the town which he could secure, and enlarging his
means by marrying two wealthy wives. But his first marriage did not take
place till he was nearer fifty than forty; and he had as a bachelor been
a most generous benefactor to the sons of his two next brothers, Thomas
and William.

His second wife, who became in due course of time godmother to her
great-niece, Jane Austen, was the widow of Samuel Lennard, of West
Wickham, who left her his estate. Legal proceedings ensued over the
will, and Mrs. Lennard took counsel of Francis Austen, who ended by
winning both the case and her hand. Francis's son by his first wife
(known as Motley Austen) rounded off the family estate at Sevenoaks by
purchasing the Kippington property. Motley's third son, John, eventually
inherited the Broadford estate. Francis's two most distinguished
descendants were Colonel Thomas Austen of Kippington, well known as M.P.
for Kent, and the Rev. John Thomas Austen, senior wrangler in 1817.

Both the two next brothers of Francis Austen adopted the medical
profession. Thomas, an apothecary at Tonbridge, had an only son, Henry,
who graduated at Cambridge, and, through his uncle's interest, held the
living of West Wickham for twenty years. His descendants on the female
side are still flourishing.

William, the surgeon, Jane Austen's grandfather, is more immediately
interesting to us. He married Rebecca, daughter of Sir George Hampson, a
physician of Gloucester, and widow of another medical man, James Walter.
By her first husband she had a son, William Hampson Walter, born in
1721; by her second she had three daughters, and one son, George, born
in 1731. Philadelphia--the only daughter who grew up and married--we
shall meet with later. Rebecca Austen died in 1733, and three years
later William married Susanna Holk, of whom nothing is known except that
she died at an advanced age, and did not mention any of the Austens in
her will; neither is there any trace of her in any of the family records
with which we are acquainted; so it is hardly probable that little
George Austen (Jane's father), who had lost both his parents when he was
six years old, continued under the care of his stepmother. However, all
that we know of his childhood is that his uncle Francis befriended him,
and sent him to Tonbridge School, and that from Tonbridge he obtained a
Scholarship (and subsequently a Fellowship) at St. John's College,
Oxford--the College at which, later on, through Ge