People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 12 June 1913, Page 41

People We Hear About

The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk were among ; those who attended the Eucharistic Congress at Malta. '■ Amongst those who occupied seats in the. Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery during Mr. Lloyd George's .Budget speech were the Very Rev. David Fleming and Mr. Martin Kennedy. They were introduced by Mr. Pat O’Brien, M.P. ; The engagement of King Manoel to Princess Augusta Victoria of Hohenzoliern is announced, and the marriage is likely to take place in the near future. The bride-elect, the only daughter of Prince William, the head of the non-reigning ane of Hohenzollerny was born at Potsdam on August 19, 1890, and is thus nine months younger than tne bridegroom, i King Manoel > is second cousin to his future bride through* her paternal grandmother, the Princess Antonia, who was the - daughter of Queen Maria da Gloria of Portugal, and so the aunt of King Carlos, the father of the bridegroom. The death occurred on April 18 at Antibes, in the 1 South of Europe, of Dr. Agnes McLaren, one of the first women doctors to qualify in the'United Kingdom. The daughter of the late Mr. Duncan McLaren, M.P. for Edinburgh, Dr. Agnes McLaren became a Catholic, and in her later years devoted her leisure and energy * assiduously to philanthropic work. She was one of the honorary secretaries of the Catholic Medical Mission to the Women and Children of India ; she was an active member of the International Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice; and also Honorary President of the Edinburgh Women’s Suffrage Society. 6 In, the current number of the Waterford and South-East of Ireland Archceoloyical Journal there is a letter from Don Rafael Merry del Val contradicting a statement made in a previous issue of the Journal that ‘ Cardinal Merry del Val was entrusted in his youth to the care of his kinsman Captain Merry, then residing in - London. Don Rafael Merry del Val "writes: ‘I wish to say that I deny this statement emphatically and entirely, as-my son, Cardinal Merry del Val, was - - never under any other care than that of his parents, and he never saw Captain Merry. The Cardinal never left his home until, when he was eighteen years old he went to St. Cuthbert’s College*, Ushaw, where he remained two years before going to Rome.’ King George, by calling the very ancient Barony of Furnival out of abeyance in favor of the Hon. Mary .' Frances Petre, the twelve-year-old. daughter. of Audrey" Lady Petre, has added yet another to the not inconsiderable number of Catholic ladies who at present hold ‘ peerages in their own right. These include the Duchess of Norfolk, in her own right Baroness Herries (though that dignity is at present merged in the dignity of premier Duchess of England) ; Mona Baroness Beaumont, Ada Baroness Wentworth and now the youthful Baroness Furnival, who ranks before all the others, that barony having been created as long ago as the year 1295, in the reign of Richard I. The male line of the Furnivals became extinct in 1383, and the barony ** thereafter passed through the families of Nevill, Talbot, and Howard, falling at length into abeyance on the death of Edward, ninth Duke of Norfolk (in 1777), between his daughters, Winifrede Lady Stourton and Anne Lady Petre. It is from the latter of these two ladies that the present Lady Furnival descends, Lord Mowbray and Stourton (the senior co-heir) having stood aside in favor of his young kinswoman, the only child and heiress of the fourteenth Lord Petre. It is, by the way, of some interest to Scotsmen that Lady Furnival is entitled, as heir of line of the old Dukes of Norfolk, to bear on her coat of arms the special augmentation—the demi-lion of Scotland on a bend—which was granted to the Earl of Surrey (afterwards second Duke of Norfolk) for his victory at Flodden, just four hundred years ago, over the Scotch, whose King, James IV., fell on that fatal field. ’