Rodney »

General Books publication date: 2009
Original publication date: 1891
Original Publisher: Macmillan and co.
Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text.
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Excerpt: CHAPTER III MARRIAGE, THE PRESS-GANG, AND THE FLAG After twenty-two years of unbroken sea service Rodney was well entitled to an easy billet on shore, or in a harbour ship. Besides, he now established a kind of moral claim to a stationary post, for in 1753 he married. The rank of the lady shows that he had a better social position than the very great majority of contemporary naval officers. They were largely sons of other officers or middle-class people, and they lived among themselves in the ports, marrying and giving in marriage in their own class. Rodney, who had some of the best blood in England in his veins, lived when ashore in the great society of London. His wife was chosen in this, and not in the naval world. She was a daughter of Mr. Charles Compton, brother of the sixth, and father of the seventh, Earl of Northampton. In Rodney's life she is little more than a name. No letter to her or from her has come in my way -- partly, no doubt, because the evidence about the Admiral's life only becomes abundant in his later years when she was dead, when he had remarried and begotten a second family. All that can be said about her may be summed up in a few words. Her name was Jane; she married Rodney in 1753, anddied in 1757, having borne him two sons and a daughter. The elder of the two sons, afterwards an officer in the Guards, was the ancestor of the present Lords Rodney. The younger went to sea, and was drowned in the wreck of his sloop, the Ferret. The daughter died in childhood. In 1751, too, Rodney had entered Parliament as member for Saltash, which means ...