Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/135

Rh quires; and further, if any one of our children shall marry clandestinely, they, by so doing, shall lose all claim, or title, to our effects, goods, gear, or estate; and we intimate this to all concerned, that none may pretend ignorance.

Decreased in the Burials this Year 3737.

N the 29th of November his Grace the Duke of Marlborough received the following letter from an unknown hand.

To his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, with care and speed.

",

As ceremony is an idle thing upon most occasions, more especially to persons in my state of mind, I shall proceed immediately to acquaint you with the motive and end of addressing this epistle to you, which is equally interesting to us both. You are to know, then, that my present situation in life is such, that I should prefer annihilation to a continuance in it. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies; and you are the man I have pitched upon, either to make me, or to unmake yourself. As I never had the honour to live among the Great, the tenour of my proposals will not be very courtly; but let that be an argument to enforce a belief of what I am now going to write. It has employed my invention for some time, to find out a method to destroy another, without exposing my own life: that I have accomplished, and defy the law. Now for the application of it. I am desperate, and must be provided for. You have it in your power, it is my business to make it your inclination to serve me; which you must determine to comply with, by procuring me a genteel support for