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By Root 2130 0

the nearby village of Harble- down. But there were at first no records to distinguish which stemmawas genuine. So Brydges turned to musty church records, and to a secure chamber in his family home that held a disorganized pile of old deeds and parchments. Eventually he emerged with "new evidence of an extraordinary nature" to buttress his case. This evidence included a transcript of a long-lost parish register, plus other documents purportedly linking his genealogy to the Chandos's in the mid-seventeenth century At first glance these were conclusive. Unfortunately, however, on close examination the crucial entries appeared to be in recent ink-and checks of the original church records revealed mysterious obliterations at important points, again apparently made after the fact. Had the documents been doctored, or even fabricated?The attorney general certainly came to believe Brydges untrustworthy. What had begun as an affair of honor in one sense thus became one in another, even more personal. From now on, if Brydges were not a peer, then he must be a forger.

After its first hearing in the House of Lords in June 1790, the case descended into a morass of heraldic and genealogical complexities. Finally, in 1803 it came to avote. It was a narrow one. But Brydges's brother- the actual claimant-made a crucial strategic error. He circulated a printed exhortation to the peers on the eve of their vote. The action was seized upon as a breach of privilege, and catalyzed opposition at a critical moment. Brydges's own former counsel, the heavyweight Tory Lord Eldon, now decided not to cast a vote at all. This proved decisive. The peers rejected the claim by one vote. Not only was Brydges's status denied; he was implicitly concluded to be a fraud. He retreated to the country in a fit of despond. "My mind at this period was active," he later recalled, "but I do not think that it was in its soundest state."24

Worse was to come. As the Chandos claim was inching its way slowly and expensively toward disaster, Brydges sought to create for himself the daily life of a peer as he imagined it to be. He had developed elaborate theories about the role of the landed nobility in the moral life of the nation, making them central to its political economy and civilization. He tried to put them into action in anticipation of his imminent ennoblement. So he bought up and renovated a dilapidated old Elizabethan mansion in Kent, establishing its manorial sway over a number of local farms and parishes. With this base he sought to engage in all the polite activities of a peer. Money hemorrhaged through these projects as fast as through his legal campaign. By the beginning of the new century Brydges was in serious debt-at just the moment when the failure of the Chandos claim made an escape through elevation impossible. So he took an even more calamitous decision. He resolved to buy the old Chandos seat of Sudeley Castle-a spectacular ruin that had stood uninhabited ever since Cromwell reduced it in the 1640s. He moved to his son's home of Lee Priory, about five miles south of Canterbury, in preparation for this grand move. But the reality was that Sudeley was far beyond his means. Brydges found himself stranded at Lee. It became his last English home.25

There were worse places for a bard to live. Lee Priory was well suited to seclusion and melancholy. It was surrounded by extensive grounds and rolling hills in which the poet could freely wander, and was rich in historical associations. The gardens contained the remains of Iron Age quarries, a ruined chapel close by was rumored to have been constructed by the Knights Templar, and a local river was said to mark the high point of the Viking invasions. The house itself was built on ancient foundations (it had been the home of royal physician George Ent in the seventeenth century), and had been extensively rebuilt by the architect James Wyatt to a high Gothic design. It housed an extensive collection of books, art, and antiquities. Its grand library was a renowned model of "extreme elegance and chastity," and a