You have heard that old lovat’s tragedy is over:  it has been succeeded by a little farce, containing the humours of the Duke of Newcastle and his man Stone.  The first event was a squabble between his grace and the Sheriff about holding up the head on the scaffold—­a custom that has been disused, and which the Sheriff would not comply with, as he received no order in writing.  Since that, the Duke has burst ten yards of breeches strings(1360) about the body, which was to be sent into Scotland; but it seems it is customary for vast numbers to rise to attend the most trivial burial.  The Duke, who is always at least as much frightened at doing right as at doing wrong, was three days before he got courage enough to order the burying in the Tower.  I must tell you an excessive good story of George Selwyn -.  Some women were scolding him for going to see the execution, and asked him, how he could be such a barbarian to see the head cut off?  “Nay,” says he, “if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made amends, for I went to see it sewed on again.”  When he was at the undertaker’s, as soon as they had stitched him together, and were going to put the body into the coffin, George, in my Lord Chancellor’s voice, said “My Lord lovat, your lordship may rise.”  My Lady Townshend has picked up a little stable-boy in the Tower, which the warders have put upon her for a natural son of Lord Kilmarnock’s, and taken him into her own house.  You need not tell Mr. T. this from me.

We have had a great and fine day in the House on the second reading the bill for taking away the heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland.  Lyttelton made the finest oration imaginable; the Solicitor General, the new Advocate,(1361) and Hume Campbell, particularly the last. spoke excessively well for it, and Oswald against it.  The majority was 233 against 102.  Pitt was not there; the Duchess of Queensberry had ordered him to have the gout.

I will give you a commission once more, to tell Lord Bury(1362) that he has quite dropped me:  if I thought he would take me up again, I would write to him; a message would encourage me.  Adieu!

(1359) The battle of Culloden.

(1360) Alluding to a trick of the Duke of Newcastle’s.

(1361) William Grant, Lord Advocate of Scotland.

(1362) George Keppel, eldest son of William, Earl of Albemarle, whom he succeeded in the title in 1755.  He was now, together with Mr. Conway, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland.

526 Letter 233 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, May 5, 1747.

It is impossible for me to tell you more of the new Stadtholder(1363) than you must have heard from all quarters.  Hitherto his existence has been of no service to his country.  Hulst, which we had heard was relieved, has surrendered.  The Duke was in it privately, just before it was taken, with only two aide-de-camps, and has found means to withdraw our three regiments.  We begin to own now that the French are superior:  I never believed they were not, or that we had taken the field before them; for the moment we had taken it, we heard of Marshal Saxe having detached fifteen thousand men to form sieges.  There is a print published in Holland of the Devil weighing the Count de Saxe and Count lowendahl in a pair of scales, with this inscription: