murmur, and with the concurrence of us all....

Before closing I will repair one omission. When I concurred in the
decision to struggle for the retention of Hawarden, I had not the
least idea that my children would have an interest in the
succession. In 1847 your uncle Stephen was only forty; your uncle
Henry, at thirty-seven, was married, and had a child almost every
year. It was not until 1865 that I had any title to look forward to
your becoming at a future time the proprietor.--Ever your
affectionate father.

FINAL SETTLEMENT

The upshot is this, that Mr. Gladstone, with his father's consent and
support, threw the bulk of his own fortune into the assets of Hawarden.
By this, and the wise realisation of everything convertible to
advantage, including, in 1865, the reversion after the lives of Sir
Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of
Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the
Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at L267,000. 'It has been for
thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, '_i.e._, since
the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my life, in conjunction with
your mother and your uncle Stephen, to keep the Hawarden estate together
(or replace what was alienated), to keep it in the family, and to
relieve it from debt with which it was ruinously loaded.'

In 1867 a settlement was made, to which Sir Stephen Glynne and his
brother, and Mr. Gladstone and his wife, were the parties, by which the
estate was conveyed in trust for one or more of the Gladstone children
as Mr. Gladstone might appoint.[205] This was subject to a power of
determining the settlement by either of the Glynne brothers, on repaying
with interest the sum paid for the reversion. As the transaction touched
matters in which he might be supposed liable to bias, Mr. Gladstone
required that its terms should be referred to two men of perfect
competence and probity--Lord Devon and Sir Robert Phillimore--for their
judgment and approval. Phillimore visited Hawarden (August 19-26, 1865)
to meet Lord Devon, and to confer with him upon Sir Stephen Glynne's
affairs. Here are a couple of entries from his diary:--

_Aug. 26._--The whole morning was occupied with the investigation
of S. G.'s affairs by Lord Devon and myself. We examined at some
length the solicitor and the agent. Lord D. and I perfectly