married 'not very creditably,' and spent all the money he could lay
his hands on. He died without issue; as did the fourth brother,
John, who was of weak intellect and feeble health, and the fifth
brother, William, whose brief career as one of Mrs. Buckner's
satellites will fall to be considered later on. So soon, then, as
the MINOTAUR had struck upon the Dogger Bank, Stowting and the line
of the Jenkin family fell on the shoulders of the third brother,
Charles.

Facility and self-indulgence are the family marks; facility (to
judge by these imprudent marriages) being at once their quality and
their defect; but in the case of Charles, a man of exceptional
beauty and sweetness both of face and disposition, the family fault
had quite grown to be a virtue, and we find him in consequence the
drudge and milk-cow of his relatives. Born in 1766, Charles served
at sea in his youth, and smelt both salt water and powder. The
Jenkins had inclined hitherto, as far as I can make out, to the
land service. Stephen's son had been a soldier; William (fourth of
Stowting) had been an officer of the unhappy Braddock's in America,
where, by the way, he owned and afterwards sold an estate on the
James River, called, after the parental seat; of which I should
like well to hear if it still bears the name. It was probably by
the influence of Captain Buckner, already connected with the family
by his first marriage, that Charles Jenkin turned his mind in the
direction of the navy; and it was in Buckner's own ship, the
PROTHEE, 64, that the lad made his only campaign. It was in the
days of Rodney's war, when the PROTHEE, we read, captured two large
privateers to windward of Barbadoes, and was 'materially and
distinguishedly engaged' in both the actions with De Grasse. While
at sea Charles kept a journal, and made strange archaic pilot-book