Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/51

 interest it was to sully his reputation, to do him ill offices, he was very well esteemed by his present majesty, as appears by his reception of him at the Hague, and the very gracious letters which I am assured the Earl had from him before and since the Oueen's death."

After the failure of the attempt to impeach Lord Strafford for his share in the Utrecht Treaty, the ex-ambassador seems to have quitted public affairs in disgust, and to have devoted himself to the completion of his great house and to the im- provement of his estates in Yorkshire. The number of letters addressed to him for some years after his return from the Hague is very small, and it is probable that it was not thought politic to preserve many of them ; for there can be no doubt that the dissatisfied Earl was in occasional corre- spondence with the Pretender — the extracts from the Stuart Papers in Windsor Castle printed by Lord Stanhope in his History prove this clearly enough.

Lord Strafford died at Wentworth Castle in November, 1739; but his body was removed to Toddington in Bedford- shire, where he lies buried with many others of the ancient race of Wentworth. He left four children, many of whose letters to their father have been preserved with the rest of his correspondence, and are quoted from in this volume. His only son William Lord Wentworth, who succeeded to the title, married Lady Anne Campbell, daughter of the Duke of Argyll, but died childless ; he is chiefly remembered as an intimate friend and correspondent of Horace Walpole. On his death in 1791 the title went to Frederick, grandson of Peter Wentworth, and became extinct in 1799. The estates of the Earl of Strafford went ultimately to his three daughters, Anne, Lucy, and Henrietta, and their descendants.

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