Did I tell you that your friend Lord Sandwich was sent’ ambassador to Holland?  He is:  and that Lady Charlotte Fermor(1266) was to be married to Mr. Finch,(1267) the Vice-chamberlain?  She is.  Mr. Finch is a comely black widower, without children, and heir to his brother Winchilsea, who has no sons.  The Countess-mother has been in an embroil, (as we have often known her,) about carrying Miss Shelly, a bosom-friend, into the Peeresses’ place at the trials.  Lord Granville, who is extremely fond of Lady Charlotte, has given her all her sister’s jewels, to the great discontent of his own daughters.  She has five thousand pounds, and Mr. Finch Settles fifteen thousand pounds more upon her.  Now we are upon the chapter of marriages, Lord Petersham(1268) was last night married to One Of our first beauties, Lady Caroline Fitzroy;(1269) and Lord Coke(1270) is to have the youngest of the late Duke of Argyl@s daughters,)1271) who is none of our beauties at all.

Princess Louisa has already reached the object of her wish ever since she could speak, and is Queen of Denmark, We have been a little lucky lately in the deaths of Kings, and promise ourselves great matters from the new monarch in Spain.(1272) Princess Mary is coming over from Hesse to drink the Bath waters; that is the pretence for leaving her brutal husband, and for visiting the Duke and Princess Caroline, who love her extremely.  She is of the softest, mildest temper in the world.

We know nothing certainly of the young Pretender, but that he is concealed in Scotland, and devoured with distempers — I really wonder how an Italian constitution can have supported such rigours!  He has said, that “he did not see what he had to be ashamed of; and that if he had lost one battle, he had gained two.”  Old Lovat curses Cope and Hawley for the loss of those two, and says, if they had done their duty, he had never been in this scrape.  Cope is actually going to be tried; but Hawley, who is fifty times more culpable, is saved by partiality:  Cope miscarried by incapacity; Hawley, by insolence and carelessness.

Lord Cromartie is reprieved; the Prince asked his life, and his wife made great intercession.  Duke Hamilton’s intercession for Lord Kilmarnock has rather hurried him to the block:  he and Lord Balmerino are to die next Monday.  Lord Kilmarnock, with the greatest nobleness of soul, desired to have Lord Cromartie preferred to himself for pardon, if there could be but one saved; and Lord Balmerino laments that himself and Lord Lovat were not taken at the same time; “For then,” says he, “we might have been sacrificed, and those other two brave men escaped.”  Indeed Lord Cromartie does not much deserve the epithet; for he wept whenever his execution was mentioned.  Balmerino is jolly with ’his pretty Peggy.  There is a remarkable story of him at the battle of Dunblain, where the Duke of Argyll, his colonel, answered for him, on