CHAPTER II
LORD SHELBURNE AND LORD NORTH
1779–1780
In 1778 Lord Shelburne had been engaged to be married to Miss Molesworth, but the engagement was broken off. "Your divine Miss Molesworth," Miss Elliot wrote to her brother Hugh Elliot then at Berlin, and once the admirer of the lady, "has surprised the world by breaking off from Lord Shelburne. She dined at his house and sat at the head of the table and was seen to cry all dinnertime. Her aunt, when she came home, asked her what was the matter. She made no answer, but ran upstairs to her own room, and sent Lady Lucan a letter to tell her she found she had an antipathy to Lord Shelburne, and begged she would break off the detested match; which was accordingly done, by showing his Lordship the letter. He was angry, as you will believe, to lose 40,000l. and so pretty a wife, but put a good face upon it, and said it was proper the ladies should settle those matters."[1] However the following year a lady was found more faithful than Miss Molesworth. "I am delighted," Walpole wrote on the 16th of June to Lady Ossory, the sister-in-law of the future Lady Shelburne,[2] "with the confirmation of Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick's match. My
- ↑ Memoir of Hugh Elliot, by the Countess of Minto, p. 147.
- ↑ Walpole to Lady Ossory, June 16th, 1779. Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick was the younger daughter of John, first Earl of Upper Ossory, by his marriage with Lady Evelyn Leveson. The latter subsequently married Mr. Richard Vernon, and became the mother of the Miss Vernons, so frequently mentioned in the letters of Horace Walpole and Bentham, and in these pages. Anne Liddell, Countess of Upper Ossory, Walpole's correspondent, was wife of John, the second Earl.
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