facilitated by his marriage to Margaret Cocks, a favourite niece of Lord
Chancellor Somers, himself one of the greatest of England's lawyer-
statesmen. There is a story that when asked by Lord Somers what
settlement he could make on his wife, he answered proudly, 'Nothing but
the foot of ground I stand on in Westminster Hall.' Never was the self-
confidence of genius more signally justified than in his case. Not only
was his own rise to fame and fortune unprecedently rapid, but he became
the founder of a family many of whose members have since played a
distinguished part in the public and social life of the country. By
Margaret Cocks he had, with two daughters, five sons, the eldest of whom
enhanced the fortunes of the family by his marriage with Jemima,
daughter of the Earl of Breadalbane, heiress of Wrest and the other
possessions of the extinct Dukedom of Kent, and afterwards Marchioness
Grey and Baroness Lucas of Grudwell in her own right. Of his next son
Charles, the second Chancellor, something will presently be said.
Another son, Joseph, was a soldier and diplomatist. He was aide-de-camp
to the Duke of Cumberland at Fontenoy; and afterwards, as Sir Joseph
Yorke, Ambassador at the Hague. He died Lord Dover. A fourth son, John,
married Miss Elizabeth Lygon, of Madresfield. The fifth son, James,
entered the Church, became Bishop of Ely, and was the ancestor of the
Yorkes of Forthampton. I had the luck many years ago to have a talk with
an old verger in Ely Cathedral who remembered Bishop Yorke, and who told
me that he used to draw such congregations by the power of his oratory
and the breadth of his teaching, that when he preached, all the
dissenting chapels in the neighbourhood were closed!

It was in 1770, only six years after Lord Hardwicke's death which
occurred in London on March 6, 1764, that his second son Charles (born
in 1722) was sworn in as Lord Chancellor. His brilliant career ended in
a tragedy which makes it one of the most pathetic in our political