June 16.
Chronology.
June 16, 1722, the great duke of Marlborough died. (See vol. i., p. 798.) Among the “Original Papers,” published by Macpherson, is a letter of the duke’s to king James II., whom he “deserted in his utmost need” for the service of king William, wherein he betrays to his old master the design of his new one against Brest in 1694. This communication, if intercepted, might have terminated the duke’s career, and we should have heard nothing of his “wars in Flanders.” It appears, further, that the duke’s intrigues were suspected by king William, and were the real grounds of his imprisonment in the Tower two years before.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 59·12.
June 17.
St. Botolph.
This English saint, whose festival is on this day, with his brother Adulph, another saint, travelled into Belgic Gaul, where Adulph became bishop of Maestricht, and Botolph returned home with news of the religious houses he had seen abroad, and recommendations from the two sisters of Ethelmund, king of the south Saxons, who resided in France, to their brother in England. Ethelmund gave him a piece of land near Lincoln, called Icanhoe, “a forsaken uninhabited desert, where nothing but devills and goblins were thought to dwell: but St. Botolphe, with the virtue and sygne of the holy crosse, freed it from the possession of those hellish inhabitants, and by the means and help of Ethelmund, built a monasterie therein.” Of this establishment of the order of St. Benedict, St. Botolph became abbot. He died on this day in June, 680, and was buried in his monastery, which is presumed by some to have been at Botolph’s bridge, now called Bottle-bridge, in Huntingdonshire; by others, at Botolph’s town, now corruptly called Boston in Lincolnshire; and again, its situation is said to have been towards Sussex. Boston seems, most probably, to have been the site of his edifice.