SIR HARRY HOTSPUR

OF

HUMBLETHWAITE.

BY

ANTHONY TROLLOPE,

AUTHOR OF

"FRAMLEY PARSONAGE," ETC.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1871

The right of Translation is reserved.

London:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers,
Bread Street Hill.

CONTENTS

SIR HARRY HOTSPUR OF
HUMBLETHWAITE.

CHAPTER I.

SIR HARRY HOTSPUR.
 

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite was a mighty person in Cumberland, and one who well understood of what nature were the duties, and of what sort the magnificence, which his position as a great English commoner required of him. He had twenty thousand a year derived from land. His forefathers had owned the same property in Cumberland for nearly four centuries, and an estate nearly as large in Durham for more than a century and a half. He had married an earl's daughter, and had always lived among men and women not only of high rank, but also of high character. He had kept race-horses when he was young, as noblemen and gentlemen then did keep them, with no view to profit, calculating fairly their cost as a part of his annual outlay, and thinking that it was the proper thing to do for the improvement of horses and for the amusement of the people. He had been in Parliament, but had made no figure there, and had given it up. He still kept his house in Bruton Street, and always spent a month or two in London. But the life that he led was led at Humblethwaite, and there he was a great man, with a great domain around him,—with many tenants, with a world of dependants among whom he spent his wealth freely, saving little, but lavishing nothing that