“Your Friend and Humble Servant,
“Jon Pryce.
“P.S.—I have sent you a Bottle of Mint Water, which, if you find too strong, you may dilute with Spring Water to what size you please.”
Sir John wrote an elegy of a thousand lines on his second wife, in which he affirmed that with his latest breath he would “lisp Maria’s name.”
Ere long, however, he fell in love again, and this time with a widow, Eleanor Jones, and married her.
But when the lady found the bodies of his two preceding wives embalmed, one on each side of the matrimonial bed, she absolutely refused to enter it, and ordered their burial “before she would supply their vocation.”
She also died, in 1748. Immediately Sir John wrote off to one Bridget Bostock, “the Cheshire Pythoness,” who pretended to heal the sick by the faith-cure and with her “fasting spittle,” which she supplied in corked and sealed bottles:—
“Madam,—Being very well informed by very creditable people that you have done several wonderful cures, even when Physicians have failed ... why may not God enable you to raise the Dead as well as to heal the Sick, give sight to the Blind and hearing to the Deaf? Now I have lost a wife whom I most dearly loved, and I entreat you for God Almighty’s sake that you would be so good as to come here, if your actual presence is absolutely requisite, to raise up my dear wife, Dame Eleanor Pryce, from the Dead.... Pray let me know by return of the Post, that I may send you a Coach and Six and Servants to attend you here, with orders to defray your expenses in a manner most suitable to your desires.
“Your unfortunate afflicted petitioner & hble servt.
“John Pryce.”