else to do for four days to amuse themselves, nor knowing whether there was a town within a hundred miles, went staring about the country to see whether there were any Frenchmen left in France; which Mr. Pitt, in very fine words, had assured them there was not, and which my Lord Howe, in very fine silence, had confirmed. However, somehow or other, (Mr. Deputy Hodges says they were not French, but Papists sent from Vienna to assist the King of France,) twelve battalions fell upon our rear-guard, and, which General Blighe says is "very common," (I suppose he means that rashness and folly should run itself into a scrape,)-were all cut to pieces or taken. The town says, Prince Edward [Duke of York] ran hard to save himself; I don't mean, too fast, but scarcely fast enough; and the General says, that Lord Frederick Cavendish, your friend, is safe; the thing he seems to have thought of most, except a little vain parade of his own self-denial on his nephew. I shall not be at all surprised if, to show he was not in the wrong, Mr. Pitt should get ready another expedition by the depth of winter, and send it in search of the cannon and colours of these twelve battalions. Pray Heaven your letter don't put it in his head to give you the command! It is not true, that he made the King ride upon one of the cannons to the Tower.

I was really touched with my Lady Howe's advertisement,' though I own at first it made me laugh; for seeing an address to the voters for Nottingham signed "Charlotte Howe," I concluded (they are so manly a family) that Mrs. Howe,' who rides a fox-chase, and dines at the table d'hôte at Grantham, intended to stand for member of Parliament.

Sir John Armitage died on board a ship before the landing; Lady Hardwicke's nephew, Mr. Cocks, scarce recovered of his Cherbourg wound, is killed. He had seven thousand pounds a year, and was a volunteer. I don't believe his uncle and aunt advised his venturing so much money.

My Lady Burlington' is very ill, and the distemper shows itself

1 On the news of the death of Lord Howe reaching the dowager Lady Howe, she addressed the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of Nottingham, whom the deceased had represented in Parliament, in favour of his next younger brother, Colonel Howe, to supply his place in the House of Commons. "Permit me," she says, "to implore the protection of every one of you, as the mother of him whose life has been lost in the service of his country." The appeal was responded to, and Colonel, afterwards General Sir William Howe, was returned.-WRIGHT.

The Hon. Caroline Howe, see vol. i. p. 90. There is a small characteristic portrait of her when very old at Gopsal, the seat of Lord Howe.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 Lady Burlington died two days after the date of this letter, viz. September 21, 1758.-CUNNINGHAM.

willing to presume you do too; that is, myself. I have been journeying much since I heard from you: first to the Vine, where I was greatly pleased with the alterations; the garden is quite beautified and the house dignified. We went over to the Grange, that sweet house of my Lord Keeper's,' that you saw too. The pictures are very good, and I was particularly pleased with the procession, which you were told was by Rubens, but is certainly Vandyke's sketch for part of that great work, that he was to have executed in the Banqettinghouse. You did not tell me of a very fine Holbein, a woman, who was evidently some princess of the White Rose.

I am just now returned from Ragley, which has had a great deal done to it since I was there last. Browne has improved both the ground and the water, though not quite to perfection. This is the case of the house; where there are no striking faults, but it wants a few Chute or Bentley touches. I have recommended some dignifying of the saloon with Seymours and Fitzroys, Henry the Eighths, and Charles the Seconds. They will correspond well to the proudest situation imaginable. I have already dragged some ancestors out of the dust there, written their names on their portraits; besides which, I have found and brought up to have repaired an incomparable picture of Van Helmont by Sir Peter Lely.-But now for recoveries-think what I have in part recovered! Only the state papers, private letters, &c. &c. of the two Lords Conway, Secretaries of State. How you will rejoice and how you will grieve! They seem to have laid up every scrap of paper they ever had, from the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign to the middle of Charles the Second's. By the accounts of the family there were whole rooms full; all which, during the absence of the last and the minority of the present lord, were by the ignorance of a steward consigned to the oven and to the uses of the house. What remained, except one box that was kept till almost rotten in a cupboard, were thrown loose into the lumber room, where, spread on the pavement, they supported old marbles and screens and boxes. From thence I have dragged all I could, and have literally, taking all together, brought away a chest near five feet long, three wide and two deep, brim full. Half are bills, another part rotten, another gnawed by rats; yet I have already found enough to repay my trouble and curiosity, not enough to satisfy it. I will only tell you of three letters of the great Strafford,

Lord Keeper Henley, in 1761 made lord chancellor, and in 1764 created Lord Northington.-WRIGHT.

1

and three long ones of news of Mr. Garrard, Master of the Charterhouse; all six written on paper edged with green, like modern French paper. There are handwritings of everybody, all their seals perfect, and the ribands with which they tied their letters. The original Proclamations of Charles the First, signed by the privy council; a letter to King James from his son-in-law of Bohemia, with his seal; and many, very many letters of negociation from the Earl of Bristol in Spain, Sir Dudley Carleton, Lord Chichester, and Sir Thomas Roe.-What say you? will not here be food for the press?

I have picked up a little painted glass too, and have got a promise of some old statues, lately dug up, which formerly adorned the cathedral of Litchfield. You see I continue to labour in my vocation, of which I can give you a comical instance :—I remembered a rose in painted glass in a little village going to Ragley, which I remarked passing by five years ago; told Mr. Conway on which hand it would be, and found it in the very spot. I saw a very good and perfect tomb at Alcester of Sir Fulke Greville's father and mother, and a wretched old house with a very handsome gateway of stone at Colton, belonging to Sir Robert Throckmorton. There is nothing else tolerable but twenty-two coats of the matches of the family in painted glass. You cannot imagine how astonished a Mr. Seward,' a learned clergyman, was, who came to Ragley while I was there. Strolling about the house, he saw me first sitting on the pavement of the lumber room with Louis, all over cobwebs and dirt and mortar; then found me in his own room on a ladder writing on a picture: and half an hour afterwards lying on the grass in the court with the dogs and the children, in my slippers and without my hat. He had had some doubt whether I was the painter or the factotum of the family; but you would have died at his surprise when he saw me walk into dinner dressed and sit by Lady Hertford. Lord Lyttelton was there, and the conversation turned on literature: finding me not quite ignorant added to the parson's wonder; but he could not contain himself any longer, when after dinner he saw me go to romps and jumping with the two boys; he broke out to my Lady Hertford, and begged to know who and what sort of man I really was, for he had never met with anything of the kind. Adieu!

1 The gossipping and pleasant correspondent of the Great Lord Strafford. -CUNNINGHAM.

2 The Rev. Thomas Seward, canon residentiary of Lichfield editor of Beaumont and Fletcher, and father of Miss Seward.-CUNNINGHAM.

567. TO JOHN CHUTE, ESQ.

Arlington Street, August 22, 1758.

By my ramble into Warwickshire I am so behind hand in politics, that I don't know where to begin to tell you any news, and which by this time would not be news to you. My table is covered with Gazettes, victories and defeats which have come in such a lump, that I am not quite sure whether it is Prince Ferdinand or Prince Boscawen that has taken Louisbourg, nor whether it is the late Lord Howe or the present that is killed at Cherbourg. I am returning to Strawberry, and shall make Mr. Müntz's German and military sang-froid set the map in my head to rights.

I saw my Lord Lyttelton and Miller at Ragley; the latter put me out of all patience. As he has heard me talked of lately, he thought it not below him to consult me on ornaments for my lord's house. I, who know nothing but what I have purloined from Mr. Bentley and you, and who have not forgot how little they tasted your real taste and charming plan, was rather lost. To my comfort, I have seen the plan of their hall; it is stolen from Houghton, and mangled frightfully and both their eating-room and salon are to be stucco, with pictures.

I have not time or paper to give you a full account of a vast treasure that I have discovered at Lord Hertford's, and brought away with me. If I were but so lucky as to be thirty years older, I might have been much luckier. In short, I have got the remains of vast quantities of letters and state papers of the two Lords Conway, secretaries of state-forty times as many have been using for the oven and the house, by sentence of a steward during my lord's minority. Most of what I have got are gnawed by rats, rotten, or not worth a straw; and yet I shall save some volumes of what is very curious and valuable-three letters of Mr. Garrard, of the Charter-house, some of Lord Strafford, and two of old Lenox, the Duchess, &c. &c. In short, if I can but continue to live thirty years extraordinary, in lieu of those I have missed, I shall be able to give to the world some treasures from the press at Strawberry. Do tell me a little of your motions, and good night.

568. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 24, 1758.

You must go into laurels, you must go into mourning. Our expedition has taken Cherbourg shamefully-I mean the French lost it shamefully, and then stood looking on while we destroyed all their works, particularly a basin that had cost vast sums. But, to balance their awkwardness with ours, it proved to be an open place, which we might have taken when we were before it a month ago. The fleet is now off Portland, expecting orders for landing or proceeding. Prince Edward gave the ladies a ball, and told them he was too young to know what was good-breeding in France, therefore he would behave as he should if meaning to please in England -and kissed them all. Our next and greatest triumph is the taking of Cape Breton, the account of which came on Friday. The French have not improved like their wines by crossing the sea; but lost their spirit at Louisbourg as much as on their own coast. The success, especially in the destruction of their fleet, is very great : the triumphs not at all disproportionate to the conquest, of which you will see all the particulars in the Gazette. Now for the chapter of cypresses. The attempt on Crown-point has failed; Lord Howe' was killed in a skirmish; and two days afterward by blunders, rashness, and bad intelligence, we received a great blow at Ticonderoga. There is a Gazette, too, with all the history of this. My hope is that Cape Breton may buy us Minorca and a peace. I have great satisfaction in Captain Hervey's gallantry; not only he is my friend, but I have the greatest regard for and obligations to my Lady Hervey; he is her favourite son and she is particularly happy.

Mr. Wills is arrived and has sent me the medals, for which I give you a million of thanks; the scarce ones are not only valuable for the curiosity of them, but for their preservation. I laughed heartily

1 General George Augustus, third Viscount Howe. He was succeeded in the title by his brother Richard, the celebrated admiral. Mr. George Grenville, in a letter to Mr. Pitt, of the 28th, pays the following tribute to his memory :- -"I admired his virtuous, gallant character, and lament his loss accordingly: I cannot help thinking it peculiarly unfortunate for his country and his friends, that he should fall in the first action of this war, before his spirit and his example, and the success and glory which, in all human probability, would have attended them, had produced their full effect on our own troops, and those of the enemy." Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 339.-WRIGHT.