His wife died in 1825, after filing a bill for divorce, and
making her children wards of Chancery. Wellesley subsequently (1828)
married Mrs. Bligh; but the second wife was as ill treated as the first,
and he left her so destitute that she was a frequent applicant for
relief at the metropolitan police-courts. He died of heart-disease in
July, 1857, a pensioner on the charity of his cousin, the second Duke of
Wellington.]
[Footnote 3: Byron's statement is incorrect. Pierre-Auguste Caron de
Beaumarchais (1732-1799) married, in 1756, as his first wife,
Madeleine-Catherine Aubertin, widow of the sieur Franquet. She died in
1757. He married, in 1768, as his second wife, Genevieve-Magdaleine
Wattebled, widow of the sieur Leveque. She died in 1770. The only
lawsuit which he won "before he was thirty," was that against Lepaute,
who claimed as his own invention the escapement for watches and clocks,
which Beaumarchais had discovered. The case was decided in favour of
Beaumarchais in 1754. Out of his second lawsuit--with Count de la
Blache, legatee of his patron Duverney, who died in 1770--sprang his
action against Goezman, with which began the publication of his
'Memoires'. (See Lomenie, 'Beaumarchais and his Times', tr. by H.S.
Edwards, 4 vols., London, 1855-6.)]
[Footnote 4: Byron took his M. A. degree at Cambridge July 4, 1808.]
[Footnote 5: Sir William Drummond (1770-1828), Tory M.P. for St. Mawes
(1795-96) and for Lostwithiel (1796-1801), held from 1801 to 1809
several diplomatic posts: ambassador to the Court of Naples 1801-3; to
the Ottoman Porte 1803-6; to the Court of Naples for the second time,
1806-9.
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