inquiries.

When one of his friends was shut up in Newgate for impugning the
conduct of the House of Commons, Sir Francis took his part, and for
this it was ordered that he too be arrested. Believing in free speech
as he did, he denied the right of the House of Commons to arrest
him, and for nearly three days barricaded his house, till the police
forcibly entered, and carried him to the Tower. A riot resulted, the
people assaulting the police and the soldiers, for the statesman was
extremely popular. Several persons were killed in the tumult.

Nine years later, in 1819, because he condemned the proceedings of the
Lancashire magistrates in a massacre case, he was again arrested for
libel (?). His sentence was three months' imprisonment, and a fine of
five thousand dollars. The banknote with which the money was paid
is still preserved in the Bank of England, "with an inscription
in Burdett's own writing, that to save his life, which further
imprisonment threatened to destroy, he submitted to be robbed."

For thirty years he represented Westminster, fearless in what he
considered right; strenuous for the abolition of slavery, and in all
other reforms. Napoleon said at St. Helena, if he had invaded England
as he had intended, he would have made it a republic, with Sir Francis
Burdett, the popular idol, at its head.

Wealthy himself, Sir Francis married Sophia, the youngest daughter of
the wealthy London banker, Thomas Coutts. One son and five daughters
were born to them, the youngest Angela Georgina (April 21, 1814),
now the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Mr. Coutts was an eccentric and
independent man, who married for his first wife an excellent girl of
very humble position. Their children, from the great wealth of the
father, married into the highest social rank, one being Marchioness of
Bute, one countess of Guilford, and the third Lady Burdett.

When Thomas Coutts was eighty-four he married for the second time,
a well-known actress, Harriet Mellon, who for seven years, till his
death, took excellent care of him. He left her his whole fortune,
amounting to several millions, feeling, perhaps, that he had provided
sufficiently for his daughters at their marriage, by giving them a
half-million each. But Harriet Mellon, with a fine sense of honor,
felt that the fortune belonged to his children. Though she married
five years later the Duke of St. Albans, twenty-four years old, about
half her own age, at her death, in ten year