(1377) And honourably acquitted on both occasions.-E.

531 Letter 237 To sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, June 26, 1747.

You can have no idea of the emptiness of London, and of the tumult every where else.  To-day many elections begin.  The sums of money disbursed within this month would give any body a very faint idea of the poverty of this undone country!  I think the expense and contest is greater now we are said to be all of a mind, than when parties ran highest.  Indeed, I ascribe part of the solitude in town to privilege being at an end; though many of us can afford to bribe so high, it is not so easy to pay debts.  Here am I, as Lord Cornbury(1378) says, sitting for a borough, while every body else stands for one.  He diverted me extremely the other day with the application of a story to the King’s speech.  It says, the reason for dissolving the Parliament is its being so near dissolution:(1379) Lord Cornbury said it put him in mind of a gaoler in Oxfordshire who was remarkably humane to his prisoners; one day he said to one of them, “My good friend, you know you are to be hanged on Friday se’nnight; I want extremely to go to London; would you be so kind as to be hanged next Friday?”

Pigwiggin is come over, more Pigwiggin than ever!  He entertained me with the horrid ugly figures that he saw at the Prince of Orange’s court; think of his saying ugly figures!  He is to be chosen for Lynn,-whither I would not go, because I must have gone; I go to Callington again, whither I don’t go.  My brother chooses Lord luxborough(1380) for Castlerising.  Would you know the connexion?  This Lord keeps Mrs. Horton the player; we keep Miss Norsa the player:  Rich the harlequin is an intimate of all; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody’s brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is to marry the Jewess’s sister.  This coup de th`eatre procured Knight his Irish coronet, and has now stuffed him into Castlerising, about which my brother has quarrelled with me, for not looking upon it, as, what he called, a family-borough.  Excuse this ridiculous detail; it serves to introduce the account of the new peers, for Sir Jacob Bouverie, a considerable Jacobite, who is made Viscount Folkestone, bought his ermine at twelve thousand pound a-yard of the Duchess of Kendal(1381) d’aujourd’hui.  Sir Harry Liddel is Baron Ravensworth, and Duncombe Baron Feversham; Archer and Rolle have only changed their Mr.ships for Lordships.  Lord Middlesex has lost one of his Lordships, that of the Treasury; is succeeded by the second Grenville, and he by Ellis,(1382) at the admiralty.  Lord Ashburnham had made a magnificent summer suit to wait, but Lord Cowper at last does not resign the bedchamber.  I intend to laugh over this disgrazia with the Chuteheds, when they return triumphant from Hampshire, where Whitehed has no enemy.  A-propos to enemies!  I believe the battle in Flanders is compromised, for one never hears of it.