LOVE FINDS A WAY

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 102, 24 January 1933, Page 9

LOVE FINDS A WAY

Earl Disguised as Baker COUNTESS IN BASKET A correspondent of the ““Children’s Newspaper,” who has been looking into the history of some of Britain’s great families, relates a curious tale concerning one of them. Fiction, says the correspondent, may feel that it has a grudge against the family of the Marquess of Northampton, for he re-established the family fortune by a device which no novel excels in pleasant audacity. He was one of the Comptons, an old Northamptonshire house whose affairs were in grave disrepair when the first earl was a young man, and Queen Elizabeth of gracious memory was on the throne. At the same time there was living in the city, at famous Crosby Hall, Sir John Spencer, fabulously rich, Lord Mayor of London, and with a beautiful only daughter, Elizabeth. Northampton, a gay and gallant figure, sought her hand, but the old merchant prince would not hear of the match.

The young wooer had influence at Court, and succeeded in getting Spencer imprisoned for a time on a charge of ill-using his daughter, but even with the father out of the way he was not able to win the fair Elizabeth, who either would not consent to marriage or was kept too securely imprisoned. Eventually an irate Sir John was released, naturally more hostile than ever to the suit of the young aristocrat. But he happened to be in a particularly good temper when he met one day a stalwart baker’s youth coming down the stairs with a basket on his head, and the old knight stopped and gave him a sixpence for his punctuality. Not for a lithe time later did he learn that the basket was his daughter Elizabeth, the baker’s assistant being none other than young Lord Northampton disguised for the adventure. Never, Sir John vowed, should his son-in-law receive a penny more of his money than the sixpence which he had given to the supposed baker’s boy. A year passed; then one day Queen Elizabeth sent for Sir John. She wanted him to go and be “gossip” with her to a newly-born baby whom sjie hoped he would adopt in place of his disinherited daughter. Of course, he could not refuse, and, needless to say, the babyproved to be Sir John’s own grandchild, and a complete reconciliation followed. The bov was named Spencer after his grandfather and grew up to play a large part in the history of his age and to die in battle at Hopton Heath, near Stafford, one of the most famous of the Cavalier commanders.