People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 26 November 1908, Page 28

People We Hear About

The Bishop of Perth (Dr. Gibney) celebrated his seventieth birthday on Sunday, October 25. He is again hale and -hearty after his recent serious illness. Lord Howard of Glossop, who has been twice married, has one son and one daughter by each marriage. He is first cousin to the Duke of Nbrfolk, and uncle to the Marquis of Bute, whose mother, the Dowager Lady Bute, was the daughter of the late Lord Howard of Glossop, first baron, so long known to Catholics of a former generation by the title of Lord Edward Howard, a premier educationist of his time, and the zealous patron and supporter of every religious and charitable movement. On October 5 Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., reached "his sixtieth birthday, though no one could believe it who looks at him. His bodily vigor is that of a man ten years younger, while mentally his brilliancy and energy seem every year to grow more remarkable. He has had one of the busiest lives 1 of any journalist in England, and yet no member of the Irish Party has such a consistent record of attention to his Parliamentary duties, and there is no more familiar or popular figure in Parliament. ' The Duke of Abruzzi, cousin of the King of Italy, who is to be married to Miss Elkins; daughter of an American millionaire, in January, has achieved the highest distinction as an Arctic and tropical explorer. Six years ago he succeeded in getting thirty-three miles nearer to the North Pole than Nansen, and he has capped that magnificent achievement by being the first white man to attain to the snow-capped summit of the Mountain of the Moon in Central Africa. It was during his Polar expedition that he was so badly frost-bitten that the tips of two of his fingers had to be removed. The Duke cares little for society and leads a Spartan life in the intervals between his adventures! He usually breakfasts on bread and milk, works from 9 till i, even in the height of the season in Rome, and after a light lunch works again till 4. Then he goes for a spin on his '-> bicycle, and afterwards works again until dinner time. And even after this meal he frequently indulges in scientific work again until past midnight. Lord Henries, father-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk, who died early in October, was, although called Constable-Maxwell for surname, by male line a Haggerston, and a scion of the ancient Northumbrian family, the head of which is Sir John Haggerston, Bart. The family received their baronetcy in 1642 from Charles 1., of whom they were zealous supporters. The second baronet married a Howard, and through this connection there was already kinship bet%veen the families of Norfolk and Herries before the later union so well known to the public. Haggerston Castle, which for long housed the family, who derived their name from it, passed from them with the daughter and heiress of the fifth baronet. Here, in 1311, Edward 11. received the homage of his cousin Thomas, Earl of " Lancaster, for the Earldom of Lincoln. And as illustrating the antiquity and standing of the Ilaggerstons, in the time of Edward's father Thomas de Haggerston was one of the jurors who found that Muriella, late Countess of Mar, held the fourth part of the Muschamp barony, in Northumberland. The Rev. Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, Bart., 0.5.8., who for the past ten or eleven years has been the- principal of Hunter-Blair's Hall, Oxford, the Benedictine foundation in association with the University, has resigned that office, and has been succeeded by the Rev. S. A. Parker, 0.5.8., M.A. Sir David, who succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father, in 1896, is descended from an acient Scottish family of distinction —the Hunters, of Hunterston, who acquired the lands of Abbot's Hill, in Ayrshire, by Royal Charter, in the sixteenth century. The second surname was assumed. by the first baronet, an emil nent Edinburgh banker, who married the daughter and heiress of John Blair and his wife, the co-heiress of David, Earl of Cassilis. Many of .the distinguished Benedictine's ancestors at- - tamed prominence in the army, and he himself held a captain's commission before entering the Catholic Church and joining the Benedictine Order. Dom Oswald was for some time Rector of the College at Fort Augustus, and was appointed Private Chamberlain successively to Popes Pius IX. and Leo XIII. He has written many learned works, and is greatly interested in antiquarian and archaeological studies. He is in the fifty-fifth year of his age, having been born in 1853. He became a Catholic in 1875, and joined the Benedictines in 1878.