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Charles , third Duke of Bolton , on the decease of his Duchess , with whom he is said never tp have cohabited . He had had
three : children ( all sons ) by his mistress previously , and had none when she became his wife ; so ^ hat on his death in 1754 , the title went to his brother . * He was then sixty-nine . He is described in his latter days
by Horace Walpole , as an old beau , fair complexioned , and in a white wig , gallanting the ladies about in public . The Duchess was the original Polly in the Beggars' Opera , and so much the " rage " in that character * that it was probably thought a feat in the gallant Duke to be able to carry her off the stage ; and her good qualkieSi&ppear to have fixed a
passion * created perhaps by vanity ; It is said , that on his once threatening to leave her , she knelt and sang ' Oh ponder well * in a style so tender , that he had not the heart to do it .
She survived him till 1760 , after behaving , according to Walpole , not so well in the character of widow as of wife . " The famous Polly , Duchess
of Bolton / ' says he , in one of his letters , "is dead , having , after a life of merit , relapsed into her Pollyhood . Two years a £ o , ill at Tonbridge , she ago , ill at lonbndge , she
pitched upon an Irish surgeon . When She was dying , this fellow sent for a lawyer to make her will ; but the man , finding
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who was to be her heir , intt&il of her children , refused to draw it . The Court of Chancery did furnish one other , not quite so scrupulous , and her three sons have but a thousand
pounds a piece ; the surgeon about nine thousand . " - } - This may be true , or it may be totally false . There is no trusting to these pieces of gossip ; nor any conclusion to be drawn from one part of a story , particularly a family one , till we hear the other . Preposterous
wills of all sorts are frequent ; but " a life of merit , " especially of kindly merit , is seldom closed by contradiction ; and supposing the statement to be true , the Duchess may have had other reasons for leaving no more to her children . They were the Duke ' s as well as
her's , and may have been already provided for , or she might have felt certain they would be so . In addition to the words " a life of merit , " as affecting the Duchess of Bolton , a strong , though negative testimony , both to the good behaviour of Beard towards his wife and
Lavmia Fenton towards the D , uke , in one whose memory was so sensitive on the point , is observable in the very silence maintained respecting them by Horace Walpole in a list of names we shall give presently , connected with those of whom we are going to speak .
• la Sir Egerton Bryflges ' s edition of Collins ' s « Peerage , ' -vol . ii , p . 886 , published in tho year 1813 , is a list of the Duke's family by Mra Beawick . f ' Letters to Sir Horace Mann . ' Vol . iii . p . 403 .
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166 Duchess of St A Ibans ; and
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 166, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/22/
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