So, when the revolutionary years began in France, there were
violence and terror and the French lords fled before it or looked
through the little door on the Place de la Concorde. In England
there was rioting, some burning of houses, and a little breaking
of heads. Some of the aristocracy opposed the new ideas, a few
were indifferent but many not only sympathized with them but
cheered on the reformers, as they cheered on the hounds in
their home pastures, and led them as they had led the field over
hedge and water.

Such was the tie which bound the people of Durham to the
man whom the outside world knew as Lord Privy Seal and
Earl of Durham, but who, to them, always remained Squire
Lambton. The tenants knew him as a family man and as a
generous host. They had watched him at cricket on the old
field where the new castle later stood and knew him for a sound
opening batsman -- as indeed the records of the matches show-
and a useful fast bowler. They had seen him with the hounds
and on the race-course which he had laid out in Lambton
Park. They followed his fortunes further afield on the turf at
York and Doncaster, and when, in 1817, his mare Borodino,
failed to win the St. Leger, they were many of them the poorer
by a few shillings. A wider circle of country folk had known
him by his all but regal progresses about the county when he
drove abroad -- he was always a lover of state and splendour --
with postilions and outriders in the Lambton livery. They had
seen and heard him on the hustings, when he stood as candidate
for the County of Durham, and in the streets of Sunderland
when he went there to attend meetings of colliery owners. His
workmen in the collieries had come to recognize in him an
employer who would always give fair pay and treatment and as
a man who cared about them as men, worried about their
accidents and gave his time and money to promote their safety.

Inevitably the domestic staff at the Castle, where there were
seldom fewer than forty indoor servants and sixteen gardeners,
beside coachmen and grooms, knew more intimate details
about him. They had a glimpse of that side of his nature which
brought him so many and such bitter enemies in public life,
his arrogance and domineering ways, his occasional fits of
terrifying anger and of hardly less terrifying remorse. But the
staff knew, too, how frail was his health and how often such

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