confessed to have been lies by his inquisitors themselves: for, they could not produce a shadow of one of the crimes with which they had charged him! I must own, Sir, I think, that Sylla and my father ought to be set in opposition ra ther than paralleled.

My other objection is still more serious; and, if I am so happy as to convince you, I shall hope that you will alter the paragraph, as it seems to impute something to Sir Robert of which he was not only most innocent, but of which, if he had been guilty, I should think him extremely so, for he would have been very ungrateful.

You say, "he had not the comfort to see that he had established his own family by any thing which he received from the gratitude of that Hanover family, or from the gratitude of that country, which he had saved and served." Good Sir, what does this sentence seem to imply, but that either Sir Robert himself, or his family, thought, or think, that the kings George I. and II. or England, were ungrateful for not rewarding his services? Defend him and us from such a charge! Neither he nor we ever had such a thought. Was it not rewarding him to make him prime-minister, and maintain and support him against all his enemies for twenty years together? Did not George I. make his eldest son a peer, and give to the father and son a valuable patent place in the Custom House for three lives? Did not George II. give my elder brother the auditor's place, and to my other brother and me other rich places for our lives; for, though in the gift of the First Lord of the Treasury, do we not owe them to the king, who made him so? Did not the late king make my father an earl, and dismiss him with a pension of 4000l. a year for his life? Could he or we not think these ample rewards? What rapacious sordid wretches must be and we have been, and be, could we entertain such an idea! As far have we all been from thinking him neglected by his country. Did not his country see and know those rewards? and could it think those rewards inadequate? Besides, Sir, great as I hold my father's services, they were so.id and silent not ostensible: they were of a kind to which I hold your justification a more suitable reward than pecuniary ecompenses. To have fixed the House of Hanover on the throne; to have maintained this country in peace and affluence for 20 years; with the other services you record, Sir, were actions, the eclat of which must be illustrated by time and reflexion, and whose splendour has been brought forwarder than I wish it had, by comparison with a period very dissimilar.

If Sir Robert had not the comfort of leaving his family in affluence, it was not imputable to his king or his country. Perhaps I am proud that he did not. He died 40,000l. in debt-that was the wealth of a man that had been taxed as the plunderer of his country! Yet, with all my adoration of my father, I am just enough to own that it was his own fault if he died so poor. He had made Houghton much too magnificent for the moderate estate which he left to support it; and as he never, I repeat it with truth, never got any money but in the South Sea and while he was paymaster, his fondness for his paternal seat, and his boundless generosity, were too expensive for his fortune. I will mention one instance, which will shew how little he was disposed to turn the favour of the crown to his own profit: he laid out 14,000l. of his own money on Richmond new park.

I can produce other reasons too, why Sir Robert's family were not in so comfortable a situation as the world, deluded by misrepresentation, might expect to see them at his death. My eldest brother had been a very bad economist during his father's life, and died himself 50,000l. in debt, or more; so that, to this day, neither Sir Edward nor I have received the 5000l. apiece, which Sir Robert left us as our fortunes. I do not love to charge the dead; therefore will only say, that Lady Orford, reckoned a vast fortune, which till she died she never proved, wasted vast sums; nor did my brother or father ever receive but 20,000l. which she brought at first, and which were spent on the wedding and christening; I mean, including her jewels.

I beg your pardon, Sir, for this tedious detail, which is minutely, perhaps too minutely, true; but, when I took the liberty of contesting any part of a work which I admire so much, I owed it to you and to myself to assign my reasons. I trust they will satisfy you; and, if they do, I am sure you will alter a paragraph against which it is the duty of the family to reclaim. Dear as my father's memory is to my soul, I can never subscribe to the position that he was unrewarded by the House of Hanover. I have the honour to be, Sir, with great respect and gratitude, your most obliged and obedient humble servant,

HOR. WALPOLE.

P. S. I did not take the liberty of retaining your Essay, Sir; but should be very happy to have a copy of it at your leisure.

LETTER II.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 7, 1783.

YOU must allow me, Sir, to repeat my thanks for the second copy of your Tract on my father, and for your great condescension in altering the two passages to which I presumed to object, and which are now not only more consonant to exactness, but, I hope, no disparagement to the piece. To me they are quite satisfactory; and it is a comfort to me too, that what I begged to have changed was not any reflection prejudicial to his memory, but, in the first point, a parallel not entirely similar in circumstances; and, in the other, a sort of censure on others to which I could not subscribe. With all my veneration for my father's memory, I should not remonstrate against just censure on him. Happily, to do justice to him, most iniquitous calumnies ought to be removed, and then there would remain virtues and merits enough far to outweigh human errors, from which the best men, like him, cannot be exempt. Let his enemies, aye, and his friends, be compared with him-and then justice would be done!

Your Essay, Sir, will, I hope, some time or other, clear the way to his vindication. It points out the true way of examining his character, and is itself, as far as it goes, unanswerable. As such, what an obligation must it be to, Sir, your most grateful and obedient humble servant, 1798, Dec.

HOR. WALPOLE.

XCIV. Letters from Bishops Hoadly and Butler, and the Duchess of Marlborough, to Sir Robert Walpole.

MR. URBAN,

THE three letters which accompany this must certainly be an agreeable treat to your readers. They are from two of the most shining ornaments of the episcopal bench to a prime minister; and are remarkable for the dignified manner in which one of them requests a translation; and the other accepts a vacant see. A fourth, from the famous Duchess of Marlborough, in the character of Ranger of Windsor Park, is also a curiosity. Their genuineness is unquestionable; and you may engrave, if you please, the

signatures. To the friend from whom I received them they were communicated by the late Earl of Orford.

Yours, &c.

M. GREEN.

LETTER I.

The Bishop of Salisbury [Hoadly] to Sir Robert Walpole. Salisbury, July 14, 1733.

SIR,

I BEG leave to let you know that I had, about ten days ago, a letter from my Ld. Barrington, dated from Berwick; the principal contents of which I must just mention to you, and then shall (as I ought) leave it entirely to you to consider what is proper on your part. He says that he has met with a reception and encouragement beyond his highest expectations; that Col. Lyddel is secure; that Ld. Polwartn's interest is in a very hazardous way by the acknowledgment of his own friends; that Gen. Sabine has given up his pretensions, and that there is not the least room for a fourth candidate; that there are about 20 votes depending upon the Government, with inclinations to him, but fears insinuated into them of losing their bread if they vote for him; that it would be of the greatest service to him to have that difficulty removed, and so many votes added to his interest. He quotes you as saying, a little while ago, "that you did not oppose him, but was only for the old members;" and hopes from thence that, Gen. Sabine having desisted, you may grant him this favour. Nay, he goes on to hope that Col. Lyddel would favour him with some of those votes, which he unnecessarily keeps now as single votes, if he thought that Lord B.'s election would be more acceptable to you than Lord Polwarth's, who may get advantage by that conduct in the Colonel. I shall make my letter as long as his if I should go on much farther. I shall only add, that he is so weak as to think that I have an interest powerful enough to do-I know not what. For my own part, I could not avoid representing the case to you as he has represented it to me; and cannot think it right to beg any thing of you but that you will be as favourable as you yourself think it reasonable to be. I find he is in, and must now go through, and that he has a number of good friends there. I forgot to say, that he cites her Majesty's saying, that it would be hard to oppose him; which I remember something of at the time. when the affair of the Dissenters was composed at London by his assistance at last, amongst others. But no more of this.

When I had last the honour of seeing you, I forgot to make an apology for my troubling you a little while ago with two letters, about the Jewel-office and the Garter affair. You, who have nothing to do with those matters, might wonder at it, if you were not informed that the Duke of Grafton, who came to me upon that subject,and was going into Suffolk, told me he came directly from you; and that I must give an account of whatever I found necessary to you in his absence.

I think fit just to say, that Sir Ed. Desbouverie's interest has been carefully and successfully managed in 'this City since the last election, and (as I am informed) is now so strong that there is indeed no talk amongst any persons of 'the old members.

I beg pardon for this long interruption; and am, with a great and sincere regard, Sir, your most faithful humble servant,

B. SARUM.

LETTER II.

From the same Bishop.

SIR, Aug. 8, 1734... HEARING from all hands the desperate condition in which the Bishop of Winchester is (if not already dead,) I flatter myself you will not take it amiss that I express to you, upon this occasion, my entire dependence upon those kind words you have often said to me upon this subject. When I last bad the honour to see you at Chelsea, the reception I met with was so exceedingly obliging, and your voluntary expressions, upon the supposition of that vacancy, were so hearty and so strong (even assuring me that my success was really as certain as if I were in possession,) that it would, I think, be perfectly stupid as to myself, and highly ungrateful to you, if I could sit silent in so critical a time, and not suffer myself to express to you the sense I have of the kind professions I have been favoured with, and my full persuasion of the truth and honour of the person who made them. This is the end of my interrupting you, Sir, at this time-not to torment so great a friend with impertinent so licitations, but to thank him for his having so generously prevented all solicitations-not to plague him with pretensions and titles to favour, slender in themselves, and perhaps magnified only by the fondness of self-love; but to acknowledge my own happiness in that better claim which