This was the man who married Lady Betty Berkeley when she was thirty years younger than himself. He had previously been married to the Duchess of Norfolk, whose husband divorced her on Sir John Germaine’s account. After her death, by which he inherited Drayton, he attached himself to the Duke and Duchess of Dorset, who received him with their wonted hospitality; but this was not enough: he wanted a brilliant alliance, he wanted an heir to Drayton. While at Bristol he “cast his eyes upon Lady Betty, whose birth, character, and accomplishments rendered her every way worthy of his choice.” They married; and the friendship with the Dorsets, to whom Lady Betty was already devoted, was strengthened by the new bond. Although the difference in age was so considerable, Lady Betty, through her “superior understanding, added to the most correct deportment, acquired great influence over him,” and when after twelve years of marriage Sir John died, “a martyr to the gout as well as to other diseases,” he called his wife to his bedside and spoke to her in these terms:
Lady Betty [_said he_], I have made you a very indifferent husband, and particularly of late years, when infirmities have rendered me a burden to myself, but I shall not be much longer troublesome to you. I advise you never again to marry an old man, but I strenuously exhort you to marry when I am gone, and I will endeavour to put it in your power. You have fulfilled every obligation towards me in an exemplary manner, and I wish to demonstrate my sense of your merits. I have, therefore, by my will, bequeathed you this estate, which I received from my first wife; and which, as she gave to me, so I leave to you. I hope you will marry and have children to inherit it. But, if events should determine otherwise, it would give me pleasure to think that Drayton descended after your decease to a younger son of my friend the Duchess of Dorset.
He then passed away, but in one particular Lady Betty did not take his advice: she never married again, although she survived him by fifty years, and thus it is perhaps that I regard her, with her crewel work, her china closet, and her pot-pourri, rather as a spinster than as a widow. There is no trace at all at Knole of Sir John Germaine, that royal bastard, that handsome and enterprising child of fortune, thanks to whom Drayton came into the possession of Lord George and continues to this day in the hands of his descendants. Of Lady Betty, on the other hand, there are copious traces. There are her rooms, which I have already described in the first chapter, her small square four-poster, her ring-box, and the painted wooden figure of a lady with the _fontange_ of Queen Anne’s day on her head. There is Lady Betty’s own portrait, a miniature full-length, in blue brocade. There is yard upon yard of her industrious embroidery. There is the pot-pourri which is made every summer from her receipt (1750):