DEAR COUSIN, Euston, Nov. 13, 1714 The unfortunate necessity which hurried me away from Bettisfield so suddainly, prevented me from speaking to you upon many things which I desired to have done. And now the near approach of elections calls upon me to inform you with what has passed on that subject with relation to the county of Flint, that you may not be a stranger to it. Before the time of choosing the present Parliament, it was considered that the last agreement of the county was expired, and therefore if possible to lay the foundation of another. Lord Bulkeley, Sir John Conway, Sir Roger Mostyn, and myself, acting also for you as you have heretofore entrusted me, took an opportunity at London of talking together concerning it. The intention was to preserve peace and good neighbourhood among us, and the terms which were then proposed and consented to by all then present were these— that all parts of the former agreement' should be renewed and stand good, with this alteration and addition only, that whenever within the new term, which was to be the same with the former, it should be Sir John Conway's turn to serve, either for the county or the borough, it might be in his choice to doe it himself, or name another gentleman belonging to the county, and agreeable to the rest of the gentlemen of it. This proposition had the consent of all us who were then present, if the other 1 I have no note of what this former agreement was; in the reign of King William III. our family had been hit very hardly by elections. gentlemen who were not there and if the countrey had no objection to it, when it should be made to them; and I thought we were obliging you by endeavouring to establish quiet and a good correspondence in the countrey, for I have always heard you express it as your earnest desire that occasions of difference might be prevented. Whatever has passed since in the countrey you are likely to know better than I, and, as I imagine there will now be another meeting amongst you before the election, I hope no occasion will be given of breaking the good intelligence which is always wished by, Dear Cousin, Your most affectionate humble servant, Marks of the new King's favour in other ways, but not again the chair he had occupied, awaited the late Speaker, who was succeeded by a member of the Whig party. Whatever was proposed to him, Lady Mary Wortley says, in one of her letters, he was "weak enough" to decline, but I do not know that a man is weak who is content with what he has.' I have also heard that the treatment the Duke of Ormond met with from that 1 The Countess of Arlington took her place as peeress in her own right at King George's coronation, but Sir Thomas's relations with the court of the former Elector of Hanover were limited by that ceremony. 2 Government was a chief cause of his break with them. He continued afterwards for many years as one of the representatives of Suffolk, a principal independent member of the House of Commons.1 In this capacity he moved, 10th June, 1715, to postpone the consideration of Mr. Walpole's Report on the Negotiations for the Late Peace; the result of which was the impeachment of Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, and a little later of the Duke of Ormond. It was long afterwards imputed as blame to Sir Thomas that he advised the Duke's flight on this occasion; but this was not the case; on the contrary, it is certain that he advised him to remonstrate with the King, 1 There was a Parliamentary phrase in those times of being "above the chair," applied to gentlemen who had filled it, and still were members of the House; Mr. Bromley was another at the same period. 2 Debates of the House of Commons, vol. vi. p. 25. A paper printed in Addison's works gives a different account. I find this in one of the now obscure pamphlets which grew out of the troubles of Mr. Thomas Hervey, some thirty years later. It is also asserted in Macpherson. Bolingbroke gave better advice. Lady Mary Wortley says sarcastically to him, who at all events did not follow it for himself, "You Advise the whole confederacy to stay, While with sly courage you run brisk away." and Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son records how it was Atterbury who gave him the evil counsel. The motion for postponement was beaten by 280 votes against 160. Lord Hervey in his memoirs says Sir Thomas's speeches had not the art of persuasion; but who is persuaded by a speech? He must be a reed shaken by the wind. Sir Thomas never re-opened the house at Hanmer, which was shut up for forty-five years in his time, from the death of his uncle Sir John, in 1701, to his own in 1746, and for eight years more in that of his immediate successor, William Hanmer of the Fens, and of Iscoyd, who died in 1754. At Bettisfield he made some ordinary additions, not now very easy to distinguish, as they are incorporated in later work, and he planted, among other trees, the large ilex on the eastern side of the house, much loved of squirrels,1 who keep a winter store about its roots. The late Lord Kenyon told me that he gave the acorns of those which are 1 I never observed before this year that squirrels collect among their stores the brown spotted funguses, which grow under oak trees. I met with two of these little creatures yesterday carrying large pieces of them in their mouths. growing at Gredington' to his neighbour there. Between the two oaks on either side the green road, at the bottom of the garden, he had a device 1 Though we have reached the reign of Queen Anne, the system of occasional notes, which make the farrago of this book, enables me to go back all the way to King Edward I. for the name of Adam de Cretyng, from whose residence, as I have said before, but I had lost the reference at the time, I believe the name of Gredington (Cretyngstown) arises; it is to be found in one of the writs to our forefather Thomas de Macclesfield. Adam de Cretyng was killed in Gascony, 22nd Edw. I. A.D. 1294; his son John was summoned to parliament as a baron, 6th Edw. I. A.D. 1332-3, but not afterwards. Writ to THOMAS de MacclesfieLD. See Rolls of Parl. vol. i. p. 279, A.D. 1308-9, 2nd Edw. II. Edwardus Dei gratia Rex Angl' etc. dilectis et fidelibus suis Nich'o de Audele et Thome de Macclesfeld salutem. Ex querela Roberti de Nevill et Ankarete uxoris ejus accessimus quod cum ipsa Ankareta et Will' le Boteler, primus vir suus, per magnum tempus seisiti fuissent in dominico suo ut de feodo de quadam placea terre ad manerium suum de Dodington pertinente, quousque Adam de Cretyng nuper Ballivus celebris memorie Alianora quondam Regine Anglie consortis nostre de Overton propria voluntate sua et absque causa rationabili ipsos Will" et Ankaretam de dicta placea ejecit. Et idem Willielmus in prosequendo jus suum et prefate Ankarete super ejectione predicta in curia nostra diem clauserit extremum, per quod eadem Ankareta nondum est inde justiciam assecuta, volentes super premissis plenius certiorari, et prefatis Roberto et Ankarete quod justum fuerit fieri in hac parte, vobis mandamus quod |