Page:The Wentworth Papers 1715-1739.djvu/86

 70 THE WENTWORTH PAPERS.

chose as he Hkes, and till of late years they have had no con- tested elections .... Lord Herbert gets petitions from a great many hands to the Queen to grant them a new charter .... Winnington's friends was to prove this an arbitrary proceed- ing and that if this was allow'd they might have all the corporations in England new model'd. Sir John Packington made a flaming speech which I won't repeat because they tell me he will print it ... . The house came to the con- clusion of approving Lord Herbert's election, and so of consequence the Queen's charter. ....

.... I have sent you a copy of the Dutchess of Ormond's letter to Lady Betty Southwell who she thought a dying,* and Lady Betty's answer which has been all the talk of the town for several vissiting days, and now there's about a hundred copy's of them, so that in a little time we may see them in print, for they print everything. They cry'd about the street TJie hasty Widdow or the Sooner the Better ; there was nothing in the paper but a parcel of proverbs (?), but the impudence was the title and coming out after the Address to the Queen, t

London, January i8, 1709. Dear Brother,

.... This day seven Lord HavershamJ made a speech, and last friday they cry'd it about the streets and I

married Edward Southwell, Secretary of State for Ireland. She was apparently an old flame of Lord Raby's, for on April i, 1709, Lady Wentworth writes, " Your old Mrs. is dead and left thre lovly boys behynde and a dismall mallancoUy husband ; its Lady Betty Southwell whoe made a very good wife, and he a fond husband .... She dyed of a consumtion. Her eldist son will be Lord Crumwell, but som say he will not."
 * Lady Elizabeth Cromwell (descended from Cromwell, Earl of Essex)

t An address had been presented by both Houses of Parliament recommending a second marriage to her majesty. the Revolution, was raised to the peerage in 1696. In May 1709, Lord Raby's French correspondent in London writes : — " Le Lord Haversham, qui est pour le moins Sexagenaire, a ^pous^, en secondes noces, la veuve d'un officier qui est mort Prisonier en France, laquelle etoit sa Domestique en quality de Femme de Charge."

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