In January, 1855, the Crimean War was in progress, and the Duke having given 500l. to the Patriotic Fund, further showed his bounty by ordering that several fat bullocks, 100 head of deer and 1,000 hares should be potted and sent out to the scene of action.  Besides these eatables he gave a quantity of unbleached cotton and flannel to be made into shirts and other garments by the ladies of Worksop and district.  In that same month Major-General Bentinck, who had been wounded in the right arm, arrived at Welbeck, intending to return to the war as soon as his wound would allow him.

It was formerly the custom for everyone who paid a visit to the stately home in Sherwood Forest, whether on business or pleasure, not to come away without tasting the Worksop ale.  Its quality was renowned, and the Duke sent 1,000 gallons of it to the Army fighting in the Crimea.

The lake at Welbeck is three miles long, and its waters are supplied from an irrigation system at Clipstone, costing the fourth Duke 80,000l. to carry out, draining a tract of marshy land and making it one of the most fertile districts in England.  After supplying the lake at Welbeck the stream flows to that at Clumber.

It was estimated that between two and three millions sterling were spent by the Duke in putting his ideas into execution, and the one beneficent effect of his expenditure was the employment of a large number of men in work that was not altogether of a useless nature, as witness his great improvements in agriculture, following up his father’s ideas, adding to the national wealth by the crops this hitherto uncultivated area was made to produce.

After his long and chequered career the Duke passed away in December, 1879, having nearly reached eighty years of age.  Peace be to his ashes.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRESENT DUKE AND DUCHESS.—­A ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT

There must have been a thrilling sensation of delight at the good fortune that had overtaken him when the present Duke found himself in possession of the family honours and estates.  There had been so many vicissitudes in the Dukedom that any chance survival might have stepped in to bar his claim.  “There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip” is an old saying, and many a relation of a great noble is near the succession of his honours, only to see them pass to some other branch where least expected.

The present Duke, or to give him his full family name, William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, was a long way off the fifth Duke, in the table of consanguinity, he had no trace of the Scott blood in him, and was in fact only second cousin of his eccentric predecessor in the title.

His father was Lieutenant-General A.C.  Cavendish-Bentinck, whose descent was through the third Duke, so that the two branches had to go back nearly a hundred years to find a common ancestor.  His birth took place on December 28th, 1857, and it must have seemed then a remote possibility that in less than five and twenty years he would succeed to one of the proudest Dukedoms in the land, with the opportunities of a royal alliance.