THE PRIME MINISTER'S ANCESTRY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The Prime Minister's grandfather was not" an eminent Scotch Presbyterian minister," as described by your corres- pondent, Mr. John MacLeod, but a worthy Wesleyan minister, who, in accordance with Methodist usage, removed to a new " circuit" every thew years, but spent, nevertheless, several of these terms, "big with fate," for his. family, in or around the Staffordshire Potteries. I believe he was living at Leek when Alice Macdonald, one of his daughters, and Lockwood Kipling took their lovers' walks on the shores of
Rudyard Lake, later recollections of which determined the name of their only son, the Laureate of the Empire. The Prime Minister's uncle, the Rev. Frederick W. Macdonald, is also a Wesleyan minister, and was the President of the Wes- leyan Conference in 1899. He has been for many years an ardent and eloquent advocate for the British and Foreign Bible Society.
'None of the daughters of the Rev. G. B. Macdonald married " well " from a worldly standpoint. The young men they wedded were all' struggling youths with more ambition than pence. Three of the four had artistic tastes ; the fourth, a young fellow named Baldwin, was a business man. I presume your correspondent wrote " mothers " when he meant "wives," when he says : "Two other daughters "- other than Mrs. Baldwin and Mrs. Kipling—" of this distin- guished house became mothers of two typical Englishmen, Sir Edward Bume-Jones and Sir Edward John Poynter."
It is a remarkable family record. The son rises to eminence in the Wesleyan Church ; one sister marries a young man who was destined to become one of the most distinctive of Vic- torian artists ; another a young man who was destined to succeed Millais in the Chair of the Royal Academy ; whilst the • other two are distinguished less by their husbands than by their sons, although neither Sir Philip Burne-Jones nor Sir Ambrose Macdonald Poynter fails to do honourto his parentage.
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