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fox hunts without, with music and feasting within doors, duly attending the church of his neighbor, the Rev. Roger Price, late of King's Chapel, Boston, of which Frankland had been, from his arrival, a member.

Called to England by the death of his uncle, whose title he inherited as fourth baronet, he journeyed to Lisbon, and there, upon All Saints' Day, 1755, on his way to high mass, he was engulfed by the earthquake, his horses killed, and he would have perished miserably but for his discovery and rescue by the devoted Agnes.

Grateful and penitent, he led her to the altar, and poor Agnes Surriage, the barefooted maid-of-all-work of the inn at Marblehead, was translated into Lady Agnes Frankland.

It was upon Sir Harry Frankland's return from Europe in 1756 that he became the owner of the Clark House, lived in it one short year, entertaining continually with the assistance of Thomas, his French cook, as appears by frequent entries in his journal; was then transferred to Lisbon as Consul General, and so, with the exception of brief visits to this country in 1759 and 1763, disappeared from our horizon.

After his death at Bath, England, in 1768, his widow returned here with Henry Cromwell, but not until she had recorded her husband's virtues upon a monument "erected by his affectionate widow, Agnes, Lady Frankland," dividing her year between Boston and Hopkinton, exchanging civilities with those who had once rejected her, till the contest with England rendered all loyalists and officials unpopular.

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Defended from molestation by a guard of six soldiers, Lady Frankland entered Boston about the first of June, 1775, witnessed from her window in Garden Court Street the battle of Bunker Hill, took her part in relieving the sufferings of the wounded officers, and then in her turn disappeared with Henry Cromwell, leaving her estates in the hands of members of her family. She lived a few years with the Frankland family in England, married a second time in 1782, and died in 1783.

She is described as altogether a very lovely creature, with a majestic gait, dark lustrous eyes, clear melodious voice, and a sweet smile, graceful and dignified manners, readily adapting herself to her rapid change of position, winning the affection of her husband's well-born relatives, while she never forgot nor forsook her own humble kindred.

One gets a very favorable impression of Sir Harry Frankland from his journal and from the transmitted facts of his life. He was a liberal giver, as the records of the King's Chapel attest, a lover of hospitality, a warm friend, constantly remitting to a large circle at home tokens of his affectionate remembrance, living in friendly relations with his more Puritan neighbors in town, helpful to those in the country, courteous and considerate to all; independent in judgment, as his comments upon the policy of the government manifest.

age

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The errors of his youth, for he came here as Collector at the twenty-five, he sought to repair. His natural son, Henry Cromwell,

he brought home to be cherished by his wife, had him educated, and provided for him handsomely in his will.*

Penitent for his betrayal of the young girl who had trusted in him, he made her his wife, welcomed all her family, sailor brother included, to his hospitable home, treating as his own two of her sister's children ; † was a considerate, loving husband while living, and at his death divided his fortune between her and Henry Cromwell.

A strange, eventful history, facts too improbable for fiction, to be told only by a poet, who should conjure up the thoughts that entered the mind, the feelings that agitated the heart, of this fair, sweet Agnes, as she sat at the window of her painted parlor in Garden Court Street, gazing by turns at the Old North Meeting-House and into the great buttonwood by its side, while the diorama of her life passed before her mind's eye.

Upon Lady Frankland's death, the town mansion, which had escaped confiscation, passed by her will to her family, and was by them sold in 1811 for $8,000 to Mr. Joshua Ellis, a retired North End merchant, who resided there until his death.

Upon the widening of Bell Alley in 1832, these two proud mansions, long since deserted by the families whose importance they were erected to illustrate and perpetuate, objects of interest to the poet, the artist, and the historian, alike for their association with a seemingly remote past, their antique splendor, and for the series of strange, romantic incidents in the lives of their successive occupants, were ruthlessly swept away.

*Henry Cromwell became an officer in the British navy, had a creditable record, and finally left it rather than fight against his native country.

† Among the interesting relics in possession of Mr. Rowland Ellis is a wellpainted picture of two children left in a panel over the mantel of one of the chambers when the house was sold by Isaac Surriage to Mr. Ellis. Circumstances tend to the belief that these are portraits of John and Sally M'Clester, the two children here mentioned.

MARCH MEETING, 1881.

The regular_monthly meeting of the Society was held in the Dowse Library on Thursday afternoon, March 10, the President, the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, in the chair.

The record of the last meeting was read and accepted. The Librarian presented his report of accessions to the Library during the past month.

The Corresponding Secretary announced the acceptance by the Rev. Henry F. Jenks of his election as a Resident Member, and the acceptance by Messrs. Julius Dexter, of Cincinnati, and George Otto Trevelyan, of England, of their elections as Corresponding Members.

On the recommendation of the Council, it was voted that the Annual Meeting be held on Friday, April 8, at noon, to adjourn to the house of the President for a social meeting. Messrs. Abbott Lawrence and George B. Chase were appointed the Committee to examine the Treasurer's accounts, and Messrs. Saltonstall, Tuttle, and J. C. Ropes, the Committee on Nominations.

The President then spoke as follows:

We are called on this afternoon, Gentlemen, to take notice of the very recent deaths of two of our most venerable Resident Members, so that they may be appropriately entered on our records.

The Hon. John Chipman Gray, LL.D., died at his winter home in this city on the morning of the 3d instant, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near to his summer residence at Cambridge, on the afternoon of the 5th. He was chosen a member of this Society in 1841, and his name stood fourth on our roll in the order of seniority of election. He was one of our Vice-Presidents for three years, and until a recent period was a frequent attendant at our meetings, taking an active part in our proceedings. Some of us can recall an interesting meeting at his own house in 1859, when communications were received from Edward Everett and Emory Washburn and Judge Warren and Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch, and others who have long since passed

away.

Born at Salem in 1793, Mr. Gray had completed his eightyseventh year on the 26th of December last, and had entirely withdrawn of late from public meetings of any sort. Yet his mind was clear and vigorous to the end, and he was spared from any serious physical infirmity until within a few weeks of his death. One of the younger sons of William Gray, once lieutenant-governor of the Commonwealth, and whose name was so long associated with the highest integrity and the widest and most successful commercial enterprise, he enjoyed the best education which New England then afforded. He was a graduate of Harvard College in 1811, while still in his seventeenth year, in the class with Edward Everett, of whom, as he told us on the occasion of Mr. Everett's death, in 1865, he was the chum for two years, and an intimate friend for sixty years. As a young man, he travelled extensively in Europe, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but he never entered seriously on the practice of his profession. His circumstances did not require him to do so; and clients rarely seek those who can do without fees. But he was soon drawn into public service, was a member of the Common Council for several years as early as 1824, and afterward served the State as a representative of Boston, as a senator of Suffolk, and as a member of the executive council, successively, during a long term of years.

Mr. Gray devoted himself with zeal and energy to whatever service he undertook, and held it a matter of conscientious obligation to study and to master the questions on which he was called to give a vote. As one of his associates for a few years in the Legislature of Massachusetts, I can bear personal testimony to the peculiar confidence which was reposed in the soundness of his judgment, in the extent and exactness of his information, and in his scrupulous impartiality and integrity, by all, of all parties, who were around him. He was a man of singularly quick perceptions, seeing at a glance the drift of a measure or a motion, and ready to pronounce upon it while others were deliberating or doubting. The absence of mind which he sometimes exhibited, or seemed to exhibit, was any thing but an indication of his intellectual qualities. He was both quick-sighted and farsighted; and few men went deeper than he did into any subject which he studied. He was proverbial, at one time, for getting all that was worth knowing out of a new book while he was cutting the leaves, or sometimes by looking between the leaves without cutting them at all.

Mr. Gray had no fancy for display, and less faculty for it,

perhaps, than many of his contemporaries. But he was a man of generous culture, a great reader, a close thinker, a good debater, and a clear and able writer. A little volume which he published in 1856 contains his principal productions. It includes an essay on Dante, giving evidence of his Italian studies, first printed in 1819; an essay on Demosthenes, proving that he had not forgotten or abandoned his Greek, in 1826; and an essay on college education, in 1851. These were all contributed to the "North American Review." But the larger part of his volume is made up of addresses or essays on agriculture or horticulture, on forest trees and fruit trees, and on the climate of New England. These were the subjects which continued to interest and occupy him long after his love of ancient or modern literature had grown colder with advancing age. The study of an unfamiliar tongue — Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, or, perhaps, Sanskrit - would still attract him. But agriculture and horticulture were his favorite pursuits, and he pursued them practically as well as theoretically. His relations to the old Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, both as one of the trustees and as its President, were as valuable as they were long-continued; and his green-houses were lovingly cared for, almost to the last day of his life.

He was eminently a just man, - true to his neighbor and to his God, doing much, while he lived, for those in less favored circumstances than himself, and not forgetting, in the final disposition of his fortune, some of those great institutions of education and charity which he had helped to encourage and maintain in previous years.

Mr. Gray was early married to a daughter of the late Samuel P. Gardner, Esq., a former member of this Society. They had no children, and, happily for him, her death preceded his own by less than two years.

I pass to the name of George Barrell Emerson, LL.D., who died at Chestnut Hill on Friday last, the 4th instant, and whose funeral was largely attended at King's Chapel on the 7th. Mr. Emerson was elected a member of this Society at our annual meeting in 1863, and never failed to manifest a warm interest in being with us, until the infirmities of age disabled him. He delivered, as you will remember, one of our course of Lowell Lectures in the winter of 1868-69. And no one will have forgotten his last appearance among us, at the January meeting of 1879, when he came to pay a brief tribute to the memory of his friend and classmate, Caleb

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