HELSEA.

Consistently and conscientiously as the great duke had opposed what he
considered the revolutionary tendency of the Reform Bill, it must not be
forgotten that it is to him that the Catholics owe the benefits of the
Act of 1829, which relieved them of the disabilities under which they
had so long suffered; and it must not be forgotten too, that in this
measure he had not only to contend with his own repugnance to Catholic
emancipation, but also with that of his chief colleagues,--of the great
majority of the House of Lords, and of the king himself. With the latter
indeed his task had been a very difficult one; and it was only a few
days before the meeting of Parliament in the early part of 1829, that
the consent of George the Fourth had been obtained. Among the most
strenuous of the duke's opponents to the Catholic Relief Bill was the
Earl of Winchelsea, who, in the unreasoning bitterness of his anger,
shut his eyes to the injustice under which the Catholics had so long
suffered, and most unwarrantably charged his grace with an intention "to
introduce Popery into every department of the State." These words led to
a hostile meeting in Battersea Fields on the 21st of March, 1829. Lord
Winchelsea, after receiving the duke's fire, discharged his pistol in
the air, and there the affair ended, his second delivering a written
acknowledgment expressing his lordship's regret for having imputed
disgraceful motives to the conduct of the duke, in his pro-Catholic
exertions. Twelve months afterwards, on the 2nd of April, 1830, Richard
William Lambrecht was indicted at Kingston assizes for the murder of
Oliver Clayton, whom he had shot in a duel in Battersea Fields on the
preceding 8th of January. Lambrecht had a narrow escape, for the judge
in his summing up told the jury that if they were of opinion that the
accused met Clayton "on the ground with the intention, if the difference
could not be settled, of putting his life against Clayton's, and Mr.
Clayton's against his," the prisoner was guilty of wilful murder; and
the jury, finding on application to the learned judge that there were no
circumstances in the case to reduce the crime to manslaughter, by way
apparently of getting out of the difficulty, returned a verdict of _not
guilty_. This incident suggested the sketch entitled _A Hint to_
_Duellists_, in which the unsparing satirist places the duke in
Lambrecht's unenviable position before Mr. Justice Bailey, from whose
l