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Engraved dom an Original Painting by A.M.Devis Esq Eclusively for La Belle Aisemblee Pubashed for John Bell Southampton Street Strand London Nov.1.1811

For OCTOBER, 1811.

A New Series.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF ILLUSTRIOUS LADIES.

The Twenty-Fourth Number.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SARAH COUNTESS OF MOUNTNORRIS.

In recording the annals of Irish nobi-reign of Henry VIII. produced William lity, we are obliged in general to refer to Cavendish of Chatsworth, ancestor of the English genealogy for their ancestry, so present Devonshire family, and Auditor of few of the ancient Irish families have been the Court of Augmentation, Treasurer and elevated to the Peerage; and in the parti- member of the Privy Council, and in high cular case of the lady who is the subject of favour at court.-A near relative of the was seated at our present biography, we do not find her last mentioned person predecessors settled in the sister kingdom | Doveridge, in Derbyshire, whose descendbefore the commencement of the last cen- aut, William Cavendish, about the close of tury. the seventeenth century, married Mary, daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrell, an Oxfordshire Baronet; and their son, Sir Henry Cavendish (created an English Baronet in 1755), having accompanied his relative, William Duke of Devonshire, to Ireland, of which kingdom he was Lord Lieutenant, was appointed Teller of the Exchequer, and a Privy Councillor in that kingdom. His marriage also procured him extensive landed possessions in that country; his lady being Anne, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Pynę, Esq. of Waterpark, in the county of Cork, son of Lord Chief Justice Sir Richard Pyne, Knight, a lawyer of great abilities and integrity.

The Right Honourable Sarah Countess of Mountnorris, is descended from a junior branch of the noble house of Cavendish, who trace their descent from Robert de Gurnon, a bold and enterprising Norman chieftain, one of the companions of William the Conqueror in his expedition to assert his claim to the English throne, in opposition to the usurper Harold. Hertfordshire then became the principal residence of the family; but having soon after become possessed of the barony of Cavendish, in Suffolk, they acquired the local surname of De Cavendish, and shortly after assumed the armorial and significant motto of Cavendo tutus, "secure by caution,"

Though not enobled until the commencement of the seventeenth century, yet the family was of considerable consequence during the preceding reigns, and produced several distinguished Knights.

Sir John Cavendish, in the reign of Richard II has been said to be the person who killed Wat Tyler, in 1881, though Sir William Walworth, then Mayor of London, has generally had the credit of it.

The

His son, Sir Henry, the second Baronet, bore the character of an upright and honest statesman for forty years, during which he sat in both the English and Irish Parliaments; and for his services he was appointed one of the Lords of the Irish Treasury, when that board was first instituted; and soon after he received a grant of the office of Receiver-General of that kingdom, which he held until his death, with a character of the strictest probity; yet such is

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