to Ashridge. By his will the duke devised his canals and estates on trust, under which his nephew, the 2nd Marquess of Stafford (afterwards 1st Duke of Sutherland), became the first beneficiary, and next his son Lord Francis Leveson-Gower (afterwards 1st Earl of Ellesmere) and his issue. In order that the trust should last as long as possible, an extraordinary use was made of the legal rule that property may be settled for the duration of lives in being and twenty-one years after. The legatees were a great number of persons connected with the duke and their living issue, plus all peers who had taken their seats in the House of Lords on or before the duke's decease. The last of the peers died in 1857, but one of the commoners survived till 19 October 1883, and so the trust did not expire until 19 October 1903, when the whole property passed to the undivided control of Francis Egerton, 3rd Earl of Ellesmere. The canals had by then been transferred to the Bridgewater Navigation Company in 1872, by whom they were sold in 1887 to the Manchester Ship Canal Company. The duke is commemorated in a number of locations around Britain. A marble wall monument in Little Gaddesden Church is dedicated to his memory, and on the nearby Ashridge Estate, the Bridgewater Monument was erected in 1832 'in honour of Francis, Third duke of Bridgewater, "Father of Inland Navigation"'. The Bridgewater Canal in North West England, still in existence today, bears the Duke's name. In the 1830s, the possibility was discussed of raising a memorial to the Canal Duke in Manchester, but at the time public statuary was relatively unknown outside London. Illustrations exist of unrealised 1836 proposal by William Fairbairn to build a Bridgewater Crescent at the eastern end of Piccadilly in Manchester, to be adorned with a statue of the Duke of Bridgewater. To date, no statue has been erected in Manchester to commemorate the Canal Duke. A 1788 portrait drawing of the Duke of Bridgewater by William Marshall Craig was engraved by Edward Scriven in 1835; prints are held in the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Two Wax medallion portraits of the Duke by Peter Rouw dating from 1803 are held at the National Portrait Gallery and at Tatton Hall in Cheshire. Francis Egerton is depicted in one of The Manchester