His father, Jonas Priestley, a woollen-cloth dresser of moderate means, was the son of a member of the Established Church, but both he and his wife, the only daughter of a farmer named Swift, were Nonconformists.
At Nancy Charles was himself among the slain, leaving his only daughter Mary of Burgundy, then in her twentieth year, sole iheiress to his possessions.
His father, Joseph Louis Lagrange, married Maria Theresa Gros, only daughter of a rich physician at Cambiano, and had by her eleven children, of whom only the eldest (the subject of this notice) and the youngest survived infancy.
Like Louis the Great before him, Sigismund had failed to found a dynasty, but, fifteen years before his death, he had succeeded in providing his only daughter Elizabeth with a consort apparently well able to protect both her and her inheritance in the person of Albert V., duke of Austria.
Having been elected M.P. for the Ayr burghs in 1818, he devoted the greater part of his life to the promotion of Liberal reforms. In 1820 he married the only daughter of Sir Samuel Romilly.
