1710. French and Spaniards defeated at Saragossa, with the loss of 5,000 killed, 7,000 prisoners, and all their artillery, and the allies entered the city.
1718. Action off cape Passaro, between the British fleet, 20 sail, admiral Byng, and the Spanish fleet, 27 sail of the line. The Spaniards were defeated with the loss of 21 of their ships, either taken or destroyed.
1719. Dominico de Angelis, an Italian scholar, died. He made the tour of France and Spain, and was everywhere received with honor by the learned.
1720. Samuel Ockley, an English divine, died; a very learned man, and well skilled in oriental literature.
1744. John Bridges, duke of Chandos, died. Few particulars are known of this peer, except of his munificence. The earlier part of his manhood was spent in reflection and observation; his middle age in business, honorable and useful; and his advanced years in deeds of benevolence. He erected the princely seat of Canons, near London, where he lived in a splendor to which no other subject had ever aspired. His liberality was equaled only by his generous forgiveness of injuries. Pope made him the subject of his satire, which Hogarth punished by representing the poet on a scaffold whitewashing Burlington house, and bespattering the duke of Chandos's carriage as it passed. Yet Pope's verse respecting the short-lived magnificence of Canons was prophetic:
Another age shall see the golden ear
Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre:
Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Three years after his death the stately mansion was sold by auction, piecemeal, such was the rage to buy something at Canons. Its site was soon an arable.