[319] On February 9.
Mrs. Montagu and her sister now joined Mr. Montagu in Dover Street, leaving little “Punch” at Sandleford with regret. On the way their coachman, who had met them at Hounslow with their own chaise, ran a race with a coach and four, and overturned them, but they were none the worse; in fact, being upset in a carriage in those days seems to have been little thought of!
A letter of March 4 of Mrs. Robinson from Mount Morris says—
“Sir John Norris is returned into the Downs, and all our fears are over. I heard that the people of Romney and Lydd had their most valuable goods packed up and put in carts ready to drive away, if they saw any occasion: for my part I was very composed, never thinking there would be any occasion to put myself in a stickle.... I am so good a subject to his Majesty that I can’t conceive any people would be so foolish to assist France with setting up a Popish Pretender.”
A letter from the duchess states that she has been reading Lord Bolingbroke’s “Dissertations upon Partys,” and desires Mrs. Montagu’s opinion on them. She laughs at the idea of the invasion, and says, “Cecil, the Pretender’s agent, is taken up, and likewise Carle, and some say Lord Weims,[320] others his second son Charles.”
[320] James, 5th Earl of Wemyss.
SIR SEPTIMUS ROBINSON
In a letter to Mr. Freind, Mrs. Montagu mentions meeting at a drum of Mrs. Mainwaring’s “My cousin Septimus Robinson, dressed as gay as a lover, but whether that was the footing he was upon, I do not know.”
Septimus Robinson was a brother of Mrs. Freind, and, as his name denotes, was the seventh child of William Robinson of Rokeby. He was born in 1710, was educated at Oxford, then entered the army, and served in the ’45, under General Wade. He left the army in 1754; became Governor to the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, brothers of George III., and eventually was made Usher of the Black Rod. He died unmarried in 1765.
In the same letter she states—