and that, therefore, a Court of Equity will establish the Will made when Sir Richard was in the full vigour of his understanding, and all written by his own hand,

and set aside this Codicil made to disinherit the lawful Heir*.

"There are now more than a competent number of witnesses to prove these facts. And a few respectable characters, acquainted with this extraordinary case, and desiring to restore this Family to the rank and fortune they are entitled to, have concurred to promote a Subscription, for the purpose of raising them from their present distresses, and to enable them to prosecute their claims in the Court of Chancery. They presume to call upon the Nobility and Gentry to concur in this huImane and honourable measure. It is particularly hoped, that the illustrious characters forming the Female Nobility will promote the design with their influence, which cannot fail of ensuring its success. The sums received will be most carefully applied, under the direction of the Gentlemen who have proposed this plan.

"That Sir Charles Corbett, Bart. and his Son Thomas Corbett, were both interred in one grave, on the 26th day of May, 1808, in the Church-yard of St. Anne's Westminster, is attested this 14th day of March, 1809, by me R. MACLEOD,

Rector of St. Anne's, Westminster."

"The Will of Sir Richard Corbett, Bart. of Longnor, with the Codicils annexed, were laid before me to advise upon as Counsel, touching the validity thereof, and particularly as to the seventh Codicil, with a variety of circumstances attending the Case; and I well remember going with Mr. Bury, the Solicitor who consulted me on the occasion, to Doctors Commons, for the purpose of examining the Signatures of the Testator, with his Signature to the Seventh Codicil, the latter appearing to be written more clearly than any of the other Signatures, and of a different hand-writing. I was at the same time informed by Mr. Bury, that the Signature to the Seventh Codicil appeared to be of a better, and more perfect hand-writing than ever the Testator was capable of writing, or had used before in his life. And therefore I advised on behalf of the then Sir Charles Corbett, a Suit in Equity to set aside the Will and Codicils.-Upon these facts, I became Counsel in the Case. Cary-street,March 13, 1809. THO. NEDHAM.

the wife of the Rev. J. Jesting, the Vicar, whose long illness has prevented him from personally performing the duties of his office, I found that a person had been there very reand writing down the tablets and incently, taking a drawing of the Church, scriptions on the grave-stones, &c. As Mrs. Jesting could not inform me who this gentleman was, it occurred to me that it was one of your respectable coadjutors, and that it would shortly appear in your valuable Miscellany *. Desirous of promoting your efforts to explore what relates to the local history of the country, and referring you for an early account of it to Chauncey's Hertfordshire, it appears, that the manor and estate descended by marriage, in the female line, from the Huttons to the Yorkes of Erthig, or Erddig, in Denbighshire, (a collateral branch of the Hardwicke family,) who about eight or ten years ago sold the materials of the antient' mansion, destroyed the gardens and temples with the bridges over the moat that surrounded the pleasure grounds; and about two years ago Mr. Yorke disposed of the whole of the estate.

As you are probably in possession of some information subsequent to the period mentioned by Chauncey, your inserting it in your Magazine will much oblige VIATOR.

P. S. Is there any probability of a history of Hertfordshire being begun, taking Chauncey for its guide? From the number of resident proprietors, it could not want encouragement, assistance, or support.

Mr. URBAN, Birmingham, Jan. 2. THE appearance of Rochester Castle on entering the Bridge from Strood is so striking, that it cannot fail to arrest the attention even of the most incurious traveller. The annexed sketch (Plate I.) will convey a faint idea of this interesting view; and, it being unnecessary to describe buildings which have been so frequently and so minutely described, I shall refer such of your readers as may wish for accounts of the Castle and Bridge, to Hasted's History of Kent, vol. II. p. 12. chæologia, vol. IV. p. 364, vol. VI. p. 296, ibid. p. 381, vol. VII. p. 395. Thorpe's Textus Roffensis, &c.

Yours, &c. WILLIAM HAMPER. Mr. URBAN,

TWO

Stirling, June 28. WO days ago my learned and amiable friend Bishop Sandford sent to me from Edinburgh your Magazine for last April, pointing out in it an article on which, for the sake of that Church to which his and my services are equally due, he expressed an earnest wish that I would make some remarks. The article is intituled, "Titular Prelates-The Scotch and English Churches ;" and contains several wonderful things-such as, a proposal that, "in this Island Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anabaptists, Independents, and every other subdivision of those (including Quakers of course) who disclaim the Pope's authority, should unite with their National Church!"-a censure of Bishop Horne for an expression which flowed from Christian humility combined with that playful wit, by which the conversation of his LordIship was so eminently distinguished; -a censure of the Spiritual Courts, which" from Tweed to the Land's end in Cornwall, brandish the scourge over such of the Clergy as eschew the Creed of St. Athanasius ;"-and a de claration that "Alliances between Church and State are not to be endured in any Christian Realm," obedience of the Church to the State being the "doctrine inculcated on the Apostles by the great Founder of our Religion;" so that he whose duty it is to communicate with the Established Church of England is bound to communicate with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, with the Greek Church GENT. MAG. July, 1809.

With respect to myself, Mr. L. L. informs the publick that I am become a nominal Scotch Bishop; and thus far he is not mistaken, for I have be come not only a nominal, but a real (however unworthy) Scotch Bishop. But when he proceeds to say that "about the year 1787, I exhibited some half dozen letters in your Magazine, under the signature of a Presbyter; that not long afterwards I reprinted them in a Pamphlet of consisiderable bulk, without any apparent motive, except that of asserting, in a furious appendix, that the right of James the Second to the Throne of these Realms was at least equal to that of his successor; and that by far the greater part of the impression was withdrawn from sale;" he has fallen into several mistakes, and some of them of considerable importance.

It was not about the year 1787, but in the year 1785, that THIS SAME Mr. L. L. whose memory is now so fallacious, exhibited in your Maga zine a letter, in which he compares the consecration of Dr. Seabury, the first Bishop of Connecticut, to the knighthood of Don Quixote; and the Scotch Bishops, by whom he was consecrated, to the Tempter making an offer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them, when he himself had no title to a single acre; in which he calls loudly on the Govern ment to execute those penal laws

which

which then hung with all their weight over the heads of the Scotch Bishops; and in which he stigmatizes most modern Bishops with possessing in an éminent degree the serpent's wisdom, though not that species of it which is recommended in the Scriptures! It was in the same year, 1785, that, in defence of the Scotch Episcopacy, and the consecration of Dr. Seabury, I published in your Magazine an answer to Mr. L. L.'s attack. He replied; and the controversy, in which the Scotch Episcopal Church was accused of disaffection to Government,, of forgery, of falsehood, and of all the crimes that have ever disgraced the most abandoned banditti; in which the wily Sherlock Bishop of London, and the great convert Secker, were mentioned in the most opprobrious terms for the noble stand which, in the House of Peers, they made to the Penal Laws of 1746 and 1748, and for maintaining, on the principles of the Primitive Church, in the same House, the rights-the purely spiritual rights, of the Scotch Bishops, which no Act of Parliament could give, or take away the controversy, I say, in which all this is to be found, was continued during the years 1785 and 1786; with what success or fury on either side, those who think it worth while to enquire will easily learn by turning over your volumes for the years in which it was carried on. The whole correspondence, amounting to six letters by L. L. and four by me, together with an additional letter of mine to a Clergyman whose attention had been directed to the controversy by Dr. Berkeley, who knew the state of Episcopacy in Scotland, as well as the principles of the Scotch Episcopalians, better than any other man at that time in England, were printed, not by me, but by Dr. Horne, then Dean of Canterbury, and soon afterwards Bishop of Norwich. It was at his request that my letter to the private Clergyman was added-not for the absurd purpose supposed by L. L. but to prove that there could be no Episcopal Church in Scotland but under the superintendance of the successors of those Prelates who had been deprived, at the Revolution, of their sees, revenues, and civil dignities. The sentence which L. L. quotes, is indeed in that letter; but so far was the Dean, on

account of that sentence, or of any thing else, from withdrawing the greater part of the impression from sale, as your Correspondent insinu ates, that he distributed the whole of the impression that was not quickly sold at his own expence, that the pamphlet might be as soon and as ge neraily read as possible.

To that pamphlet I was indebted for the warm and steady friendship of Dr. Horne, through the few remain ing years of his valuable life; for the countenance of Archbishop Moore; and for the friendly correspondence of perhaps the most learned Prelate of the age in which he lived-the late Bishop Horsley, who assured me that his attention was first drawn by the controversy occasioned by the consecration of Dr. Seabury, to the state of Episcopacy in Scotland, of which he afterwards so ably pleaded the cause in the House of Peers.

I mention these things, which hundreds alive can prove, not merely because they are honourable to my self, but because they evince, beyond the reach of rational controversy, that the principles, political and religious, of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, as well as of her humble apologist, are not, in the opinion of those who were most competent to judge of them, such as ought to have excited the odium which L. L. has now for upwards of twenty years professed towards both; but that, on the contrary, they are such as to render the Scotch Episcopal Church not altogether unworthy of the countenance and encouragement which she has recently received from the Church of England.

Of this fact another proof may be found in the fund which is now raising by subscription for her support. Your Correspondent is greatly mistaken if he suppose that the subscription for this purpose has been confined to the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD alone; and he will therefore be extremely unjust, if he restrain to that learned body the guilt, with which he charges it, "of thus giving nndue encouragement to Separatists." The University of Oxford has indeed subscribed, with a liberality which the Scotch Episcopalian must be a monster of ingratitude who can ever forget; but the same liberality has, on this occasion, been displayed by the

Bench