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British Library, Add MS 47890. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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The draft is safely arrived.
About the time that your letter from Easton Grey arrived – G.
Fricker broke a blood vessel, – a thing so bad in itself could never have occurred under more favourable circumstances.before he was before it
happened. He had been using no kind of exertion. A very slight cough preceded the hæmorrhage, xx <but> was not the
cause of it, being apparently occasioned by the effusion of blood into the lungs. I never saw any man behave better than he did; – but
what a frightful thing it is for any one to witness who is not accustomed to such sights.
Xx If you should hear of any situation which may suit him let us know – This xx is of course all that can be
done. He looks either to London or Bristol & says that he would rather be out of employment looking for a situation in the latter
place than in the former. Perhaps it may be possible to find temporary employ for him in London by & by, while he looks about for
something more permanent. But (between ourselves x for I do not say this to his sistersxxxxxx too far. Some internal disease he has – whether of liver of where else Heaven knows, – & there seems to me
fresh reason to apprehend that he is consumptive also. At any rate he will remain here three or four months – till he has enjoyed the
country a little in a fairer season, – & this he may very well do, for the danger <does> not not appear to be
close at hand, & I think he has no suspicion of it, xxx he seems to have all the feelings, but none of the fears of a
valetudinarian.
I am glad to hear so well of David. If his income were twice what
it is, or if the Socinians did not like all the dissenters, starve their own xxxxxxx I should wish to hear that he followed
his fathers way of life. But a ministers stipend would add little to his means, & tho it is very possible that he might marry a
woman with some fortune, this is not to be calculated upon. It is as easy to get a wife with money as without it – but as more women
are fortuneless than otherwise, the probability always is that a man who consults only his heart will not enrich himself by marriage.
In law or physic he may start with the great advantage of having enough to support him respectably till he gets into practice, the law
has the most & the highest prizes, & what is of more importance will leave him most leisure.
You will receive Nelson
I am as much pleased with the manner in which Granville Sharpth, 1813xxxx xxx xxx disqualifying ones. The latter position is refuted by Granville Sharp.
What xxx a mischievous & foolish thing is this letter of the Princess of xxx Wales!the
<its> impudent hypocrisy, (if that can be called hypocrisy which xxxx bareface lies with a bare face, knowing that you
know it to be a liar – from all this circumstance I suspected Brougham to
be the author, before I saw it asserted that he was so in the newspapers.has an <bears> every mark of
him, – for he is as remarkable for want of prudence, as for the want of other more effectual virtues.
I start for the south, if nothing unforeseen should prevent, as soon as the Registerxxx <hardly> see Bristol, unless summoned to Taunton. I wish we could expect you this summer. The young ones often
ask when you will come again – even Bertha has not forgotten you.
Tell Mrs King that we see a great deal of Lord Sunderlins family & like them so well that we shall much regret their loss,
whenever they leave us. Lord & Lady S. are now in London, leaving Miss C. Malone alone with her suffering sister.xx xxx an incurable cripple
xx in constant pain; – Lady S. & the other sister both
advanced in life, looking for the death of these persons (never did I see a family more affectionately attached to each other) – &
having none to supply their loss. – The xxx misfortune of all the branches of a family being childless was never more
xxxxxxxxx evinced.