A LINK WITH THE PAST.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—A link with the past has been broken by the death of my mother, Mrs. Longworth-Damee, at St. Leerier& on the 18th of last month, and a short amount of the circumstances which led to her becoming the goddaughter of -Queen Caroline may not be with- out interest for the readers of the Spectator. She was the daughter of Thomas Northmore, -of -Cleve, and his wife Emmeline, daughter of Sir John Eden, Bart., of Windleetone, in the county of Durham. My mother was born on June 6th, 1821, at Cleve, near Exeter. At this period the whole of England was agitated by the controversy between George IV. and Queen Caroline, whose cause was ardently taken -up by my grandfather. He was a leading man in that part of Devon, and not only a pelitician of the school of Leigh Hunt, but also a scholar, a poet, and -a geologist, a -rare combination for a country gentleman at-that period. Incidentally It may be mentioned that he was the drat discoverer of prehistoric remains at Kent's Cavern, near Torquay. The cause of Queen Caroline enlisted his sympathy, and Cleve was one of her resting- places during her peregrination of the Western Counties. 'When she learnt that her host had an infant daughter who was about to be baptized she expressed her wish -to be-the child's godmother. She attended at the ceremony at St. Thomas's Church, 'Exeter (where many generations of Northmores lie), and held my mother in her arms at the christening. From her my mother received her Christian names, Caroline Amelia Brunswick.
Cleve was the last of the formerly extensive properties of the North mores to remain in the possession of the family. I often heard from my mother in ray childhood the family legend of the loss of Whyddon Park, which adjoins the well-known Fingle Bridge in the beautiful gorge .Q.1 the Teign near Chagferd. Geoffrey Northmore, about 1780, lost a large sum of money at cards, the game turning on an Atee of diamonds. To pay the debt he had to sell Whyddon. He masa the rest of his life at an old
eountry-house named Woneon Manor, near Throwleigh, on the edge of Dartmoor, and there painted on the panelling of his bed- room a large ace of diamonds, which, as an old nurse told my mother, "he always cursed when he went to bed, instead of saying his prayers.' Woneon Manor is now a farmhouse; the ace of diamonds is still olearly visible, and I have myself seen it more than once. It was sketched by ray cousin, John Northmore, and the drawing was reproduced by Mr. Baring-Gould in his book, An Old Devon Manor House. He also introduces the Northmores into two of his novels, John Herring and Urith. John North- more, who was the last Northmore owner of Cleve, died in 1915 in his eighty-ninth year, and is buried in St. Thomas's Church.—
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