Chapter 192

Sunday, March 18, 1764. (page 300)

You will feel, my dear lord, for the loss I have had, and for the much greater affliction of poor Lady Malpas. My nephew(546) went to his regiment in Ireland before Christmas, and returned but last Monday. He had, I suppose, heated himself in that bacchanalian country, and was taken ill the very day he set out, yet he came on, but grew much worse the night of his arrival; it turned to an inflammation in his bowels, and he died last Friday. You may imagine the distress where there was so much domestic felicity, and where the deprivation is augmented by the very slender circumstances in which he could but leave his family; as his father--such an improvident father--is living! Lord Malpas himself was very amiable, and I had always loved him--but this is the cruel tax one pays for living, to see one's friends taken away before one! It has been a week of mortality. The night I wrote to you last, and had sent away my letter, came an account of my Lord Townshend's death. He had been ill treated by a surgeon in the country, then was carried improperly to the Bath, and then again to Rainham, tho Hawkins, and other surgeons and physicians represented his danger to him. But the woman he kept, probably to prevent his seeing his family, persisted in these extravagant journeys, and he died in exquisite torment the day after his arrival in Norfolk. He mentions none of his children in his will, but the present lord; to whom he gives 300 pounds a-year that he had bought, adjoining to his estate. But there is said, or supposed to be, 50,000 pounds in the funds in his mistress's name, who was his housemaid. I do not aver this, for truth is not the staple commodity of that family. Charles is much disappointed and discontented--not so my lady, who has 2000 pounds a-year already, another 1000 pounds in jointure, and 1500 pounds her own estate in Hertfordshire.(547) We conclude, that the Duke of Argyle will abandon Mrs. Villiers(548) for this richer widow; who will only be inconsolable, as she is too cunning, I believe, to let any body console her. Lord Macclesfield(549) is dead too; a great windfall for Mr. Grenville, who gets a teller's place for his son.

There is no public news: there was a longish day on Friday in our House, on a demand for money for the new bridge from the city. It was refused, and into the accompt of contempt, Dr. Hay(550) threw a good deal of abuse on the common council--a nest of hornets, that I do not see the prudence of attacking.

I leave to your brother to tell you the particulars of an impertinent paragraph in the papers on you and your embassy; but I must tell you how instantly, warmly, and zealously, he resented it. He went directly to the Duke of Somerset, to beg of him to complain of it to the Lords. His grace's bashfulness made him choose rather to second the complaint, but he desired Lord Marchmont to make it, who liked the office, and the printers are to attend your House to-morrow.(551)

I went a little too fast in my history of Lord Clive, and yet I had it from Mr. Grenville himself. The Jaghire is to be decided by law, that is in the year 1000. Nor is it certain that his Omrahship goes; that will depend on his obtaining a board of directors to his mind, at the approaching election.(552) I forgot, too, to answer your question about Luther;(553) and now I remember it, I cannot answer it. Some said his wife had been gallant. Some, that he had been too gallant, and that she suffered for it. Others laid it to his expenses at his election; others again, to political squabbles on that subject between him and his wife--but in short, as he sprung into the world by his election, so he withered when it was over, and has not been thought on since.

George Selwyn has had a frightful accident, that ended in a great escape. He was at dinner at Lord Coventry's, and just as he was drinking a glass of wine, he was seized with a fit of coughing, the liquor went wrong, and suffocated him: he got up for some water at the sideboard, but being strangled, and losing his senses, he fell against the corner of the marble table with such violence, that they thought he had killed himself by a fracture of his skull. He lay senseless for some time, and was recovered with difficulty. He was immediately blooded, and had the chief wound, which is just over the eye, sewed up--but you never saw so battered a figure. All round his eye is as black as jet, and besides the scar on his forehead, he has cut his nose at top and bottom. He is well off with his life, and we with his wit.

P. S. Lord Macclesfield has left his wife(554) threescore thousand pounds.

(546) George Viscount Malpas member for Corfe-Castle, and colonel of the 65th regiment of foot, the son of George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, and of Mary, only legitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Malpas had married, in 1747, Hester daughter and heiress of Sir Francis Edwards, Bart. and by her was father of the fourth Earl.

(547) She was daughter and heiress of J. Harrison, Esq. of Balls, in Herts.-E.

(548) Probably Mary Fowke, widow of Mr. Henry Villiers, nephew of the first Earl of Jersey.-C.

(549) George, second Earl of Macclesfield, one of the tellers of the exchequer, and president of the Royal Society.-E.

(550) George Hay, LL. D. member for Sandwich, and one of the lords of the admiralty.-E.

(551) We find in the Journals, that the printers of two papers in which the libellous paragraph appeared, were, after examination at the bar, committed to Newgate. The libel itself is not recorded. The proceedings in the House of Lords were notified to Lord Hertford by the secretary of state, and the following is a copy of his reply to this communication:--"Paris, March 27th, 1764. I am informed by my friend, of the insult that has been offered to my character in two public papers, and of the zeal shown by administration in seconding the resentment of the House of Peers in my favour. Perhaps my own inclination might have led me to despise such indignities; but if others, and particularly my friends, take the matter more warmly, I am not insensible to their attention, and receive with gratitude such pledges of their regard. I had indeed flattered myself, that my course of life had hitherto created me no enemy; but as I find that this felicity is too great for any man, I am pleased, at least, to find that he is a very low one: and I am so far obliged to him for discovering to me the share I have in the friendship of so many great persons, and for procuring me a testimony of esteem from so honourable an assembly as that of the Peers of England."-C.

(552) Lord Clive made it a condition of his going to India, that Mr. Sullivan should be deprived of the lead he had in the direction at home.-C. [Soon after the election of the directors, the court took the subject of the settlement of Lord Clive's Jaghire into consideration; and a proposition, made by himself, was, on the ]6th of May, agreed to, confirming his right for ten years, if he lived so long, and provided the company continued, during that period, in possession of the lands from which the revenue was Paid.-E.]

(553) John Luther, Esq. of Myless, near Ongar, in Essex, who, on the death of Mr. Harvey, of Chigwell, stood on the popular interest ,for that county against Mr. Conyers, and succeeded.-C.

(554) Lord Macclesfield's second wife, whom he married in 1757, was a Miss Dorothy Nesbit.-E.