(116) The Princess Craon, who, it had been reported, was to marry Stanislaus Leczinsky, Duke of Loraine and ex-King of Poland, whose daughter Maria Leczinska was married to Louis the Fifteenth, King of France.-D.
(117) "This is the story of a woman named Mary Mignot. She was near marrying a young man of La Gardie, who afterwards entered the Swedish service, and became a field-marshal in that country. Her first husband was, if I mistake not, a Procureur of Grenoble; her second was the Marshal de l'H`opital; and her third is supposed to have been Casimir, the ex-King of Poland, who had retired, after his abdication, to the monastery of St Germain des Pr`es. It does not, however, appear certain whether Casimir actually married her or not.-D.
(118) Lady Pomfret and Princess Craon did not visit at Florence, upon a dispute of precedence.
(119) The Pretender, when in Lorraine, lived in Prince Craon's house.
60 Letter 22 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, April 2, 1750.
You will not wonder so much at our earthquakes as at the effects they have had. All the women in town have taken them up upon the foot of Judgments; and the clergy, who have had no windfalls of a long season, have driven horse and foot into this opinion. There has been a shower of sermons and exhortations; Secker, the jesuitical Bishop of Oxford, began the mode. He heard the women were all going out of town to avoid the next shock; and so: for fear of losing his Easter offerings, he set himself to advise them to await God's good pleasure in fear and trembling. But what is more astonishing, Sherlock,(120) who has much better sense, and much less of the Popish confessor has been running a race with him for the old ladies, and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten thousand were sold in two days; and fifty thousand have been subscribed for, since the two first editions.
I told you the women talked of going out of town: several families are literally gone, and many more going to-day and to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you: but it is so true, that Arthur of White's told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic.(121) Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and strived late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman's voice cried, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!" But I have done with this ridiculous panic: two pages were too much to talk of it.
We have had nothing in Parliament but trade-bills, on one of which the Speaker humbled the arrogance of Sir John Barnard, who had reflected upon the proceedings of the House. It is to break up on Thursday Se'nnight, and the King goes this day fortnight. He has made Lord Vere Beauclerc a baron,(122) at the solicitation of the Pelhams, as this Lord had resigned upon a pique with Lord Sandwich. Lord Anson, who is treading in the same path, and leaving the Bedfords to follow his father-in-law, the Chancellor, is made a privy councillor, with Sir Thomas Robinson and Lord Hyndford. Lord Conway is to be an earl,(123) and Sir John Rawdon(124) (whose follies you remember, and whose boasted loyalty of having been kicked downstairs for not drinking the Pretender's health, though even that was false, is at last rewarded,) and Sir John Vesey are to be Irish lords; and a Sir William Beauchamp Proctor, and a Mr. Loyd, Knights of the Bath.
I was entertained the other night at the house of much such a creature as Sir John Rawdon, and one whom you remember too, Naylor. he has a wife who keeps the most indecent house of all those that are called decent: every Sunday she has a contraband assembly: I had had a card for Monday a fortnight before. As the day was new, I expected a great assembly, but found scarce six persons. I asked where the company was—I was answered, "Oh! they are not come yet: they will be here presently; they all supped here last night, stayed till morning, and I suppose are not up yet."
My Lord Bolinbroke has lost his wife. When she was dying, he acted grief; flung himself upon her bed, and asked her if she could forgive him. I never saw her, but have heard her wit and parts excessively commended.(125) Dr. Middleton told me a compliment she made him two years ago, which I thought pretty. She said she was persuaded that he was a very great writer, for she understood his works better than any other English book, and that she had observed that the best writers were always the most intelligible.