marriage, Lady Altham gave birth to a son at
Dunmain, the family residence in Wexford,
which son was christened by the Rev. Mr.
Lloyd, chaplain of Lord Altham, and called,
after his grandfather, James Annesley, Earl of
Anglesey. Two gentlemen of repute in the
parish, Anthony Colclough and Anthony Cliffe
respectively, were the godfathers, and Mrs.
Pigot, of Tintern, was the godmother. The
Earl of Mount Alexander swore to the birth of
the child, inasmuch as he had heard Lord Altham
say, with an oath, that "his wife had got a son
which would make his brother's nose swell,"
which is apparently an unusual version of
putting that member out of joint. Indeed, there
seemed in those days nothing to which to object
in the transaction, and everything was open and
confessed enough. Two years after the birth
of the child Lord and Lady Altham separated,
and my lord took the boy with him from place
to place till he cast anchor in Carlow, where he
took back a former mistress, with whom he
finally settled in Dublin in the year 1722. She
called herself then Lady Altham; though the
real wife was alive, poorly pensioned, and
in delicate health. In 1729, the real Lady
Altham died. Lord Altham, of course, like all
Irish peers, wanted money. He could not raise
it unless joined in the loan by his son, who was
too young for this. He therefore (this is the
theory) resolved to get rid of him as a useless
burden, and sent him to a person called Cavanagh,
from whom, however, the lad escaped back to
Lord Altham. But when he reached his old
house he was refused admittance, denied
acknowledgment; and so perforce went out into
darkness and distress, and became henceforth a
vagabond about the streets. In 1727, Lord
Altham died, and his brother became Lord
Altham in his stead, succeeding ten years after
to the earldom of Anglesey as well.

A year after his brother's death, Lord Altham
sought out his nephew, kidnapped him—so the
story runs—and shipped him on board the Janus,
under the name of James Hennesley. He was
taken to America, and sold to a planter, one
Drummond, in Pennsylvania, and kept on the
plantation for thirteen years. An old woman, a
fellow-slave, was very kind to him, and when she
died, perhaps feeling that he had lost his only
friend, he tried to make his escape, but was
recaptured, and transferred to another master
because of the brutality of Drummond. The
twelve months' servitude, which was all now
remaining of the original bond, was lengthened
into five years, as a punishment for his attempt.
Here, in his second term, a young Iroquois
Indian girl fell in love with him; and it seems
that his master's daughter did something of the
same kind too; whereupon the Indian nearly
murdered her mistress, and then drowned
herself.  James Hennesley was again sold; and this
time placed on a plantation near that of his old
master, Drummond, where two Indians, brothers
to the young Iroquois girl, tried to murder him;
but succeeded only in wounding him severely, and
giving him two months' sickness. Then, so he
said, he discovered a plot, wherein the mistress
of the establishment, his master's wife, had
agreed to rob her husband, and escape to Europe
with the slave of a neighbouring planter. His
peccant wife sought to tamper with the young
man's fidelity; but, failing in this, she tried to
poison him. Now he escaped in reality, and went
as a sailor before the mast on board a British
man-of-war; where Admiral Vernon heard his
story, and, believing in it, sent him to England
to try his luck in the law courts. His first
appearance there was as prisoner on the charge
of murder, he having accidentally shot a man
named Egglestone; and when asked whether he
would plead guilty or not guilty, his answer was
a fine bit of melodramatic indignation:

"My Lord, I observe that I am indicted by the
name of James Hennesley, labourer, the lowest
addition my enemies could possibly make use of;
but though I claim to be Earl of Anglesey, and a
peer of this realm, I submit to plead not guilty
to this indictment, and put myself immediately
upon my country, conscious of my own
innocence and impatient to be acquitted even of the
imputation of a crime so unbecoming the dignity
I claim."

He was acquitted. After this came the more
important trial for the earldom, in which also
James Hennesley was victorious; and thus it
came to pass that the vagabond of the streets,
the ill-used slave on the plantation, became
Earl of Anglesey and a peer of the realm. But
he never assumed the title, and died in 1760,
leaving two sons, who did not long survive him,
the one dying in 1763, and the other in 1764.
There was another trial about the same earldom
a few years later, but it is not sufficiently
interesting to report.

Some analogy to this great Anglesey case
may be found in the strange Tichborne story
going on at this moment, and likely to go on
for some time yet before it is finally arranged.
When Sir James Francis Doughty, tenth baronet
and father of the late Sir Alfred Tichborne,
eleventh baronet, came to the title and estates
on the death of his brother in 1853, he
had two sons, Roger Charles, born in 1829,
and Alfred Joseph, born in 1839—the two
boys being of the ages of fourteen and
twenty-four respectively. The year after his
father's accession, Roger, an ex-lieutenant in
the 6th Dragoons, left England in anger;
declaring that he would never return during his
father's lifetime; and sailed for South America
to see what fortune and energy would give him
in a new life. However, the ship in which he
had embarked was wrecked, and young
Tichborne was assumed to have gone to the bottom
with the rest. Years passed on. Alfred grew
up, and married the daughter of Lord Arundel
of Wardour; and in 1862 Sir James, the father,
died, and Alfred succeeded to the title and
estates. But he did not keep them long. He
was wonderfully extravagant during his short
period of possession, and ran through his
property with that mad haste which some young
men have to free themselves from the