scene of anxiety; we have had a good deal; but I think we grow in spirits again.  There never was so melancholy a town; no kind of public place but the playhouses, and they look as if the rebels had just driven away the company.  Nobody but has some fear for themselves, for their money, or for their friends in the army:  of this number am I deeply; Lord Bury(1139) and mr.  Conway, two of the first in my list, are aide-de-camps to the Duke, and another, Mr. Cornwallis,(1140) is in the same army, and my nephew, Lord Malpas(1141)—­so I still fear the rebels beyond my reason.  Good night.

P. S. It is now generally believed from many circumstances, that the youngest Pretender is actually among the prisoners taken on board the Soleil:  pray wish Mr. Chute joy for me.

(1134) Charles Radcliffe, brother of James, Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed for the share he took in the rebellion of 1715.  Charles was executed in 1746, upon the sentence pronounced against him in 1716, which he had then evaded, by escaping from Newgate.  His son was Bartholomew, third Earl of Newburgh, a Scotch title he inherited from his mother.-D.

(1135) Afterwards the well-known Duchess of Kingston.-D.

(1136) Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, and second Duke of Dover:  died 1778.-D.

(1137) Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk, the wife of Duke Edward.  She and her Husband were suspected of Jacobitism.-D.

(1138) Cardinal Riviera, promoted to the purple by the interest of the Pretender.

(1139) George Keppel, eldest son of the Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1754.

(1140) Edward, brother of Earl Cornwallis, groom of the bedchamber to the King, and afterwards governor of Nova Scotia.

(1141) George, eldest son of George, Earl of Cholmondeley, and of Mary, second daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.

455 Letter 189 To sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, December 9, 1745.

I am glad I did not write to you last post as I intended; I should have sent you an account that would have alarmed you, and the danger would have been over before the letter had crossed the sea.  The Duke, from some strange want of intelligence, lay last week for four-and-twenty hours under arms at Stone, in Staffordshire, expecting the rebels every moment, while they were marching in all haste to Derby.(1142) The news of this threw the town into great consternation but his Royal Highness repaired his mistake, and got to Northampton, between the Highlanders and London.  They got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the books brought to them, and obliged every body to give them what they had subscribed against them.  Then they retreated a few miles, but returned again to Derby, got ten thousand pounds more, plundered the town, and burnt a house of the Countess of Exeter.  They are gone again, and got back to Leake, in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed, and, it is said, have left