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Those who profess to understand the mysteries of heredity say that children more frequently inherit the characteristics of their grandparents than those of their parents, and that a great man more often had a brilliant mother or grandmother than a brilliant father or grandfather. The William Cavendish in whom it is hoped that the reader may be interested had a very remarkable grandmother in Margaret, the third wife of Sir William Cavendish of the aforesaid Abbey Lands. She was a widow when Sir William married her, and she had inherited her late husband’s large estates under settlements. This estimable woman had no less than four rich husbands and succeeded in obtaining magnificent settlements from every one of them.

Collinsssss1 says that, on the death of Sir William Cavendish, she married Sir William St. Lowe, “possessor of divers fair lordships in Gloucester, which, in articles of marriage, she took care should be settled on her, and her own heirs, in default of issue by him, and accordingly, having no child by him, she lived to enjoy his whole estate, excluding his former daughters and brothers.” On his death she married George, Earl of Shrewsbury, “whom she brought to terms” in an excellent marriage settlement, and she made him marry his eldest son and heir to her own youngest daughter, and his youngest daughter to her own eldest son. Well, in her case, may Collins speak of “Conditions that, perhaps, never fell to any one woman ... to rise by every husband into greater wealth, and higher honours; to have an unanimous issue by one husband only, etc.”