tented himself with his father's moderate allowance, and

began to study economy

"Which time, he chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one incapable of his own distress."

Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7.

He was living in 1630, when, by an arrangement made previously to the sale of the advowson of Lancaster, he presented a Vicar to the benefice; but the date of his death is unknown.

The second son, Henry, was born about 1561, and his marriage settlement is dated 1582. His wife was Margaret, daughter and heiress of Edward Browster of Macclesfield. Dying before his father, he left issue three sons and a daughter. From his third son, Thomas, descended Major General William ffarington of Chislehurst in Kent, whose daughter and coheiress, Albinia, married Robert first Duke of Ancaster, who died in 1723.

The third son, William ffarington, was born in 1566. He was "brought up in the Earl of Derby's household," and was living in London in 1597, and, like his eldest brother, had "sondrye credytours" who were very importunate; his father, writing to his "very loving friend Mr. Mark Graye at his house in St John's St near unto the barryers that stand betwixt Smythfield and St John's St," says, "It seemeth unto me by your letter that you have not spoken wth the one halfe of my sonne William his credytours, neither doe I thinke that he hath declared vnto you a perfect note of

1 Worden Evid.

n

them, and I have set down a note of all such severall debtes as by enqwiry and examinacōn I have learned and wch he now confesseth to be due." He then engages to pay the debts of his extravagant son when he visits London, in the beginning of Michaelmas term. In another letter the old man deplores the loss of his "great golde Chaine," which this thriftless son had sold, its value being estimated at £110. This is probably the same gold chain which occurs in 1559 in the inventory of his grandfather Sir Thomas Talbot, and which is there stated to be worth "four score pounds."

2

On his brother's resignation of the office of Steward of the Royal Manors of Lonsdale in 1599, he was nominated by the Queen as the successor, and he also succeeded his brother as the Castellan of Lancaster. He lived to extreme old age, and dying without issue, was buried on the 15th January 1655-6, aged about ninety, his tombstone still remaining in Leyland Church yard near the Chancel door.

There may be seen at Worden the portrait of a venerable looking man with a silvery beard, the growth of years, and of a hale countenance, standing at a table on which are placed a rebeck, music books, and a skull with a Latin sentence beneath it "teaching the moralist to die," and indicating the change which time, and it may be hoped the holier influences of religion, had effected in the views and habits of William ffarington-for this is his picture, and the Talbot countenance is not to be mistaken. The date is "1628, æt. 62.” 3

3 It seems probable that he had been married, as there is a companion

The Will of Mr. ffarington, deeply considered and elaborately matured by himself, is far from suggestive of a calm and gentle departure from time, and such an one as might have been looked for in a man educated in the atmosphere of Puritanism, but more especially in the School of Him who was the friend of publicans and sinners. Whether he acted right in thus fearfully punishing a child and, it might be, dying unreconciled to him, may admit of doubt, although it has been contended that his was not so much the decisive expression of what Johnson calls "gloomy malignity, biting like a viper, and glad to leave inflammation and gangrene behind him," as the vindication of a high principle of justice to his posterity. By disinheriting his son he probably preserved his estate. He had added considerably to its extent by purchasing from the wealthy husbands of his nieces lands "not of yesterday," endeared to him by family ties and ancient associations; and had he lived longer it is certain that the manor of ffarington, which had passed with his eldest brother's heiress to the Fleetwoods, would have been once more added to his paternal inheritance, for, like Sir William Temple, he found a country life, especially in Leyland, notwithstanding its uncertain summers and lengthened winters, the inclination of his youth and the pleasure of his age, for there he was born and there he wished to die.

portrait at Worden by the same artist, and of the same size with his own, and painted in the same year, the date and age on the canvas being "1628 æt. 55." The lady wears a black figured silk, with the large ruff and winged head dress of the time, but, as neither name nor arms are added, it may be feared that her "parentage" had not been highly aristocratic, although it does not appear to have been the source of family dissention.

We have perhaps gained but little information respecting his private habits and home life, but his ordinary avocations and the salient points of his character are vividly marked and fully before us. It might be inferred from his rubicund complexion that he was not altogether a stranger to the power of wine, although his business habits, regular pursuits, and fine handwriting, through life, would justify the conjecture that his libations had not been excessive. What he would be at the head of Lord Derby's household, or at the Town's Council of Preston, or on the bench at Lancaster, or in his "browne parlour" commonly called his "studie,” surrounded by his great legal authorities, we may have been enabled to form a tolerably correct notion. It may also be inferred that he was not often found at the Whitsun Ales or Wakes of Leyland, and that the pastoral days of pipe and crook, and dance and song, were little heeded by him; but there is no doubt that his sage admonition, like George Herbert's, fell gently on the ear—

Sundays observe,

Think when the bells do chime,

'Tis Angels' music."

That he entered not with much spirit into the theatrical representations of Knowsley and New Park, that the liltings and old ballad music of his sons found small favour with him, that he had not much delight in comic humour, or a particle of imagination or sentiment or romance about him, may readily be admitted. His life was that of a prosperous man, living much in the whirl of society, practical and cautious,

the mind always on the stretch, and the affections, perhaps, not much in request.

Descriptive portrait painting is necessarily defective, and generally unsatisfactory, but it may be well to mention that Mr. ffarington's portrait - a patriarch at the head of a fine gallery of family pictures, was taken, according to the memorandum upon it, in "1593 æt. 56." His features are handsome and regular, the face somewhat square, eyes dark, complexion florid, and the forehead high, with a few lines across it indicative of thought. The beard is thin, peaked, and slightly gray. The hair is cropped close and combed back. He wears a russet coloured doublet, apparently of cloth, which closely fits the body, and is free from the "slashing and jagging" which fashionable men at that period so much affected. He also wears a sable fur across his shoulders, and a large chain of linked gold is suspended in three rounds across the chest. In his right hand he holds a silver headed cane, (or it may be his wand of office as Comptroller,) and wears a ring on his little finger. In his left hand he holds a scented glove embroidered with gold, and on his forefinger is a signet ring. He wears the stiffened or wired double cambric ruff, which Stubbs, in his Anatomy of Abuses, (1595,) terms "monstrous, being set three or four times double, and of some fitly called three steps and an half to the gallows." In the right corner of the picture are his arms impaling those of Talbot.

There is great decision and authority, united with more than ordinary sharpness and sternness, in the expression,