4 4 [To the Editor of The SPECTATOR.] Sut,—" Honour to
whom honour is due" being a maxim of your interesting paper, you will be pleased to correct a mis- statement made in your issue of November 29th by your correspondent, Mr. John M. MacLeod. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, whose ancestry was traced to "an eminent Scotch Presby- terian minister in the North of England, the Rev. George Macdonald," is, in fact, the grandson of Rev. George Brown Macdonald, a Wesleyan Methodist Minister, who" travelled" on the " circuits " of that church from 1825 to 1868. One of his daughters married Mr. Baldwin, of Stourport, while her three equally gifted sisters became the wives of Mr. Lockwood Kipling, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and Sir Edward John Poynter. Their brother, Rev. Frederic W. Macdonald, who, like his father, became an illustrious Wes- leyan Methodist minister, and now lies in extreme age and feebleness, has written the engaging history of the families' life in As a Tale that is Told.
On his father's side the Premier is at least one degree further removed by descent from Scotch heredity. For his great-grandfather was another eminent Wesleyan Methodist minister, Rev. Jacob Stanley, one of whose daughters married a Mr. Baldwin, and so became the Prime Minister's grandmother. So it may be that Mr. Stanley Baldwin is a Scotch Presbyterian improved by three or four generations' residence among Wesleyan Methodists in England.—! am, (Superintendent Minister, Leicester (Bishop Street) Circuit).
50 Clarendon Park Road, Leicester.
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