‘Before I see you again, I am like to be sent by My Lord Treasurer into Scotland, to see that the Mint there be regulated upon the same foot with that of the Tower, as to the Standart of the Silver and Gold, the Pieces of Moneys, the Weights, the Rateing and Standarding, and the formes and manner of keeping the Books of the Mint, and I have been somewhat taken up with seeing and informing myself of everything of this nature in the Tower. I shall, I hope return before Michaelmass; but if I should be 2 or 3 weeks after the beginning of the Term, I hope you will excuse it, and every body concern’d.
‘As for what you propose to be done with the Mulctes, I am very clear for it, Sir Henry Savile’s and Dr Wallis’s Armes will be very proper.
‘I hope to have an occasion to write to you again before I part. I am with all respect and esteem,
‘Reverend Sir,
‘Your most oblidged and most humble servant,
‘D. Gregory.’
When the Union really came, it was very unpopular in Scotland and rather unpopular in England. Dr Arbuthnot published in Edinburgh a pamphlet with the title A sermon preached to the people at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh; on the subject of the Union. In it he forcibly argued against the foolish prejudice of his own country. He pointed out the intimate conjunction between Pride, Poverty and Idleness (’this is a worse union a great deal than that which we are to discourse of at present’). ‘Better is he that laboureth,’ he said in concluding, ‘and aboundeth in all things than he that boasteth himself, and wanteth bread.’ The populace, however, was by no means in the humour to be cajoled by any man’s wit, and even Dr Arbuthnot, who, according to Samuel Johnson, was the greatest writer of Queen Anne’s reign, found himself unable to create anything but ungraciousness.
Dr Arbuthnot was a very constant friend towards Gregory, and the day was fast drawing near when the professor should truly require his help. Symptoms of serious illness appeared in 1708, and Dr Gregory was advised to try the effect of the waters at Bath. He felt himself that his journey would be in vain, and often tried to prepare his wife for his being taken from her very suddenly. There was much to disturb the quietness of his mind, his children were ill in London, and he was full of anxiety for them and yet unable to go to them. After a wretched time at Bath, it was decided that he should return to London, but at Maidenhead he became so ill, that he could not be moved. Dr Arbuthnot, who was sent for from Windsor, found him sinking, and on the 10th of October 1708 he died.
The news was sent to Oxford by this kind physician in a letter to Dr Charlett, Gregory’s best friend.