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'In the autumn of 1838 an event occurred which all persons interested in Sir Henry Halford must lament. His friend and neighbour, Mr. Lockley, a much-respected medical practitioner, of Half-moon Street, when on his way along with Sir Henry to stay with him at Wistow, was seized with apoplexy in the railway carriage, and at Tring was removed from it into the station house. Sir Henry ordered a surgeon to be immediately sent for, and, having directed what he should do on his arrival, left Mr. Lockley and proceeded on his journey to Wistow.'

Sir Henry's conduct on this occasion was severely censured by the newspapers; and his own defence of it, which he published in a letter to 'The Times,' is not perhaps entirely satisfactory. It amounted to no more than this, that being satisfied that he had left Mr. Lockley in competent hands, and that every care would be taken of him, he felt it unnecessary to delay his journey any longer. It is perfectly true that everything was done for the patient by Mr. Dewsbury which could have been done by Sir Henry Halford, and that Mr. Lockley's death, which occurred twelve days afterwards, could not reasonably be attributed to any neglect on the physician's part. But of course the imputation was made; and it was at first asserted that Mr. Lockley had died at the railway station the same evening. It must be owned, however, that Sir Henry would have come out of the affair better had he stayed with his friend till Mr. Dewsbury arrived, and had satisfied himself with his own eyes and ears that the local doctor thoroughly understood the case, and the treatment prescribed for it. It was suggested, as might have been expected, that if Mr. Lockley had been a great man, Sir Henry's conduct would have been different. But the physician who could refuse to wait upon a Queen, might very well smile at any insinuation of this kind.

Of Sir Henry's family, distinguished on both sides, and of the society in which he moved as a scholar and country gentleman, numerous anecdotes are still preserved in his native county. The Vaughans of Leicester, where the celebrated physician was born on the 2nd of October, 1766, came of 'a respectable family in Herefordshire,' as we are informed by the mural tablet in Wistow Church. Tradition connects them with Henry Vaughan, the poet of Brecknockshire, who died in 1691. There is no evidence to prove it; but the author of 'Olor Iscanus' was not only a scholar who wrote Latin verses, but a lawyer and a physician too,-three types which have certainly been conspicuous in the ancestors of the Wistow family. In fact it may almost be said that the profession of medicine has been hereditary in the Vaughans.

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William Vaughan, from whom they are undoubtedly descended and who died in 1712, was physician to William III. and a Fellow of the Royal College. William's grandson Henry was a surgeon at Leominster, of which place his father, a friend of Dean Swift, was vicar. Henry's son James was the Doctor Vaughan of Leicester who married the granddaughter of Sir Richard Halford of Wistow, and his son again was the famous physician of whom we are now writing. One nephew, the present Dean of Llandaff and formerly Head Master of Harrow, was Senior Classic and Chancellor's Medallist at Cambridge, and a skilful and elegant writer of both Greek and Latin verses. Another nephew, Henry Halford Vaughan, as an Oxford first classman, Fellow of Oriel, Professor of Modern History in his University, and a great Shakesperian critic, kept up the family reputation for scholarship and literature. One of Sir Henry's brothers was a Judge, and another nephew is now an eminent counsel, having also in his turn won the highest honours at Cambridge and the Camden prize for Latin Hexameters. Thus the Vaughans have been distinguished, generation after generation, in law, literature, and medicine.

The Halfords, an old county family formerly seated at Langham, in Rutland, migrated to Wistow either at the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century. They, too, are not without 'illustration.' When the Civil War broke out, the baronet of that date was of sufficient ability and importance to lead for the king in Leicestershire. He came into collision more than once with his neighbour, Sir Arthur Hazelrigge, and suffered in purse for some disrespectful observations upon him. Charles slept at Wistow shortly before, if not the night before, the battle of Naseby, and retreated in that direction after his defeat; but being too hotly pressed to allow of his resting there, was compelled to turn aside to Oxford. Many relics of him are preserved at the family seat. Among them is a portrait, which, though not an original Vandyke, is an admirable copy. No face was ever anore faithful to the character of the man, or more suggestive of the doom which overtook him. The whole Stuart romance seems written on those well-known features.

During the century and a half after the decisive action fought upon that high grass-land, which now witnesses only the mimic war of the chase, and echoes to the cheerful cry of the Pytchley hounds, the Halford family jogged quietly on without ineddling with State affairs. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Halford, was married to William Smalley, Esq., an Alderman

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of Leicester, whose daughter Hester was married to Dr. James Vaughan, and was the mother of the physician, who was thus the great grandson of Sir Richard Halford. It is said that Smalley was a grocer; but he was, on the mother's side, descended from the provincial aristocracy, she having been Millicent Whalley, daughter of the owner of Norton by Galby in Leicestershire, whose family trace themselves, as the heralds say, to the Norman Conqueror.

The old line of the Halfords came to an end in Sir Charles Halford. Dying without issue in 1780, he left the estate by will to the descendants of Elizabeth Halford, on the death of his widow, who afterwards married the Earl of Denbigh in the drawing-room of Wistow, and died in 1814. Henry, the eldest surviving son of James Vaughan, thus became the owner of Wistow, took the name of Halford, and was soon after created a baronet.

Wistow was formerly a small village standing about eight miles north-west of Market Harborough, and six miles south of Leicester. But in many parts of the Midland counties the old system of peasant farming was early supplanted by enclosures, and tillage superseded by pasturage. Consequently the rural population gradually dwindled away, and the houses or cottages which they inhabited being in no demand were pulled down. Not more than five or six houses remained at Wistow in the middle of the seventeenth century, and these all disappeared long ago. Besides the Hall, there are three or four farm-houses in the parish, and that is all. Wistow Hall is very prettily situated, on a slightly rising ground, looking across a fine piece of water to some beautiful meadows, through which runs 'a willowy brook,' dignified in the old maps with the name of a river, the river Serse. Above the lake is a fine stretch of undulating grass-land, dotted with clumps of tall old elms, which used at one time to be a deer park. The rent-roll of the estate in 1814 scarcely exceeded three thousand a year. It was drawn from the three parishes of Wistow, Kilby, and Newton, the whole of which are now in possession of the Halfords.

Here during three or four months of every year, generally from about the middle of July to the middle of October, Sir Henry lived as the great man of the neighbourhood. Before the days of railways the old Midland villages were still much as they were in the days of Mr. Poyser and Mr. Gilfil, 'when the keenest of bucolic minds felt a whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape'; and when Vol. 183.-No. 365.

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Sir Henry's carriage and four dashed through Kilby village, with the two postilions in blue and silver, the spectacle was talked of for days afterwards, scarcely yielding in interest to the memorable afternoon when the Quorn ran their fox to ground just outside the Parson's garden. Sir Henry was liberal to the poor; and when he left Wistow, the clergyman, who was known to play whist with the squire three nights a week while he stayed there, naturally became his representative in the eyes of the people, shared his authority, and governed his parish on principles of paternal absolutism without a murmur for more than half a century.

For nearly thirty years Wistow was Sir Henry's country residence. One of the most interesting figures to be seen there was his own wife, who was a daughter of Lord St. John of Bletsoe. She was a fine handsome woman, with a good deal of the fearless freedom of the old régime in her manners and conversation, a characteristic of 'society' before the French Revolution, the disappearance of which was so regretted by Charles Fox. It was, however, with his great rival that Lady Halford's name was connected. Ah,' she once said, when sitting down to chess, 'I used at one time to play chess with a very great man.' These words were always understood to refer to Mr. Pitt, between whom and the Hon. Miss St. John a warmer feeling than friendship is said to have existed.

In 1840 the then Duke of Cambridge was among the visitors at Wistow, and his presence in the village church was long remembered by the parishioners. He repeated the responses with great unction and in a tone which towered high above the clerk's. The congregation in those days did not participate in this act of worship, and the Duke's voice was the only one heard in church. His little eccentricities may now be repeated without offence. When it came to his turn to inquire 'why hop ye so, ye high hills?' which he did with his usual emphasis, as soon as the words were out of his mouth he bent down to a little boy beside him in the high square pew, and said in a loud whisper, 'Impossible, impossible, you know-they couldn't do it.' On another occasion a curate in the neighbourhood was invited to meet him. The Duke, with his usual affability, began a conversation with him after dinner:

"And what are your pursuits, sir? Do you hunt?"
"No, sir."

"Ah, then, you shoot, I suppose?"

"No, sir."

"H'm"H'm-a fisherman, eh?"

"No, sir, I don't care much for fishing."

"The Duke was puzzled. "Oh, you read a good deal then, I dare

say-a scholar?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid I'm no great reader."

"Then what the devil do you do?""

At Wistow Sir Henry kept open house, always paying marked attention to his own parish clergyman, who was his favourite partner at whist, and knew his play thoroughly. Once when Bishop Blomfield was dining at Wistow, Sir Henry called upon the vicar to say grace, whereupon the Bishop immediately rose and said it himself. Sir Henry showed his regard for his * venerable Pastor' in another way when Sir John Vaughan was buried at Wistow. Sir John's son, a Leicestershire clergyman, was very naturally invited by another member of the family to perform the service. But after the funeral, Sir Henry went up to his old friend and said, 'Now I charge you solemnly that, when I come to be buried here, you yourself shall officiate, and no one else.'

He was fond of making the vicar his companion on his visits. They went together to Belvoir Castle, to Apthorpe, to Middleton, to Wynnstay. Once, when Sir Henry, on his way to Drayton Manor, parted from his fellow-traveller, he told him that Sir Robert Peel's was the only house he knew to which he could not venture to take a friend. How curiously illustrative of Sir Robert Peel's character is this little anecdote! Sir Henry's connection with the Court furnished him with one anecdote which never failed 'to bring down the house' at Wistow. It related to a well-known baronet who bore a stronger resemblance to Tony Lumpkin than to Sir Charles Grandison, and whose ignorance of books and history was absolute. He lived where one of the great battles had been fought in the Wars of the Roses, but of these things our baronet knew nothing. One day he took it into his head to be presented at Court, and George III., who had the right thing ready to say, remarked:-

"You come from the scene of a very celebrated battle, I understand, Sir William?"

"Well, your Majesty," was the answer, "it's true I did have a round or two with the blacksmith, but I'm very much surprised that your Majesty should ever have heard of it.""

Sir Henry was rather an irritable man, though his wrath quickly subsided. A somewhat eccentric old rector, who was also a bon vivant, used to try him occasionally. People dined

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