Baron Masham of Otes, in Essex, having, a short time previously, succeeded his nephew as fourth Baronet.

Lady Masham was the mother of four children :-George, who died in the life-time of his father:-Samuel, who succeeded to the title, and at whose death, in 1776, the barony became extinct :-Francis, who died young;-and Anne, married to Henry Hoare, Esq., and mother of Susannah, Countess of Aylesbury. Lady Masham died on the 6th December, 1734, having survived her husband about fourteen months. They were both buried at Otes.

VOL. II.

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258

ROBERT FIELDING,

BEAU FIELDING.

Beau Fielding, the "Orlando" of the Tatler.- Descended from an old Warwickshire family.-Sent to London to study the Law. His great personal beauty and foppish habits.His extraordinary popularity with the fair sex.-His success as a gambler.-Fantastic liveries of his servants.—Portraits of him by the three great Artists of the day. His first wife, daughter and heiress of Lord Carlingford.—His second, the celebrated Duchess of Cleveland, Mistress of Charles the Second. Their matrimonial unhappiness.-Duchess's discovery that he had committed bigamy. He is tried at the Old Bailey.-Singular evidence adduced at the trial respecting Fielding's intrigues to obtain the hand of a rich widow, Deleau.-Curious statement made by the Counsel for the prosecution.-Evidence of Mrs. Villars, and of Fielding's servant, Boucher.-Fielding found guilty, but afterwards pardoned by Queen Anne. His marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland annulled.

THE history of a fine gentleman of the reign of Queen Anne, as it throws an amusing light on the manners of the period, may not be unacceptable to the reader.

Robert Fielding, the " Orlando" of the Tatler, was a cadet of a good family in Warwickshire, and, at an early age, was sent to London for the purpose of studying the law. Vanity, however,

and a taste for dissipation, gradually weaned him from his professional pursuits, and when, on an occasion of his appearing at court, his sovereign spoke of him, par excellence, as "the handsome Fielding," the circumstance is said to have stamped him for ever as a fop. Granger speaks of him as "uncommonly beautiful," and if we are to judge from the notices of him by his contemporaries, the encomium scarcely appears to be exaggerated.

Popular with the fair sex, almost beyond precedent, the sums which he received for conferring his favours on the old, he is said to have lavished profusely on the young. The gaming-table also afforded him occasional means of subsistence, and, though a vice which rarely enriches its votaries, he is said, as a gamester, to have proved unusually successful. Whatever may have been the secret means of his subsistence, he figured for a series of years, in his proper sphere, the metropolis, in dazzling, though borrowed plumes; and, by the splendour of his dress, and the fantastic liveries of his servants, appears to have never failed in attracting public attention. His domestics are described as habited in yellow liveries, with black sashes, and black feathers in their hats. One circumstance is curious, and, moreover, affords tolerable evidence of Fielding's self-love, that he caused himself to be painted by the three great artists of their time, Lely, Wissing, and Kneller. All three of their portraits have been engraved.

The first wife of Fielding was the daughter and sole heiress of Barnham Swift, Lord Carlingford. On the death of this lady, trusting, as usual, to retrieve his fortunes by his handsome person, he paid his addresses to the celebrated Duchess of Cleveland, formerly the dazzling and scornful mistress of Charles the Second, but who, at this period, must have been verging on her sixty-sixth year. They were married on the 25th of November, 1705, and, as is usually the case where there exists such glaring disparities of age and character, their union proved unhappy in the extreme. The reflec

tion, indeed, cannot fail to be a melancholy one, that a woman who (profligate and undeserving as she is admitted to have been,) had formerly enslaved a powerful sovereign, and made him subservient to her slightest caprice, should not only so far have demeaned herself as to become the wife of a needy adventurer, but should eventually have been compelled to seek refuge from his violence in a court of law.

Fortunately, the Duchess, under somewhat remarkable circumstances, was afforded an opportunity of extricating herself from her matrimonial engagements. She had been united to her dissipated husband about a year, when rumours, in the first instance, reached her that Fielding had already another wife alive, and, some time afterwards, a female actually made her appearance at Cleveland House, who stoutly maintained the priority of her claim. An inquiry was imme

diately instituted by the friends of the Duchess, of which the result was a determination to prosecute Fielding for bigamy. Accordingly, on the 4th of December, 1706, he was placed at the bar of the Old Bailey, charged, in a formal indictment, with having intermarried Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, his former wife, Mary Wadsworth, being still alive. From the evidence elicited at the trial, there transpired the singular fact that Fielding, within the short space of sixteen days, had been united to two different women. His marriage with Mary Wadsworth took place on the 9th of November, 1705; his union with the Duchess of Cleveland on the 25th of the same month.

The circumstances connected with the case render it not a little amusing, and perhaps will excuse our introducing them somewhat in detail. It appears, then, that a young widow, a Mrs. Deleau, had been left, or was reputed to have been left, a large fortune, and that Fielding, tempted by the rumours of her wealth, had conceived the project of making her his wife. As yet he was unacquainted with even her person; but having paid a visit to Doctors' Commons, and discovering that report had not exaggerated her fortune, he speedily concerted his plans for obtaining an interview.

The next step of the fortune-hunter was to pay a visit to Mrs. Deleau's seat at Waddon, where, under a pretence of being desirous to inspect the house and gardens, he was politely admitted