insisted on her keeping her bed, she said, as she went into her room, “Then, Lord have mercy on me!  I shall never come out of it again,” and died in three days.  Lord Besborough grew outrageously impatient at not seeing her, and would have forced into her room, when she had been dead about four days.  They were obliged to tell him the truth:  never was an answer that expressed so much horror! he said, “And how many children have I left?"not knowing how far this calamity might have reached.  Poor Lady Coventry is near completing this black list.

You have heard, I suppose, a horrid story of another kind, of Lord Ferrers murdering his steward in the most barbarous and deliberate manner.  He sent away all his servants but one, and, like that heroic murderess Queen Christina, carried the poor man through a gallery and several rooms, locking them after him, and then bid the man kneel down, for he was determined to kill him.  The poor creature flung himself at his feet, but in vain; was shot, and lived twelve hours.  Mad as this action was from the consequences, there was no frenzy in his behaviour; he got drunk, and, at intervals, talked of it coolly; but did not attempt to escape, till the colliers beset his house, and were determined to take him alive or dead.  He is now in the gaol at Leicester, and will soon be removed to the Tower, then to Westminster Hall, and I suppose to Tower Hill; unless, as Lord Talbot prophesied in the House of Lords, “Not being thought mad enough to be shut up, till he had killed somebody, he will then be thought too mad to be executed;” but Lord Talbot was no more honoured in his vocation, than other prophets are in their own country.

As you seem amused with my entertainments, I will tell you how I passed yesterday.  A party was made to go to the Magdalen-house.  We met at Northumberland-house at five, and set off in four coaches.  Prince Edward, Colonel Brudenel his groom, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, Lady Carlisle, Miss Pelham, Lady Hertford, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Huntingdon. old Bowman, and I. This new convent is beyond Goodman’s-fields, and I assure you would content any Catholic alive.  We were received by—­oh! first, a vast mob, for princes are not so common at that end of the town as at this.  Lord Hertford, at the head of the governors with their white staves, met us at the door, and led the Prince directly into the chapel, where, before the altar, was an arm-chair for him, with a blue damask cushion, a prie-Dieu, and a footstool of black cloth with gold nails.  We set on forms near him.  There were Lord and Lady Dartmouth in the odour of devotion, and many city ladies.  The chapel is small and low, but neat, hung with Gothic paper, and tablets of benefactions.  At the west end were enclosed the sisterhood, above an hundred and thirty, all in grayish brown stuffs, broad handkerchiefs, and flat straw hats, with a blue riband, pulled quite over their faces.  As soon as we