I went a little too fast in my history of Lord Clive, and yet I had it from Mr. Grenville himself.  The Jaghire is to be decided by law, that is in the year 1000.  Nor is it certain that his Omrahship goes; that will depend on his obtaining a board of directors to his mind, at the approaching election.(552) I forgot, too, to answer your question about Luther;(553) and now I remember it, I cannot answer it.  Some said his wife had been gallant.  Some, that he had been too gallant, and that she suffered for it.  Others laid it to his expenses at his election; others again, to political squabbles on that subject between him and his wife—­but in short, as he sprung into the world by his election, so he withered when it was over, and has not been thought on since.

George Selwyn has had a frightful accident, that ended in a great escape.  He was at dinner at Lord Coventry’s, and just as he was drinking a glass of wine, he was seized with a fit of coughing, the liquor went wrong, and suffocated him:  he got up for some water at the sideboard, but being strangled, and losing his senses, he fell against the corner of the marble table with such violence, that they thought he had killed himself by a fracture of his skull.  He lay senseless for some time, and was recovered with difficulty.  He was immediately blooded, and had the chief wound, which is just over the eye, sewed up—­but you never saw so battered a figure.  All round his eye is as black as jet, and besides the scar on his forehead, he has cut his nose at top and bottom.  He is well off with his life, and we with his wit.

P. S. Lord Macclesfield has left his wife(554) threescore thousand pounds.

(546) George Viscount Malpas member for Corfe-Castle, and colonel of the 65th regiment of foot, the son of George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, and of Mary, only legitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole.  Lord Malpas had married, in 1747, Hester daughter and heiress of Sir Francis Edwards, Bart. and by her was father of the fourth Earl.

(547) She was daughter and heiress of J. Harrison, Esq. of Balls, in Herts.-E.

(548) Probably Mary Fowke, widow of Mr. Henry Villiers, nephew of the first Earl of Jersey.-C.

(549) George, second Earl of Macclesfield, one of the tellers of the exchequer, and president of the Royal Society.-E.

(550) George Hay, LL.  D. member for Sandwich, and one of the lords of the admiralty.-E.

(551) We find in the Journals, that the printers of two papers in which the libellous paragraph appeared, were, after examination at the bar, committed to Newgate.  The libel itself is not recorded.  The proceedings in the House of Lords were notified to Lord Hertford by the secretary of state, and the following is a copy of his reply to this communication:—­“Paris, March 27th, 1764.  I am informed by my friend, of the insult that has been offered to my character in two public papers, and of the zeal shown by administration