1757. word that there was no ministry yet fixed, or we should send some ships there; but, as far as I can hear, we have none to send. Potter told me at court he should wait upon your Grace, and beg your assistance at Okehampton, as it is now again fixed for Pitt at Bath, and he takes a nominal place to vacate. The Parliament is not to be up till Tuesday; the only quarrel, the Duke of Newcastle assured me, there was between the Duke of Devonshire and him. I am to dine with the latter Duke at Holland House. If I should hear any thing more, I will send you another letter; but as the post goes out early this evening, I chose not to defer telling you how far this happy country is gone in its progress towards everlasting peace and quiet. I find it is expected that the Russian minister will also be recalled very speedily. Nothing done about Halifax, who, I hear, is gone to Horton. MR. RIGBY TO THE DUKE OF BEdford. My dear Lord, Leicester Fields, July 2. 1757. Having despatched my Irish business in the other packet, there remains very little of intelligence to send your Grace from here. The news I wrote you from Devonshire House you will 1757. see an account of published in to-night's Gazette, and it will be Michel's own account. I have seen it this morning, and very bad indeed it is; but there is a circumstance in it more than will be published, which is, that the Austrians made a sally upon the the rear of Marshal Keith's corps, and cut off a good number of men. This bad news, I hear, has stunned the new administration not a little; and had it arrived four or five days sooner, I verily believe they would not have accepted. What I wrote your Grace from the Duke of Newcastle about Jennison's pension I had yesterday from good authority was altered, and they intend to provide for him in some other shape. Fox's election at Windsor is very doubtful. There is a Jacobite subscription of 5000l. raised against him, with Sir James Dashwood's name at the head of it. The Beauclerck interest has joined it, and I am in the greatest fear for him; at all events it must cost him a vast deal of money. Lord-Keeper Henley took his seat upon the woolsack yesterday, and poor Lord Sandys remains upon the pavé. The Duke of Devonshire is very angry at it; but he will tell your Grace all that has passed concerning it himself on Monday night at Wobourn. He told me yesterday he should not be of their conciliabulum. Of whom that august meeting is to consist his Grace will also inform you. I am very glad to find by your Grace's letter that Lord Kildare has acted so sensibly with relation to the 1757. King's letter, and hope you will approve of what I have done to-day in consequence of it. I must prepare your Grace against a troublesome visitor, who may perhaps call upon you at Woburn; it is a Mrs. Humphrey, housekeeper of Dublin Castle, a termagant brimstone, that has been with me this morning, abusing all the lord-lieutenants that have been these twenty years for not paying her what I dare say is a very unreasonable demand; but I will not trouble you with a detail of that till she send you her petition. She talked of calling upon you only to desire your Grace would immediately order her an apartment in the Castle, which is part of her complaint, that no lord-lieutenant would ever yet give her one that she thinks good enough for herself. I advised her to postpone her complaints till your Grace's arrival in Ireland; but whether she will or not she would not tell me. Seven o'clock in the afternoon, Saturday. I have this moment heard things look worse and worse at Windsor *; and, what is worst of all, Mr. Fox was taken very ill there last night, forced to be blooded and go to bed. I am, &c. RICHARD RIGBY. * "We carried the election 137 to 86." Mr. Rigby to the Duke of Bedford. EARL OF CLANBRASSILL* TO THE DUKE OF 1757. My Lord, BEDFORD. Dundalk, July 17. 1757. Your Grace's disposition to promote the true interest of this country is so well known, that it encourages me to trouble you upon a subject that appears to me of importance to it. That the Papists in Ireland are zealously attached to the cause of the Pretender is but too manifest, and that this zeal is fed and cherished by their priests is as notorious. As these men lie under the severest penalties for every exercise of their function, they look on themselves as proscribed by the legislature; and though the lenity of the administration indulges them, contrary to law, to exercise their functions openly in every parish in Ireland, they do not think this arises from a principle of humanity, but from the necessity of not driving three fourths of the people into despair. Thus they trust to their numbers for security, and think that the more formidable they make themselves the better chance they shall have for the continuance of this connivance. Now, my Lord, I cannot but think it is highly advisable to attempt to dissolve this close connection between Popery and Jacobitism, and that the most probable method to * James Hamilton, Earl of bric manufacture in the town of Clanbrassill; so created Novem- Dundalk. ber 1756. He established a cam 1757. this effect would be to take their priests under the protection of the government, and oblige them in order to obtain that protection to give security for their good behaviour. One advantage would immediately flow from this plan;-the persons, the number, and the place of abode of all the priests in Ireland would be publicly known, which would be a great check upon them; and when they have tasted the comfort of a legal protection, which would give them a kind of property in their parishes, they will be ready enough to give private informations against the itinerant friars (those restless emissaries of France and the Pretender) who swarm in this country, and devour many little emoluments that would otherwise fall to the share of the parish priests. And I make no doubt but that the Irish parish priests, finding themselves thus indulged, would in time be as good subjects to the King of Great Britain, as the German priests in the Electorate are to the Elector of Hanover. This train of thinking put me on framing the heads of a bill, of which I send your Grace a copy. I proposed one of the same nature, but something different from this, in the last session of Parliament. A considerable majority of the lay lords approved of it; but all the bishops, except three, opposed the carrying of it into execution at that juncture. I am inclined to acquit most of them of malice, and to impute it to ignorance of the genius of the Protestant religion, and of the nature of men and of government. One of them |