that you ordered me to lay down four guineas for you towards the redemption of some French Protestants, taken going into Holland, and made slaves in Algiers. They are now redeemed, four ministers or five, and the rest proposers. My cousin Ruvigny has paid the money, and I am to gather to reimburse him the greatest part if I can. I have some time since writ to Lord Campden for his contribution, and he bid me lay down for him, but the time was not come till now, so I will remind him again in a few days, but I think it not fit yet in his present circumstances. I will add no more at this time, from Your true friend and servant, 26 January, 1688-9." R. RUSSELL. LETTER LXXXIV. LADY RUSSELL TO DR. FITZWILLIAM. GOOD DOCTOR, I GIVE you a thousand thanks for taking so very kindly of me all my impertinences, as most others would call them, but a good meaning excuses all to a good man. I do so little doubt of my interest to serve you, in the point you ask, at any time, that unless you urge the dispatch of it, I will defer the execution of it. I cannot now stay to expostulate why I would Q do do so; but, in short, a hasty asking may alarm, and be thought to be an occasion of putting others on the same: and, perhaps, also before you would use the liberty you ask, accidents may abdicate your opinion. The reason of my haste is expecting every minute Doctor Lower to my daughter Cavendish, who was taken ill last night, in a manner, if she had not had the small-pox, one would guess she would have it. My sister Mountague's son has been so too, that I forbore seeing him, but yesterday that fear passed over. I am very faithfully Your friend to serve you to my power, Thursday, March, 16, 1688-9. I hear the Doctor's coach. LETTER LXXXV. R. RUSSELL. LADY RUSSELL TO LORD HALIFAX. MY LORD, THAT this is burthen'd with an humble request you will soon guess. What that is, and how I am engaged to it, if you will please to read the letter, you will know the first; and the address will tell the latter. It was the furthest in the world from my intention to break in thus upon your Lordship, and give you a trouble in a time I take such as yourself to be (if you could be be so) overwhelm'd with business; but I was uneasy to resist a friend I love so well as Lady Shaftsbury, finding her so heartily interested in this affair as she is: and both the Ladies so fixed in their belief, that this would be most effectually done, if your Lordship would act in it. I am the more easy to move your Lordship to do so, from the professions I have had the honour to hear you make, that you would readily and gladly serve good Lady Shaftsbury, who is disconsolate enough, and imagines it would be a refreshment to please a friend so very much as the obtaining this suit would my Lady Cowper, whom she has a great esteem for, and I take her to be worthy of it. Sir William is more known to your Lordship. My Lady Shaftsbury is so zealous in this matter, that if she had believed her request more immediately from herself to your Lordship, would have been better to her purpose, you would have had that separate from this; but being I was to do something, I thought we might do it joyntly, and that better, because the shortest trouble to your Lordship. An apology added to all this, would begin another from Your Lordship's most humble servant, Feb. 1688-9. Before I attempted to move this request to your Lordship, I tried what Pollexfen could object against the fitness of it. He made no objec tion, as to the gentleman, but as many others do, gave him a very good character; yet, as 'tis in all trades not to help another to a shop to work in, said, it might be the undoing young men. His friends are secure in him, and that others, as well as he, have done very well. LETTER LXXXVI. LADY RUSSELL TO LORD HALIFAX. MY LORD, YOU must needs be so well acquainted with the solicitudes most persons have in such affairs as touch them very near, that you will not think it very strange, Lady Shaftsbury and I have been prevailed upon by Mr. Cowper's* friends once again to press your Ladyship to weigh his case, and serve him in it if it may be. If his Majesty, when he granted this request in the behalf of Mr. Cowper, was pleased (as I understood from your Lordship) to express his sense of that favour as a thing extraordinary, and to make the irregularity of it an instance of his grace to Lady Shaftsbury and myself, we are ready to embrace his Majesty's concessions in the largest sense, being disposed to think as highly of his goodness as any * William, afterwards Earl Cowper, and Lord Chancellor. He died October 10, 1723. circumstance circumstance can render it, and therefore would not controvert that point, though very understanding men, and several eminent disinterested persons of the profession of the law, are of a contrary opinion; and the frequent instances that are given of its having been done before, seem rather to prove it has been used as an encouragement for young gentlemen, to serve the King in that difficult profession, and consequently is most proper for such, and is likely to induce such to qualify themselves to serve their King and country with more honour and integrity, than persons whose first steps and advances in the world teach them shifting. But to lay our partiality aside, I think we may say, that 'tis hard to guess, after the King has given the place to Mr. Cowper, under the notion of its being irregular in respect of his age, what worse representations the commissioners can have made of him to the King; except they have mistaken the matter of fact, and told his Majesty that a man of twenty-four is under age; an age his Majesty has found is not uncapable of great actions. It must be some strange inconveniency attending this grant, they have press'd, that could move the King to determine his pleasure so soon to one that yet has not been capable of offending in that station; and every day mends the fault he took it in with. Sure this is a matter below the envy of the Lords Commissioners; and what other rea sons |