mercy; but the Duke, who has not so much of Cæsar after a victory, as in gaining it, is for the utmost severity. It was lately proposed in the city to present him with the freedom of some company; one of the aldermen said aloud, "Then let it be of the Butchers!” The Scotch and his Royal Highness are not at all guarded in their expressions of each other. When he went to Edinburgh, in his pursuit of the rebels, they would not admit his guards, alleging that it was contrary to their privileges; but they rode in, sword in hand; and the Duke, very justly incensed, refused to see any of the magistrates. He came with the utmost expedition to town, in order for Flanders; but found that the Court of Vienna had already sent Prince Charles thither, without the least notification, at which both King and Duke are greatly offended. When the latter waited on his brother, the Prince carried him into a room that hangs over the wall of St. James's Park, and stood there with his arm about his neck, to charm the gazing mob.

Murray, the Pretender's secretary, has made ample confessions: the Earl of Traquair' and Mr. Barry, a physician, are apprehended, and more warrants are out; so much for rebels ! Your friend, Lord Sandwich, is instantly going ambassador to Holland, to pray the Dutch to build more ships. I have received yours of July 19th, but you see have no more room left, only to say, that I conceive a good idea of my eagle, though the seal is a bad one. Adieu !

P.S. I have not room to say anything to the Tesi till next post; but, unless she will sing gratis, would advise her to drop this thought.

DEAR GEORGE :

227. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Aug. 2, 1746. You have lost nothing by missing yesterday at the trials, but a little additional contempt for the High Steward; and even that is recoverable, as his long paltry speech is to be printed; for which, and for thanks for it, Lord Lincoln moved the House of Lords. Somebody said to Sir Charles Windham, "Oh! you don't think

1 "The Duke," says Sir Walter Scott," was received with all the honours due to conquest; and all the incorporated bodies of the capital, from the Guild brethren to the Butchers, desired his acceptance of the freedom of their craft, or corporation." Billy the Butcher was one of his by-names.-WRIGHT.

2 Charles Stuart, fifth Earl of Traquair.-DOVER.

Lord Harwicke's speech good, because you have read Lord Cowper's."' -"No," replied he; "but I do think it tolerable, because I heard Serjeant Skinner's." Poor brave old Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and desired the Lords to intercede for mercy. As he returned to the Tower, he stopped the coach at Charing-cross to buy honey-blobs, as the Scotch call gooseberries. He says he is extremely afraid Lord Kilmarnock will not behave well. The Duke said publicly at his levee, that the latter proposed murdering the English prisoners. His Highness was to have given Peggy Banks a ball last night; but was persuaded to defer it, as it would have rather looked like an insult on the prisoners, the very day their sentence was passed. George Selwyn says that he had begged Sir William Saunderson to get him the High Steward's wand, after it was broke, as a curiosity; but that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take it to light his fire with: I don't believe my Lady Harwicke is so high-minded.

Your cousin Sandwich' is certainly going on an embassy to Holland. I don't know whether it is to qualify him, by new dignity, for the head of the Admiralty, or whether (which is more agreeable to present policy) to satisfy him instead of it. I know when Lord Malton,' who was a young earl, asked for the garter, to stop his pretensions, they made him a marquis. When Lord Brooke, who is likely to have ten sons, though he has none yet, asked to have his barony settled on his daughters, they refused him with an earldom; and they professed making Pitt paymaster, in order to silence the avidity of his faction.

Dear George, I am afraid I shall not be in your neighbourhood, as I promised myself. Sir Charles Williams has let his house. I wish you would one day, whisk over and look at Harley House. The enclosed advertisement makes it sound pretty, though I am afraid too large for me. Do look at it impartially don't be struck at first sight with any brave old windows; but be so good to inquire the rent, and if I can have it for a year, and with any furniture. I have not had time to copy out the verses, but you

1

1 Lord Chancellor Cowper was Lord High Steward at the trial of the Rebels in 1715. CUNNINGHAM.

2 Matthew Skinner, afterwards a Welsh judge.-WRIGHT.

3 John, the fourth Earl of Sandwich; son of Edward Richard, Viscount Hinchinbrooke. He signed the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.-WALPOLE.

4 Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, created Marquis of Rockingham, in 1746.-WALPOLE.

shall have them soon. sisters.

Adieu, with my compliments to your

DEAR GEORGE:

228. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Aug. 5, 1746. THOUGH I can't this week accept your invitation, I can prove to you that I am most desirous of passing my time with you, and therefore en attendant Harley House, if you can find me out any clean, small house in Windsor, ready furnished, that is not absolutely in the middle of the town, but near you, I should be glad to take it for three or four months.' I have been about Sir Robert Rich's, but they will only sell it. I am as far from guessing why they send Sandwich in embassy, as you are; and, when I recollect of what various materials our late ambassadors have been composed, I can only say, "ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius." Murray' has certainly been discovering, and warrants are out; but I don't yet know who are to be their prize. I begin to think that the ministry had really no intelligence till now. I before thought they had, but durst not use it. A-propos to not daring; I went t'other night to look at my poor favourite Chelsea,' for the little Newcastle is gone to be dipped in the sea. In one of the rooms is a bed for her Duke, and a pressbed for his footman; for he never dares lie alone, and, till he was married, had always a servant to sit up with him. presented her petition to the King last Sunday. to her, but would not at all give her any hopes. as soon as he was gone. Lord Cornwallis told me that her lord weeps every time any thing of his fate is mentioned to him. Old Balmerino keeps up his spirits to the same pitch of gaiety. In the cell at Westminster he showed Lord Kilmarnock how he must lay

Lady Cromartie He was very civil She swooned away

1 Gray, in a letter to Wharton of the 15th, says, "Mr. Walpole I have seen a good deal, and shall do a great deal more, I suppose; for he is 'looking for a house somewhere about Windsor during the summer. All is mighty free, and even friendly, more than one could expect."-Works by Mitford, vol. iii., p. 7.-WRIGHT.

2 John Murray, of Broughton, the Pretender's secretary, who purchased his own safety by betraying his former friends.-WRIGHT.

3 Where his father had, for several years, what was then (1730-1742) a countryhouse. CUNNINGHAM.

4 "Lady Cromartie, who is said to have drawn her husband into these circumstances, was at Leicester House on Wednesday, with four of her children. The Princess saw her, and made no other answer than by bringing in her own children, and placing them by her; which, if true, is one of the prettiest things I ever heard.”—Gray to Wharton, Works by Mitford, vol. iii., p. 4.-WRIGHT,

his head; bid him not wince, lest the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him to bite his lips. As they were to return, he begged they might have another bottle together, as they should never meet any more till -, and then pointed to his neck. At getting into the coach, he said to the gaoler, "Take care, or you will break my shins with this damned axe.'

I must tell you a bon-mot of George Selwyn's at the trial. He saw Bethel's' sharp visage looking wistfully at the rebel lords; he said, "What a shame it is to turn her face to the prisoners till they are condemned." If you have a mind for a true foreign idea, one of the foreign ministers said at the trial to another, "Vraiment cela est auguste." "Oui,” replied the other, "cela est vrai, mais cela n'est pas royale."

I am assured that the old Countess of Errol made her son Lord Kilmarnock' go into the rebellion on pain of disinheriting him. I don't know whether I told you that the man at the tennis-court protests that he has known him dine with the man that sells pamphlets at Storey's Gate; "and," says he, "he would often have been glad if I would have taken him home to dinner." He was certainly so poor, that in one of his wife's intercepted letters she tells him she has plagued their steward for a fortnight for money, and can get but three shillings. Can any one help pitying such distress ?' I am vastly softened, too, about Balmerino's relapse, for his pardon was only granted him to engage his brother's vote at the election of Scotch peers.

My Lord Chancellor [Hardwicke] has had a thousand pounds in present for his High Stewardship, and has got the reversion of clerk of the crown (twelve hundred a year) for his second son. What a long time it will be before his posterity are drove into rebellion for want, like Lord Kilmarnock !

"The first day, while the Peers were adjourned to consider of his plea, Balmerino diverted himself with the axe that stood by him, played with its tassels, and tried the edge with his finger."-Gray, Works by Mitford, vol. iii., p. 5.-WRIGHT. 2 See note, vol. ii., p. 38.- CUNNINGHAM.

3 The Earl of Kilmarnock was not the son of the Countess of Errol. His wife, the Lady Anne Livingstone, daughter of the Earl of Linlithgow, was her niece, and, eventually, her heiress.-WRIGHT.

4 At the upper end of Birdcage Walk, in St. James's Park.-CUNNINGHAM.

5 "The Duke of Argyle, telling him how sorry he was to see him engaged in such a cause, My Lord,' says he, 'for the two Kings and their rights, I cared not a farthing which prevailed; but I was starving, and by God, if Mahomet had set up his standard in the Highlands, I had been a good Mussulman for bread, and stuck close to the party, for I must eat.'"-Gray, Works by Mitford, vol. iii., p. 5.-WRIGHT.

The Duke gave his ball last night to Peggy Banks at Vauxhall. It was to pique my Lady Rochford, in return for the Prince of Hesse. I saw the company get into their barges at Whitehall stairs, as I was going myself, and just then passed by two City Companies in their great barges, who had been a swan-hopping.' They laid by and played "God save our noble King," and altogether it was a mighty pretty show. When they came to Vauxhall, there were assembled about five-and-twenty hundred people, besides crowds without. They huzzaed, and surrounded him so, that he was forced to retreat into the ball-room. He was very near being drowned t'other night going from Ranelagh to Vauxhall, and politeness of Lord Cathcart's, who, stepping on the side of the boat to lend his arm, overset it, and both fell into the water up to their chins. I have not yet got Sir Charles's ode; when I have, you shall see it here are my own lines. Good night!

:

2

DEAR GEORGE:

229. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Aug. 11, 1746.

I HAVE seen Mr. Jordan, and have taken his house at forty guineas a-year, but I am to pay taxes. Shall I now accept your offer of being at the trouble of giving orders for the airing of it? I have desired the landlord will order the key to be delivered to you, and Ashton will assist you. Furniture, I find, I have in abundance, which I shall send down immediately; but shall not be able to be at Windsor at the quivering dame's before to-morrow se'nnight, as the rebel Lords are not to be executed till Monday. I shall stay till that is over, though I don't believe I shall see it. Lord Cromartie is reprieved for a pardon. If wives and children become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going into rebellion. Lady Caroline Fitzroy's execution is certainly to-night. I dare say she will follow Lord Balmerino's advice to Lord Kilmarnock, and not winch.

1 That is, swan-upping-going up the Thames as far as Staines, to look after the swans on the river, the property of the Corporation of London.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 I do not know to which particular ode Walpole alludes. My predecessor (Mr. Wright) says it was 'Isabella, or the Morning; but that delightful poem is not an ode.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 In August, 1746, I took a house within the precincts of the castle at Windsor.Walpole's Short Notes, vol. i., p. lxi.—CUNNINGHAM.

Lady Caroline Fitzroy (youngest daughter of the Duke of Grafton) was married