[451] Wife of the Right Hon. Edward Southwell.
Mrs. Montagu’s health being extremely delicate, she was ordered to Bath, accompanied by her husband and sister. They stayed at Mrs. Purdie’s, Orange Court. In a letter of December 28, to Mrs. Donnellan, she says—
“The day after I came I consulted Dr. Hartley;[452] he gave me comfortable words, said mine was a Bath case, would be cured by the waters, but medicines were improper and dangerous, and neither ordered bolus, draughts, or electuary, or any of the warlike stores of the faculty. The waters do not disagree with me, nor have I been ill since I came in any violent degree. My spirits are not in the best order, which you will not wonder at when I tell you my brother Tom[453] has a miliary fever; Dr. Wilmot does not perceive any danger at present, but cannot pronounce him safe till the fever leaves him.”
[452] Dr. David Hartley, born 1705, died 1757; physician, philosopher, and writer.
[453] Her second brother, admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, April 14, 1730.
THOMAS ROBINSON’S DEATH
Alas! poor Tom died on December 29; his hitherto brilliant career being cut short, my grandfather, Matthew, 4th Baron Rokeby, says, “by a cold caught by being overheated in a pleading before the House of Commons.” He was a young man so promising in his profession that the then Chief Justice of the King’s Bench exclaimed, “We have lost the man in England for a point of law.” His treatise[454] on Gavelkind still continues to be the standard book on that subject. In sprightliness of wit and fertility of invention he much resembled his sister. He left on Mrs. Montagu’s recollection “an indelible impression of admiration, and a regret which no subsequent acquisition in friendship could sufficiently compensate.”
[454] “The Common Law of Kent,” or “The Customs of Gavelkind, with an Appendix concerning Borough English,” 1st edition, 1741; 2nd at a date I have not been able to ascertain; 3rd in 1822; 4th in 1858. Edited by J. D. Norwood, of Ashford.
1748
In writing to Mrs. Donnellan soon after, she says—