Offices of Parliament

Samuel Pepys' Diary. 21st February 1668. Thence with Brouncker and T. Harvey to Westminster Hall [Map], and there met with Colonel Birch (age 52) and Sir John Lowther, and did there in the lobby read over what I have drawn up for our defence, wherein they own themselves mightily satisfied; and Birch, like a particular friend, do take it upon him to defend us, and do mightily do me right in all his discourse. Here walked in the Hall with him a great while, and discoursed with several members, to prepare them in our business against to-morrow, and meeting my cozen Roger Pepys (age 50), he showed me Granger's written confession¹, of his being forced by imprisonment, &c., by my Lord Gerard (age 50), most barbarously to confess his forging of a deed in behalf of Fitton (age 38), in the great case between him [Fitton] and my Lord Gerard; which business is under examination, and is the foulest against my Lord Gerard that ever any thing in the world was, and will, all do believe, ruine him; and I shall be glad of it.

Note 1. Pepys here refers to the extraordinary proceedings which occurred between Charles, Lord Gerard, and Alexander Fitton, of which a narrative was published at the Hague in 1665. Granger was a witness in the cause, and was afterwards said to be conscience-stricken from his perjury. Some notice of this case will be found in North's "Examen", p. 558; but the copious and interesting note in Ormerod's "History of Cheshire", Vol. iii., p. 291, will best satisfy the reader, who will not fail to be struck by the paragraph with which it is closed-viz., "It is not improbable that Alexander Fitton, who, in the first instance, gained rightful possession of Gawsworth [Map] under an acknowledged settlement, was driven headlong into unpremeditated guilt by the production of a revocation by will which Lord Gerard had so long concealed. Having lost his own fortune in the prosecution of his claims, he remained in gaol till taken out by James II to be made Chancellor of Ireland (under which character Hume first notices him), was knighted, and subsequently created Lord Gawsworth after the abdication of James, sat in his parliament in Dublin in 1689, and then is supposed to have accompanied his fallen master to France. Whether the conduct of Fitton was met, as he alleges, by similar guilt on the part of Lord Gerard, God only can judge; but his hand fell heavily on the representatives of that noble house. In less than half a century the husbands of its two co-heiresses, James, Duke of Hamilton (age 9), and Charles, Lord Mohun, were slain by each other's hands in a murderous duel arising out of a dispute relative to the partition of the Fitton estates, and Gawsworth itself passed to an unlineal hand, by a series of alienations complicated beyond example in the annals of this country". B.