On the death of George I., a singular scene, with which Lord Chesterfield’s interests were connected, occurred in the Privy Council.  Dr Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the king’s will, and delivered it to his successor, expecting that it would be opened and read in the council; what was his consternation, when his Majesty, without saying a word, put it into his pocket, and stalked out of the room with real German imperturbability!  Neither the astounded prelate nor the subservient council ventured to utter a word.  The will was never more heard of:  and rumour declared that it was burnt.  The contents, of course, never transpired; and the legacy of L40,000, said to have been left to the Duchess of Kendal, was never more spoken of, until Lord Chesterfield, in 1733, married the Countess of Walsingham.  In 1743, it is said, he claimed the legacy—­in right of his wife—­the Duchess of Kendal being then dead:  and was ‘quieted’ with L20,000, and got, as Horace Walpole observes, nothing from the duchess—­’except his wife.’

The only excuse that was urged to extenuate this act on the part of George II., was that his royal father had burned two wills which had been made in his favour.  These were supposed to be the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell and of the Electress Sophia.  There was not even common honesty in the house of Hanover at that period.

Disappointed in his wife’s fortune, Lord Chesterfield seems to have cared very little for the disappointed heiress.  Their union was childless.  His opinion of marriage appears very much to have coincided with that of the world of malcontents who rush, in the present day, to the court of Judge Cresswell, with ‘dissolving views.’  On one occasion he writes thus:  ’I have at last done the best office that can be done to most married people; that is, I have fixed the separation between my brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace will be proclaimed in about a fortnight.’

Horace Walpole related the following anecdote of Sir William Stanhope (Chesterfield’s brother) and his lady, whom he calls ‘a fond couple.’  After their return from Paris, when they arrived at Lord Chesterfield’s house at Blackheath, Sir William, who had, like his brother, a cutting, polite wit, that was probably expressed with the ‘allowed simper’ of Lord Chesterfield, got out of the chaise and said, with a low bow, ‘Madame, I hope I shall never see your face again.’  She replied, ’Sir, I will take care that you never shall;’ and so they parted.

There was little probability of Lord Chesterfield’s participating in domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fancy were engaged in the union which he had formed.  The lady to whom he was really attached, and by whom he had a son, resided in the Netherlands:  she passed by the name of Madame du Bouchet, and survived both Lord Chesterfield and her son.  A permanent provision was made for her, and a sum of five hundred pounds bequeathed to her, with these words:  ’as a small reparation for the injury I did her.’  ‘Certainly,’ adds Lord Mahon, in his Memoir of his illustrious ancestor, ‘a small one.’