annoyed or opposed him; and in his disordered brain he nursed suspicion
and hatred of all around him.

When he was little more than thirty, and some years after he had come
into his earldom, he wooed and won the pretty daughter of Sir William
Meredith; but before the honeymoon was ended he had begun to treat her
with such gross brutality that, before she had long been a wife, she
petitioned Parliament for a divorce, which set her free. And as he was
obviously quite unfit to administer his estates, it became necessary to
appoint some one to receive his rents and control his revenue.

Such was the pitiful plight to which insanity had reduced Laurence, Earl
Ferrers, while still little over the threshold of manhood; and these
calamities only, and perhaps naturally, accentuated his madness. He
became more and more the terror of the neighbourhood in which he lived,
and few had the courage to meet him when he took his solitary walks.

"I still retain," writes a Mr Cradock in his "Memoirs,"
"a strong impression of the unfortunate Earl Ferrers,
who, with the Ladies Shirley, his sisters, frequented
Leicester races, and visited at my father's house. During
the early part of the day his lordship preserved the
character of a polite scholar and a courteous nobleman,
but in the evening he became the terror of the
inhabitants; and I distinctly remember running upstairs
to hide myself when an alarm was given that Lord Ferrers
was coming armed, with a great mob after him. He had
behaved well at the ordinary; the races were then in the
afternoon, and the ladies regularly attended the balls.
My father's house was situated midway between Lord