Prince" being the first. Ultimately, to reward his
many services, Edward III. created him, about 1348, duke of Lancaster,
and the county of Lancaster was formed into a palatinate or
principality. This great and good nobleman who seems to have been the
soul of munificence and piety, died in 1361, leaving two daughters to
inherit his vast possessions, but on the death of the elder without
issue the whole devolved on the second, Blanche, who married John of
Gaunt (so called because born at Ghent in Flanders, in March, 1340), son
of Edward III. He was created duke of Lancaster, played a prominent part
in history, and died in 1399, leaving a son by Blanche--Henry
Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, from Bullingbrook Castle in
Lincolnshire, the scene of his birth. He became King Henry IV., and thus
the duchy merged in the Crown, and is enjoyed to-day by Queen Victoria
as duchess of Lancaster.

Her revenue from this source has been steadily increasing. Thus in 1865
it was L26,000; in 1867, L29,000; in 1869, L31,000; in 1872 L40,000. The
largest of these figures does not probably represent a fifth of the
receipts of John of Gaunt, but the duchy of Lancaster, like that of
Cornwall, suffered far a long time from the fraud and rapacity of those
who were supposed to be its custodians. Managed as it now is, it will
probably have doubled its present revenue before the close of the
century.[B]

The other source is still more strictly personal income. On the 30th of
August, 1852, there died a gentleman, aged seventy-two, of the name of
John Camden Neild. He was son of a Mr. James Neild, who acquired a large
fortune as a gold- and silversmith. Mr. James Neild was born at Sir
Henry Holland's birthplace, Knutsford, a market-town in Cheshire, in
1744. He came to London, when a boy, in 1760, the first year of George
III.'s reign, and was placed with one of the king's jewelers, Mr.
Hemming. Gradually working his way up, he started on his own account in
St. James's street, a very fashionable thoroughfare, and made a large
fortune. In 1792 he retired. He appears to have been a man of rare
benevolence and some literary ability. He devoted himself to remedying
the condition of prisons, more especially those in which persons were
confined for debt: indeed, his efforts in this direction would seem to
have rivaled those of Howard, for in the course of forty years Mr. Neild
visited most of the prisons in Great Britain, and was for many years
treas