Lady Mary Wortley Montague | Page 6

York. A zealous royalist, he was in 1643
appointed Lieutenant-General of the King's forces in the counties of
Lincoln, Rutland, Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Norfolk, and soon after
taking up this command was accidentally shot near Gainsborough,
when being carried off in a pinnace as a prisoner to Hull by the
Parliamentary Army. He married in 1601 Gertrude, eldest daughter and
co-heir of Sir William Reyner, of Orton Longueville, Co. Huntingdon.
She survived her husband six years.
The second Earl was Henry Pierrepont, who was born in 1607. From
1628, when his father was given the earldom, he was known under the
style of Viscount Newark. In that year he was elected Member of
Parliament for Nottingham, and he represented that constituency until
1641, when he was summoned to the House of Lords in his father's
barony as Lord Pierrepont. He, too, was an ardent supporter of the King,
and was a member of His Majesty's Council of War at Oxford. He was
created Marquess of Dorchester in 1645. After the Restoration he was
in high favour at Whitehall. He was Commissioner of Claims at the
Coronation of Charles II, and in 1662 and again in 1673 he acted as

Joint Commissioner of the office of Earl Marshal. He was twice
married, but had no direct heirs, and on his death in 1680 the
marquessate became extinct.
The earldom passed to the family of the younger brother of the last
holder. This was the great grandfather of Lady Mary, William
Pierrepont, who deservedly earned the title of "Wise William." He
sided with the Parliament, and during the Long Parliament, in the
proceedings of which he took an active part, he sat for Great Wenlock.
He was one of the Commissioners selected to treat with Charles in
1642, and after the failure to open negotiations he was anxious to retire
from public affairs. However, he was persuaded not to resign, and in
1644 was appointed one of the Committee of both Kingdoms. He
became a leader of the independent party, and did not always see eye to
eye with Cromwell. He quarrelled with his party, disapproving of its
attitude towards Purge's Pride and the trial of the King. After this he
took little part in politics, though the Protector sought, and he gave on
occasions, his advice. In February, 1660, he was elected to the new
Council of State at the head of the list, and in the Convention
Parliament represented Nottingham. In the negotiations with Charles II
he was a moderating influence. Afterwards, he retired into private life.
He died in 1678 or 1679. His eldest son, Robert, who married Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir John Evelyn, pre-deceased his father, dying in 1666,
and the earldom passed to his eldest son, Robert, who died unmarried
in 1682. The title then went to his next brother, William, who died
without issue eight years later.
A younger brother of Robert and William, Evelyn Pierrepont, now
succeeded as (fifth) earl. He was the father of Lady Mary. Born in 1665,
he was returned to Parliament for East Retford in 1689, but his stay in
the House of Commons was brief, for in the following year the peerage
descended to him. In December, 1706, the higher dignity that had once
been in his family was revived in his favour, and he was created Earl of
Dorchester, with a special remainder, failing heirs male of his body, to
his uncle Gervase Pierrepont, who had himself been raised to the
peerage as Lord Pierrepont of Ardglass in Ireland and later was given
the dignity of Lord Pierrepont of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire. Lord

Pierrepont died in 1715, and both his titles became extinct.
The Marquess married Mary, daughter of William Feilding, third Earl
of Denbigh, by his first wife, Mary, sister of John, first Baron of
Kingston, in the peerage of Ireland. Lady Mary was, therefore, a
relation of the novelist, Henry Fielding, whose surname was spelt
differently because, he explained, his branch of the family was the only
one that could spell correctly.
Of this marriage, there was issue:
(i.) William, who took the style of Viscount Newark until 1706, and
then was known as Earl of Kingston until his death in 1713, at the age
of twenty-one. He had married before 1711 Rachel, daughter of
Thomas Baynton, of Little Charfield, Wilts, who outlived her husband
eight years. There was a son, Evelyn, who succeeded to the peerage.
(ii.) Lady Mary, the subject of this memoir.
(iii.) Lady Frances, who in 1714 became the second wife of John
Erskine, sixth or eleventh Earl of Mar; and
(iv.) Lady Evelyn, who married John, second Baron, and afterwards
first Earl Gower, and died in June, 1727.
In the winter of 1697, when Lady Mary was eight years old, her mother
died. After