—I am in possession of a copy of the above work, presented to my father by the late amiable authoress, Miss Porter. It is, as you are no doubt aware, a journal of adventure in the Carribean Sea and its islands, between 1733 and 1749; but on the publication of the first edition its authenticity was questioned, and a suggestion made by some of the critics that the editor was also the author. This, Miss Porter assured me was not the fact, and that the work is a genuine diary, placed in her hands for publication by the family, still existing, of the original writer. The name I think she intimated was not Seaward, but she expressed some hesitation to detail the circumstances of its coming into her possession. She makes, in a preface to the second edition, an assurance to the same effect as to the genuineness of the Narrative, and says the author died at his seat in Gloucestershire in the year 1774.
Can any of your readers throw further light on this story, or inform who the hero of the Narrative really was?
W.W.E.T.
Warwick Square, Belgravia.
Clerical Members of Parliament.
—In a note in p. 4. of The Lexington Papers, recently published, mention is made of a Mr. Robert Sutton, who, after having taken deacon's orders, and having accompanied his relative, Lord Lexington, to Vienna, in the joint capacity of chaplain and secretary, was, on his recall in 1697, appointed resident minister at the Imperial Court; was subsequently sent as envoy extraordinary to the Ottoman Porte; in 1720, succeeded Lord Stair as British minister at Paris; in 1721, was elected M.P. for Notts; and in 1725, was created Knight of the Bath. The editor adds this remark:
"It is well known that holy orders were not at that time considered any disqualification for civil employments, but I do not recollect any other instance of a clerical Knight of the Bath."
Do you, Mr. Editor, or any of your readers, recollect any other instance since the Reformation, of a clerical member of parliament, before the celebrated one of Horne Tooke? Were any such instances quoted in the debates on the bill for excluding clergymen from Parliament?
CLERICUS.