P R E F A C E .
Being honoured by a request, from a quarter which
made compliance a duty as irresistible as it was
gratifying, that I should write a Preface to this work,
I feel I cannot do better than give some account of its
originator, who was for nearly forty-five years—though
with occasional breaks—one of my most constant, and,
I may add, most valued correspondents. Born in
Stanhope Street, Mayfair, on the 18th of March, 1833,
Thomas Littleton Powys was the eldest son of
Thomas Atherton Powys, third Lord Lilford, and Mary
Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of Henry Richard
Pox, third Lord Holland, and Elizabeth Yassall his
wife—a couple sufficiently well known to all readers of
social or political history. On his father’s side I need
not trace his ancient ancestry further back than to Sir
Thomas Powys, who in 1686 was Solicitor-General to
James II., and in 1713 under Anne a Judge of the
Queen’s Bench, an office from which he was removed
on the accession of the House of Hanover. He then
retired to Lilford in Northamptonshire, an estate which,
with its fine Hall (one of the best examples of Jacobean