Chapter One In Search of William Shakespeare± Before he came into a lot of money in 1839, Rich-ard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Gren-ville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, led a largely uneventful life. He sired an illegitimate child in Italy, spoke occasionally in the Houses of Parliament against the repeal of the Corn Laws, and developed an early interest in plumbing (his house at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, had nine of the first flush toilets in England), but otherwise was distinguished by nothing more than his glorious prospects and many names. But after inherit-ing his titles and one of England’s great estates, he astonished his associates, and no doubt himself, by managing to lose every penny of his inheritance in just nine years through a series of spectacularly unsound investments. Bankrupt and humiliated, in the summer of 1848 he fled to France, leaving Stowe and its contents to his creditors. The [1]