Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/44

 28 THE WENTWORTH PAPERS.

show why the intention was changed. In a letter to Strafford dated November 14, 171 1, his friend "Jack Wiche," our representative at Hamburgh, says : —

" They write me from the office that your Excellence, My Lord Privy Seale, and my old school-fellow and friend Matt: Prior are designed for the Plenipotentiaries to encourage this Peace. Faith, my Lord, though the affair is weighty, it could never be putt into better hands ; experience, resolution, and learning wont be wanting, and who can mannage the interest of Great Britain better, than those who are distinguisht by their English hearts."

Swift in his Journal to Stella, under date November 20, thus refers to the reported appointment "Odso, I must go see his Excellency, 'tis a noble advancement : but they could do no less after sending him to France. Lord Strafford is as proud as Hell, and how he will bear one of Prior's mean birth on an equal character with him, I know not."

Another entry dated February 20, 171 2, thus refers to the two plenipotentiaries. Lord Strafford and Dr. Robinson." "They are both long practised in business, but neither of them of much parts. Strafford has some life and spirit but is infinitely proud, and wholly illiterate." Elsewhere Swift says tha:t Strafford " can't spell," which is true enough according to modern notions on the construction of some words ; but his lordship might have retorted, with Will Honeycomb, that he was above such pedantries, and that he spelt like a gentle- man, not like a scholar.

Immediately after his attainment of the earldom. Lord Strafford was married to Anne, only daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Johnson, of Bradenham, Bucks, a city knight who had amassed considerable property as a ship- builder. Johnson had already allied himself with the Cleveland branch of the Wentworths by a second marriage with Martha, daughter of Lord Lovelace, who became Baroness Wentworth in her own right. Through the last- named lady the manor of Toddington in Bedfordshire, where

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