[29] Advice to October Club.
[30] Behaviour of Queen’s Ministry.
[31] There was enough plausibility in this scandal to give it a sting. The duchess had left her second husband, a Mr. Thynne, immediately after the marriage ceremony, and fled to Holland. There Count Coningsmark paid her his addresses, and, coming to England, had Mr. Thynne shot by ruffians in Pall Mall. See the curious case in the State Trials, vol. ix.
[32] Letters from Smalridge and Dr. Davenant in 1713.
[33] Letter to Lord Palmerston, Jan. 29th, 1726.
[34] June 22nd, 1711.
[35] The list, so far as I can make it out from references in the journal, appears to include more names. One or two had probably retired. The peers are as follows:—The Dukes of Shrewsbury (perhaps only suggested), Ormond and Beaufort; Lords Orrery, Rivers, Dartmouth, Dupplin, Masham, Bathurst, and Lansdowne (the last three were of the famous twelve); and the commoners are Swift, Sir R. Raymond, Jack Hill, Disney, Sir W. Wyndham, St. John, Prior, Friend, Arbuthnot, Harley (son of Lord Oxford), and Harcourt (son of Lord Harcourt).
[36] Feb. 28th, 1712.
[37] Its authenticity was doubted, but, as I think, quite gratuitously, by Johnson, by Lord Stanhope, and, as Stanhope says, by Macaulay. The dulness is easily explicable by the circumstances of the composition.
[38] April 13, 1713.