(203) This was a party ballad (written by Glover, though by some at the time ascribed to Lord Bath,) on the taking of Porto-Bello by Admiral Vernon.  “The case of Hosier,” says Bishop Percy, in his admirable Reliques, vol. ii. p. 382, where the song is preserved, “The case of Hosier, which is here so pathetically represented, was briefly this.  In April 1726, that commander was sent with a strong fleet into the Spanish West Indies to block up the galleons in the port of that country, or, should they presume to come out, to seize and carry them to England:  he accordingly arrived at Bastimentos, near Porto-Bello; but, being employed rather to overawe than attack the Spaniards, with whom it was probably not our interest to go to war, he continued long inactive on this station.  He afterwards removed to Carthagena, and remained crusing in those seas, till the greater part of his men perished deplorably by the diseases of that unhealthy Climate.  This brave man, seeing his best officers and men thus daily swept away, his ships exposed to inevitable destruction, and himself made the sport of the enemy, is said to have died of a broken heart.-E.

(204) Philip Yorke Lord Hardwicke was the son of an attorney at Dover, and was introduced by the Duke of Newcastle to Sir Robert Walpole.  He was attorney-general, and when Talbot, the solicitor-general, was preferred to him in the contest for the chancellorship, Sir Robert made him chief justice for life, with an increased salary.  He was an object of aversion to Horace Walpole, who, in his Memoirs, tells us, “in the House of Lords, he was laughed at, in the cabinet despised.”  Upon which it is very properly observed by the noble editor of those memoirs, Lord Hollan,-"Yet, in the course of the work, Walpole laments Lord Hardwicke’s influence in the cabinet, where he would have us believe that he was despised, and acknowledges that he exercised a dominion nearly absolute over that house of Parliament which, he would persuade his readers, laughed at him.  The truth is, that, wherever this great magistrate is mentioned, Lord Orford’s resentments blind his judgment and disfigure his narrative."-E.

(205) charles Talbot baron Talbot was, on the 29th Nov. 1733, made lord high chancellor and created a baron; and, dying in Feb. 1737, was succeeded by Lord Hardwicke.  There is a story current, that Sir Robert Walpole, finding it difficult to prevail on Yorke to quit a place for life, for the higher but more precarious dignity of chancellor, worked upon his jealousy, and said that if he persisted in refusing the seals, he must offer them to Fazakerly.  “Fazakerly!” exclaimed Yorke, “impossible! he is certainly a Tory, perhaps a Jacobite.”  “It’s all very true,” replied Sir Robert, taking out his watch; " but if by one o’clock you do not accept my offer, Fazakerly by two becomes lord keeper of the great seal, and one of the staunchest Whigs in all England!” Yorke took the seals and the peerage.-E.