Footnotes 1. For the London Library by James Spedding.
2. Henry Petty Fitzmaurice (1780–1863), 3d Marquess of Lansdowne, succeeded to title, 1809; chancellor of the exchequer under Grenville, 1806–7; moderate Whig leader who advocated the abolition of slavery, Catholic emancipation, the removal of the political disabilities
of Jews, and better national education; president of the council, 1830–41 and 1846–52; refused the premiership, 1852, but was a member of the cabinet without office, 1852–58; respected as a patron of literature and art.
3. George Hamilton Gordon (1784–1860), 4th Earl of Aberdeen; founded the Athenian Society after visiting Greece, 1804; took part in diplomatic negotiations while ambassador to Vienna, 1813–14; foreign sec. under Wellington, 1828–30, and Peel, 1841–46, when he established friendly relations with the U.S. over their northeastern and western boundaries through the Ashburton
and Oregon treaties. He tried and failed to prevent the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, 1843; headed a coalition ministry, 1852, which was forced into the Crimean War, and resigned in 1855, after a vote of censure on its mismanagement. He was president of the Society of Antiquaries, 1812–46.
4. Spencer Joshua Alwynne Compton (1790–1857), 2d Marquess of Northampton, succeeded to title, 1828. M.P. for Northampton, 1812–20, but, after returning from Italy on the death of his wife, 1830, he chiefly interested himself in literature, the arts, and science. At various times president of the Geological Society,
the British Association, the Royal Society, and a trustee of the British Museum.
6. Spedding explained to Milnes in more detail, 22 Jan.: “What we wish Lord Northampton to do is simply this. If he be willing to become a shareholder in the proposed institution,
to allow his name to be announced as a supporter of it. The reason why the proposal cannot be circulated in its present state
is that it wants the sanction and guarantee of some known and conspicuous names. People will say, who is the getter-up of
the project, what security is there that it is not a job, a booksellers' speculation or a fudge? Nobody could ask such a question
if the names of Lord Lansdowne, … &c., were attached to it as patrons or parties interested” (Reid, RMM 1:234).
7. Forster's Oliver Cromwell (pref. dated Oct. 1838), vol. 6 of Lives of Eminent British Statesmen, which were part of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia (1830–49), ended at 1651 and the battle of Worcester; he completed the biography with his Cromwell and the Republicans, vol. 7, in Aug.
8. TC had already read Forster's lives of Sir John Eliot and Sir Thomas Wentworth in vol. 2 (1836); see 8:333. Forster's other vols. were 3 (1837) on Pym and John Hampden, and 4 (1837) on Sir Henry Vane and Henry Marten. Vol. 1 (1831), by Sir James Mackintosh, was on Sir Thomas More, Wolsey, Cranmer, and William Cecil, Lord Burleigh; and vol. 5 (1838), by T. P. Courtenay, was on Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby. Forster's 5 vols. were collected,
with a new intro., as Statesmen of the Commonwealth of England (London, 1840).
