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Mr and Mrs Poyntz had originally a family of five children, but in the year 1815 the catastrophe occurred which carried out to the full the anathema already alluded to.

The family were spending some time at Bognor, during the bathing season, and one fatal day Mr Poyntz, accompanied by his two sons, two young lady visitors, and three boatmen, went out in a so-called pleasure boat, leaving the youngest daughter, Isabella Poyntz,^[21] in tears because she was not permitted to accompany them. From the windows, which gave upon the beach, the agonised mother saw that boat capsize, and as far as I remember what I have been told, one boatman and my uncle were the only survivors. The latter was brought to shore in an insensible state, and it was some time before he recovered consciousness. By these two accidents of drowning, both families of Browne-Montague and Poyntz became extinct in the male line.

ssss1.Afterwards wife of second Marquess of Exeter.

The tragedy occurred when I was a child, and while we were yet at Sheerness, but I can still recall my mother’s piercing shriek when the awful intelligence was broken to her. By this means Mr Poyntz’s daughters became co-heiresses, and at the death of their father his property and estates were sold, and Cowdray passed into the hands of strangers.