About this time died my brother Lord Fanshawe's widow. She was a very
good wife and tender mother, but else nothing extraordinary. She was
buried in the vault of her husband's family in Ware church. Within a
year after this, his son, Lord Fanshawe, sold Ware Park for 26,000
pounds to Sir Thomas Byde, a brewer, of London.
Thus, in the fourth generation, the chief of our family, since they
came into the south, for their sufferings for the Crown, sold the
flower of their estates, and near 2000 pounds a year more. There
remains but the Remembrancer's place of the Exchequer office: and very
pathetical is the motto of our arms for us--'The victory is in the
Cross.' [Footnote: "In Cruce Victoria." Another motto of the Fanshawe
family was, "Dux vitae ratio." Of these mottoes a Correspondent in the
Gentleman's Magazine for July 1796, tells the following story. "When
Sir Richard was ambassador, and was travelling in Spain, in an English
carriage, with his arms upon it, surrounded by the two mottoes
belonging to them--Dux vitae Ratio--In Cruce Victoria; a crowd of
peasants gathering round the unusual sight of so many foreigners, in a
town where they stopped for refreshment, were very anxious with a
priest, who happened to be amongst them, for an explanation of the
Latin, which being beyond his skill, he informed them that the coach
belonged to the Duke of Vitae Ratio, who had done great things for the
Cross.
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