Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/13

 LORD HARDINGE

CHAPTER I

Birth and Boyhood

Henry, first Viscount Hardinge of Lahore and King's Newton, was descended from a family that had been long settled at King's Newton in Derbyshire, where the name can be traced back among the local landowners to the reign of Henry VI. His ancestor at the time of the Great Rebellion was Sir Robert Hardinge, who raised a troop of horse for Charles I, and was knighted after the Restoration. His monument in the parish church of Melbourne (a fine old Norman building) records that he was 'a faithful servant to God, the King, the Church of England, and his country in the worst times.' This monument, together with others in the Hardinge chancel, was restored by the Governor-General before he went to India. King's Newton Hall, built in 1563, was a good example of the Tudor architecture of that period. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1859; all that now remains of it is a picturesque ruin, over-