Chapter 357

Strawberry Hill, Friday, July 7, 1769. (page 547)

You desired me to write, if I knew any thing particular. How particular will content you? Don't imagine I would send you such hash as the livery's petition.(1079) Come; would the apparition of my Lord Chatham satisfy you? Don't be frightened; it was not his ghost. He, he himself in propria persona, and not in a strait waistcoat, came into the King's lev`ee this morning, and was in the closet twenty minutes after the lev`ee; and was to go out of town to-night again.(1080) The deuce is in it if this is not news. Whether he is to be king, minister, lord mayor, or alderman, I do not know; nor a word more than I have told you. Whether he was sent for to guard St. James's gate, or whether he came alone, like Almanzor, to storm it, I cannot tell: by Beckford's violence I should think the latter. I am so indifferent what he came for, that I shall wait till Sunday to learn: when I lie in town on my way to Ely. You will probably hear more from your brother before I can write again. I send this by my friend Mr. Granger, who will leave it at your park-gate as he goes through Henley home. Good-night! it is past twelve, and I am going to bed. Yours ever.

(1079) The petition of the livery of London, complaining of the unconstitutional conduct of the King's ministers, and the undue return of Mr. Luttrell, when he Opposed Mr. Wilkes at the election for Middlesex.

(1080) In a letter to the Earl of Chatham, of the 11th, Lord Temple says:--"Your reception at St. James's where I am glad you have been, turns out exactly such as I should have expected--full of the highest marks of regard to your lordship: full of condescension, and of all those sentiments of grace and goodness which his Majesty can so well express. I think that you cannot but be happy at the result of this experiment." Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 361.-E.