tenth Earl and first Marquess of Exeter, was born at Brussels in 1754. For many years he was member for Stamford, and like his father, was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, but his chief claim to distinction lies in his matrimonial adventures. His first wife was Emma, daughter and heiress of Thomas Vernon, of Hanbury, Worcestershire, to whom he was married in 1776 at St. George's, Hanover Square. Only one child was born, a son, who died in infancy ; and in May, 1789, after thirteen years of married life, Mrs. Cecil ran away

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