Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/324

 262 NOTES AND QUERIES. 112 s.vm. APRIL 2, 1921 forth the threat that he will exercise his right of petitioning the Grown (op. cit., pp. 27-28 : cf. 'A Letter to the L. and G.,' p. 3.) By March, 1741, he was lodging in Berry Street, St. James ('A Letter,' p. 5). His Petition to the King he printed, forwarded under a covering letter to Lord Wilmington, the President, and the other members of the Privy Council,* and circulated among the members of Parliament. His attitude may be epitomised in the following quotation : " I thought it a Duty I owed to God, as well as to Myself to assert my Bight to an Original Fortune (the Purchase of no inconsiderable private Inheritance laid out in the best of Educa- tions under the greatest Patronage) (' A Letter to the L. & C.,' p. 51)." The petition does not, however, appear to be preserved among the Privy Council papers now housed in the Public Record Office, and we may perhaps conclude that What ley's action was designed merely in terrorem, reliance being placed on the minister's waning power and the moral effect of publicity, while it is possible that he may have thought it advisable to renew his attack and agree to a withdrawal on terms. Whatever the reason, publicity was made more public by the issue- early in 1742t of his ' A Letter to the Lords and Commons .... Containing, A State of the Cause between the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole and Mr Whatley, As It now lies at Issue in the Hands of the. . . .Privy Council, by Mr Whatley's most humble Appeal to his Majesty, in the Cause between Them.' This comprised among other matter a letter to Walpole of Mar. 21, 1741, the letter to Wilmington, the appeal, and Whatley's affidavit of Apr. 23 made before Spicer, now a Master in Chancery! "occasioned by his Appeal to his Majesty " (op. cit., p. 31). The more Christian duties were meanwhile not neglected : on Oct. 2 he was at Caistor at the visitation of the Arch- deacon of Lincoln, and published in con- sequence : ' A Presentment Made to the Reverend Dr. George Reynolds Archdeacon of Lincoln at his Visitation held at Caister October the 2d. 1741 : by the Reverend Mr. Whatley, Rector of Toft near Lincoln and Prebendary of York.'i A Letter to the L. & C.' Neither is there dated. t It is dated from Berry Street, the 9th of January, 1742. J " Lincoln : Printed for William Wood Printer and Bookseller, 1741." This admirably timed reminder of the zealous parochus, like to be lost in the draggled frequenter of antechambers,, formed a neat pamphlet of four pages, just the size, the unkind critic might remark,- to slip into a letter to a profitable recipient to which circumstance (the British Museum copy forms an enclosure with Whatley'& letter to Hardwicke of Kov. 8, 1741, Add. MSS. 35,586, folio 410), we appear to owe- its preservation. Henceforward, for lack of a connected: account, we are constrained to rely on letters by the claimant which have been- preserved among the manuscripts of the British Museum. It was in 1742 that he first approached Lord Hardwicke to take up his case* (Whatley to Hardwicke, May 1, 1743, B.M., Add. MSS. 35,587, folio 123), and a year later he was still in, town, " humbly waiting the Decision of my Cause " (ibidem], but his suggestion that the bestowal on him of a vacant canonry of Westminster would "make me easy" had not been taken up. Of the rest of the year 1743 we know naught save that he wrote but did not then publish ' Self -Entertain- ment ; Or, Day-Thoughts. Being a Collec- tion Of Six' Months Occasional Reflections, Set Down As they occurr'd to the Writer's Mind,' the title of which was obviously inspired by the recent triumph of his friend Young (op. cit., p. ii). He also attended the festival of the Sons of the Clergy (op. cit. 9j p. 5). C. S. B. BUCEXAND. (To be concluded.) AMONG THE SHAKESPEARE ARCHIVES. (See ante, pp. 23, 45, 66, 83, 124, 146, 181,. 223, 241.) THE PLAGUE IN STRATFORD. The child William Shakespeare had more to fear from the Plague than from fairies. This terrible sickness came from Havre, and was probably brought by the Earl of Warwick's soldiers into the Midlands. It broke out in Leicester in June, 1564, where it was promptly isolated. An, act of the Council there on, June 30 forbade those "visited " to go abroad within a space of two months after a death in their house made the contest a little unreal.
 * The text of both is printed on pp. 725 of
 * Perhaps on Walpole's fall, which must have