Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/133

Rh Sir Richard having invited to his houſe a great number of perſons of the firſt quality, they were ſurprized at the number or liveries which ſurrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had ſet them free from the obſervation of rigid ceremony, one of them enquired of Sir Richard, how ſuch an expenſive train of domeſtics could be conſiſtent with his fortune? Sir Richard frankly confeſſed, that they were fellows of whom he would very willingly be rid. And being then aſked why he did not diſcharge them, he declared that they were Bailiffs who had introduced themſelves with an execution, and whom, ſince he could not ſend them away, he had thought it convenient to imbelliſh with liveries, that they might do him credit whilſt they ſtaid.

His friends were diverted with the expedient, and by paying the debt, diſcharged the attendance, having obliged Sir Richard to promiſe that they ſhould never find him again graced with a retinue of the ſame kind.

He married to his firſt wife a gentlewoman of Barbadoes, with whom he had a valuable Plantation there on the death of her brother, who was taken by the French at Sea as he was coming to England, and died in France. This wife dying without iſſue, he married Mary, the daughter of Jonathan Scurlock of Langunnoc in Carmarthanſhire, eſq; by whom he had one ſon, Eugene, who died young: of his two daughters, one only is living; which lady became ſole heireſs to a handſome eſtate in Wales. She was married, when young, to the hon. John Trevor, eſq; one of the judges of the principality of Wales; who ſince, by the death of his brother, has taken his ſeat in the Houſe of Lords, as Baron Trevor, &c.