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138 taining it much longer. But he entreats the Minister not to let him be 'dragged from it like a felon, after the labour of twenty-seven years dedicated to the service of the Company and the aggrandisement of the British dominion .'

On the 8th August, 1777, Hastings married Mrs. Imhoff under her maiden name. Imhoff seems to have left Calcutta a few years before, but the divorce suit dragged on so slowly, that the award had not reached Calcutta until this year. The second Mrs. Hastings was then about thirty, and her new husband forty-five. Even Francis, who had always discredited the fact of her former marriage, was ere long to admit that she 'behaves with perfect propriety in her new station, and deserves, every mark of respect .'

On the 29th of that month. Sir John Clavering died of dysentery. His health had been failing visibly for more than a year past. If it be true that he had lately figured among the wedding guests, the fact bears witness rather to Hastings' placable temper, than to any thought of triumphing over a vanquished rival. Whatever causes may have concurred to weaken Clavering's bodily powers, there is no sort of warrant for connecting his last illness with any incidents of the wedding. He was taken ill on his way home from a visit to Sir Elijah Impey, and died within the next fortnight. The old man's death, however, as Hastings wrote to a friend in November, 'has produced a state of quiet in our