The King goes on Monday se’nnight;(130) it is looked upon as a great event that the Duke of Newcastle has prevailed on him to speak to Mr. Pitt, who has detached himself from the Bedfords.  The Monarch, who had kept up his Hanoverian resentments, though he had made him paymaster, is now beat out of the dignity of his silence:  he was to pretend not to know Pitt, and was to be directed to him by the lord in waiting.  Pitt’s jealousy is of Lord Sandwich, who knows his own interest and unpopularity so well, that he will prevent any breach, and thereby what you fear, which yet I think you would have no reason to fear.  I could not say enough of my anger to your father, but I shall take care to say nothing, as I have not forgot how my zeal for you made me provoke him once before.

Your genealogical affair Is in great train, and will be quite finished in a week or two.  Mr. Chute has laboured at it indefatigably:  General Guise has been attesting the authenticity of it to-day before a justice of peace.  You will find yourself mixed with every drop of blood in England that is worth bottling up-. the Duchess of Norfolk and you grow on the same bough of the tree.  I must tell you a very curious anecdote that Strawberry King-at-Arms(131) has discovered by the way, as he was tumbling over the mighty dead in the Heralds’ office.  You have heard me speak of the great injustice that the Protector Somerset did to the children of his first wife, in favour of those by his second; so much, that he not only had the dukedom settled on the younger brood, but to deprive the eldest of the title of Lord Beauchamp, which he wore by inheritance, he caused himself to be anew created Viscount Beauchamp.  Well, in Vincent’s Baronage, a book of great authority, speaking of the Protector’s wives, are these remarkable words:  “Katherina, filia et una Coh.  Gul:  Fillol de Fillol’s hall in Essex, uxor prima; repudiata, quia Pater ejus post nuptias eam cognovit.”  The Speaker has since referred me to our journals, where are some notes of a trial in the reign of James the First, between Edward, the second son of Katherine the dutiful, and the Earl of Hertford, son of Anne Stanhope, which in some measure confirms our ms; for it says, the Earl of Hertford objected, that John, the eldest son of all, was begotten while the Duke was in France.  This title, which now comes back at last to Sir Edward Seymour is disputed:  my Lord Chancellor has refused him the writ, but referred his case to the Attorney General,(132) the present great Opinion of England, who, they say, is clear for Sir Edward’s succession.(133)

I shall now go and show you Mr. Chute in a different light from heraldry, and in one in which I believe you never saw him.  He will shine as usual; but, as a little more severely than his good-nature is accustomed to, I must tell you that he was provoked by the most impertinent usage.  It is an epigram on Lady Caroline Petersham, whose present fame, by the way, is coupled with young Harry Vane.