This is of interest as showing that the custom of giving rings at the conferring of honorary degrees existed in England, as it does to this day at Upsala.
The following extract illustrates what we should now consider great license in the matter of smoking:
“When the bill for security of the church of England was read . . . Dr Bull sate in the lobby of the house of lords all the while, smoking his pipe.”
31st March 1708–9.—“We hear from Yeovill in Somersetshire by very good hands of a woman covered with snow for at least a week. When found she told them that she had layn very warm, and had slept most part of the time.”
A well-known case of the same sort is described in Gunning’s Reminiscences (1854).
22nd April 1711.—“There is a daily paper comes out called The Spectator, written, as is supposed, by the same hand that writ the Tatler, viz. Captain Steel. In one of the last of these papers is a letter written from Oxon, at four o’clock in the morning, and subscribed Abraham Froth. It ridicules our hebdomadal meetings. The Abraham Froth is designed for Dr Arthur Charlett, an empty, frothy man, and indeed the letter personates him incomparably well, being written, as he uses to do, upon great variety of things, and yet about nothing of moment. Queen’s people are angry at it, and the common-room say there, ’tis silly, dull stuff; and they are seconded by some that have been of the same college. But men that are indifferent commend it highly, as it deserves.”
17th Nov. 1712.—“On Thursday last (13th Nov.), duke Hamilton and the Lord Mohun being before Mr Oillabar, one of the masters of Chancery, about some suit depending between them, and some words arising, a challenge was made between these two noble men, and the duell was fought on Saturday (15th Nov.) in the Park. My lord Mohun was killed on the spot, and the duke so wounded that he died before he got home. This lord Mohun should have been hanged some years agoe for murder, which he had committed divers times.”
24th Nov.—. . . “The duke having given Mohun his mortal wound, and taking him up in his arms, as soon as Makartney saw it, he and col. Hamilton fell
to it; but Hamilton, though he was wounded by Makartney in the leg, disarmed Makartney, and threw his sword from him, and immediately went to Mohun to endeavour also to recover him. Mean time Makartney (who is a bloudy, ill man) runs and takes up his sword, comes to the duke, and gives him his mortal wound, of which the duke dyed before he could get home.”
It is of some interest to compare the above with Thackeray’s account of the duel in Esmond, book iii., chap. v.—