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No. 10 Berkeley Square
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LADY ALBEMARLE (DOWAGER-COUNTESS OF ALBEMARLE)
Two interesting people lived at No. 10. at different times. One was the Dowager-Countess of Albemarle, widow of the third Earl and daughter of Sir John Miller, a Hampshire baronet.
She would seem to have had anything but an amiable temper, and her grandson mentioned that she once boxed his ears after he had served in the Waterloo campaign!
The same chronicler related how, being a stout Burdettite when a boy, during the Burdett Riots he once cried out lustily, "Burdett for ever," - but being terrified by the clattering of swords and pattering of hoofs which signalled the approach of the soldiery, he did not stop running until he was safe and sound in his grandmother's house.
"That same evening," he continues, "a large and noisy multitude assembled in our Square, and smashed every pane of glass in the windows of No. 12, the house next but one to Lady Albemarle's. The object of popular resentment was the Earl of Dartmouth, who rented that house of my father."
This Lord Dartmouth was the third Earl, described in the Malmesbury Letters as being "a very fat fair young man" in 1777, who held many important positions, amongst others that of Lord of the Bedchamber to George IV, when Prince of Wales.
Next page: 1784 Demonstration in Berkeley Square
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