lords, we shall never meet again in the same place." He says he will be hanged; for that his neck is so short and bended, that he should be struck in the shoulders. I did not think it possible to feel so little as I did at so melancholy a spectacle, but tyranny and villainy wound up by buffoonery took off all edge of concern. The foreigners were much struck; Niccolini seemed a great deal shocked, but he comforts himself with the knowledge he thinks he has gained of the English constitution.

Don't thank Riccardi for me: I don't feel obliged for his immoderate demand, but expect very soon to return him his goods; for I have no notion that the two Lords, who are to see them next week, will rise near his price. We have nothing like news: all the world has been entirely taken up with the trial. Here is a letter from Mr. Whitehed to Lord Hobart. Mr. Chute would have written to-night, if I had not; but will next post. Adieu!

246. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, April 10, 1747.

I DEFERRED Writing to you as long as they deferred the execution of old Lovat, because I had a mind to send you some account of his death, as I had of his trial. He was beheaded yesterday, and died extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity his behaviour was natural and intrepid. He professed himself a Jansenist; made no speech, but sat down a little while in a chair on the scaffold, and talked to the people round him. He said, "He was glad to suffer for his country, dulce est pro patriâ mori; that he did not know how, but he had always loved it, nescio quá natale solum, &c.; that he had never swerved from his principles; that this was the character of his family, who had been gentlemen for five hundred years." He lay down quietly, gave the sign soon, and was despatched at a blow. I believe it will strike some terror into the Highlands, when they hear there is any power great enough to bring so potent a tyrant to the block. A scaffold fell down and killed several persons; one, a man that had rid post from Salisbury the day before to see the ceremony; and a woman was taken up dead with a live child in her arms. The body is sent into Scotland: the day was cold, and before it set out, the coachman

1 It was countermanded, and buried in the Tower.—WALPOLE.

drove the hearse about the court, before my Lord Traquair's dungeon, which could be no agreeable sight: it might to Lord Cromartie, who is above the chair. Mr. Chute was at the execution with the Italians, who were more entertained than shocked: Panciatici told me, "It was a triste spectacle, mais qu'il ne lassoit d'être beau." Niccolini has treasured it up among his insights into the English constitution. We have some chance of a Peer's trial that has nothing to do with the Rebellion. A servant of a college has been killed at Oxford, and a verdict of wilful murder by persons unknown, brought in by the coroner's inquest. These persons unknown are supposed to be Lord Abergavenny,' Lord Charles Scot,' and two more, who had played tricks with the poor fellow that night, while he was drunk, and the next morning he was found with his skull fractured, at the foot of the first Lord's staircase. One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport.

I shall not be able till next letter to tell you about Riccardi's gems: Lord Duncannon has been in the country; but he and Lord Carlisle are to come to me next Sunday, and determine.

Mr. Chute gave you some account of the Independents: the committee have made a foolish affair of it, and cannot furnish a report. Had it extended to three years ago, Lord Sandwich and Grenville of the Admiralty would have made an admirable figure as dictators of some of the most Jacobite healths that ever were invented. Lord Doneraile, who is made Comptroller to the Prince, went to the committee (whither all members have a right to go, though not to vote, as it is select, not secret), and plagued Lyttelton to death, with pressing him to inquire into the healths of the year '43. The

1 Lord Cromartie had been pardoned.-DOVER.

2 George Neville, fifteenth Lord and first Earl of Abergavenny. Died 1785.Dover.

3 Lord Charles Scot, second son of Francis, Duke of Buccleuch, and great-grandson of the Duke of Monmouth. He died at Oxford, 1747, in his twenty-first year.CUNNINGHAM.

4 An innkeeper in Piccadilly, who had been beaten by them, gave information against them for treasonable practices, and a committee of the House of Commons headed by Sir W. Yonge and Lord Coke, was appointed to inquire into the matter.WALPOLE. The informant's name was Williams, keeper of the White Horse,' in Piccadilly. Being observed, at the anniversary dinner of the independent electors of Westminster, to make memorandums with a pencil, he was severely cuffed, and kicked out of the company. The alleged treasonable practices consisted in certain offensive toasts. On the King's health being drunk, every man held a glass of water in his left hand, and waved a glass of wine over it with the right.-WRIGHT. 5 George Grenville, afterwards prime minister.-Dover.

Ministry are now trembling at home, with fear of losing the Scotch bills for humbling the Highland chiefs: they have whittled them down almost to nothing, in complaisance to the Duke of Argyll; and at last he deserts them. Abroad they are in panics for Holland, where the French have at once besieged two towns, that must fall into their hands, though we have plumed ourselves so much on the Duke's being at the head of a hundred and fifteen thousand men.

There has been an excellent civil war in the house of Finch: our friend, Lady Charlotte,' presented a daughter of John Finch, (him who was stabbed by Sally Salisbury,) his offspring by Mrs. Younger, whom he since married. The King, Prince, and Princess received her: her aunt, Lady Bel, forbad Lady Charlotte to present her to Princess Emily, whither, however, she carried her in defiance. Lady Bel called it publishing a bastard at Court, and would not present her-think on the poor girl! Lady Charlotte, with spirit, presented her herself. Mr. W. Finch stepped up to his other sister, the Marchioness of Rockingham, and whispered her with his composed civility, that he knew it was a plot of her and Lady Bel to make Lady Charlotte miscarry. The sable dame'

Lady Charlotte Fermor, second daughter of Thomas, Earl of Pomfret, and second wife of William Finch, vice-chamberlain to the King; formerly ambassador in Holland, and brother of Daniel, Earl of Winchelsea. [See vol. i. p. 52.]-WALPOLE.

Sally Salisbury, alias Pridden, a woman of the town, stabbed [1723] the Hon. John Finch in a bagnio, in the neighbourhood of Covent-garden; but he did not die of the wound.-DOVER. "The freshest news in town is the fatal accident happened three nights ago to a very pretty young fellow, brother to Lord Finch, who was drinking with a dearly beloved drab, whom you may have heard of by the name of Sally Salisbury. In a jealous pique she stabbed him to the heart with a knife. He fell down dead immediately; but a surgeon being called for, and the knife drawn out of his body, he opened his eyes, and his first words were to beg her to be friends with him, and kissed her. She has since stayed by his bed-side till last night, when he begged her to fly, for he thought he could not live; and she has taken his advice, and perhaps will honour you with her residence in Paris."-Lady M. Wortley Montagu to the Countess of Mar.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 Mrs. Younger-the sister of Mrs. Bicknel, celebrated in the Tatler and 'Spectator,'-was a general actress, and sometimes appeared in tragedy, though I think not to advantage. Much about the time when she left the stage [1733-4] she was married to the Hon. Mr. Finch, who had, above twenty years before, been stabbed in a quarrel by the famous Sally Salisbury.-T. Davies, Dramatic Miscellany, vol. iii. p. 368.-CUNNINGHAM. Elizabeth Younger, her daughter, by the Hon. John Finch, married John Mason, Esq., of Greenwich.-DOVER.

4 Lady Isabella Finch [died 1771], lady of the bedchamber to the Princesses Emily and Caroline. [See vol. i. p. 188.]-WALPOLE.

Lady Mary Finch, fifth daughter of Daniel, sixth Earl of Winchelsea; married in 1716 to the Hon. Thomas Wentworth, afterwards created Marquis of Rockingham.DOVER.

Lady Charlotte Finch was delivered of a daughter, 1st Sept. 1747.-CUNNINGHAM. 7 The black funereal Finches.-CUNNINGHAM.

(who, it was said, is the blackest of the family, because she swept the chimney) replied, "This is not a place to be indecent, and therefore I shall only tell you that you are a rascal and a villain, and that if ever you dare to put your head into my house, I will kick you down stairs myself." Politesse Anglaise! Lord Winchilsea (who, with his brother Edward, is embroiled with both sides) came in, and informed everybody of any circumstances that tended to make both parties in the wrong. I am impatient to hear how this operates between my Lady Pomfret and her friend, Lady Bel. Don't you remember how the Countess used to lug a half-length picture of the latter behind her post-chaise all over Italy, and have a new frame made for it in every town where she stopped? and have you forgot their correspondence, that poor Lady Charlotte was daily and hourly employed to transcribe into a great book, with the proper names in red ink? I have but just room to tell you that the King is perfectly well, and that the Pretender's son was sent from Spain as soon as he arrived there. Thank you for the news of Mr.

DEAR HARRY:

247. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Arlington Street, April 16, 1747. We are all skyrockets and bonfires to-night for your last year's victory;' but if you have a mind to perpetuate yourselves in the calendar, you must take care to refresh your conquests. I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs as I passed through the villages made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the Duke's head had succeeded almost universally to Admiral Vernon's, as his had left but few traces of the Duke of Ormond's. I pondered these things in my heart, and said unto myself, Surely all glory is but a sign!

You have heard that old Lovat's tragedy is over: it has been succeeded by a little farce, containing the humours of the Duke of Newcastle and his man Stone. The first event was a squabble between his Grace and the Sheriff about holding up the head on the scaffold-a custom that has been disused, and which the Sheriff would not comply with, as he received no order in writing. Since that, the Duke has burst ten yards of breeches strings about the

1 The battle of Culloden.-WALPOLE.

2 Alluding to a trick of the Duke of Newcastle's.-WALPOLE.

body, which was to be sent into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise to attend the most trivial burial. The Duke, who is always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower. I must tell you an excessive good story of George Selwyn: Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him, how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off? "Nay," says he, "if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again." When he was at the undertaker's, as soon as they had stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor's [Hardwicke's] voice, said, "My Lord Lovat, your lordship may rise." My Lady Townshend has picked up a little stable-boy in the Tower, which the warders have put upon her for a natural son of Lord Kilmarnock's,' and taken him into her own house. You need not tell Mr. T[ownshend] this from me.

We have had a great and fine day in the House on the second reading the bill for taking away the Heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland. Lyttelton made the finest oration imaginable; the Solicitor-General [Murray], the new Advocate,' and Hume Campbell, particularly the last, spoke excessively well for it, and Oswald against it. The majority was 233 against 102. Pitt was not there; the Duchess of Queensberry had ordered him to have the gout.

I will give you a commission once more, to tell Lord Bury' that he has quite dropped me: if I thought he would take me up again, I would write to him; a message would encourage me. Adieu!

248. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, May 5, 1747.

It is impossible for me to tell you more of the new Stadtholder" than you must have heard from all quarters. Hitherto his existence has been of no service to his country. Hulst, which we had heard

1 See vol. ii., p. 19 and p. 51.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 William Grant, Lord Advocate of Scotland.-WALPOLE.

3 George Keppel, eldest son of William, Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1755. He was now, together with Mr. Conway, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland.-WALPOLE.

The Prince of Orange had just been raised to that dignity in a tumultuary manner.-Walpole.

VOL. II.

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