Huntingdon

To Lady Olivia Sparrow, 23 June [1819]

I suppose you are by this time seated in your own Bra /m/ pton. We had heard with equal concern and indignation of the conduct of your Episcopal neighbour. This must not a little lessen the satisfaction of your return to your beloved home. Such arbitrary and cruel proceedings are disgraceful. I had hoped that you, on every account would have been exempted by that spirit by which so many dependent persons have suffered by his injustice.^*

To Lady Olivia Sparrow, August 1814

I long to know how your great day went off. Mr. Boak passed thro Huntingdon at the time and heard of it far and near. I believe you can do everything but mollify certain hard hearts and open certain eyes judiciously blinded. Thank dear Millicent for the harmonious and very pleasant Way-Verses. So characteristic of the delightful writer! By the way – when [he] does he talk of accomplishing his plan at ? – If you have any intercourse with him be sure put him in mind that he is pledged to for a night or two –

To Lady Olivia Sparrow, [March 1820]

A kind, agreeable, long and interesting letter from dear Miss Sparrow should be answered directly but that I am in deep arrears to your Ladyship. Nothing can be more obliging than her little details, than which nothing makes letters so pleasant. Public events are just now of so complicated & overwhelming a nature that even to touch upon /them/ would fill my paper and occupy your time to little purpose. I truly pity the K–^* How surely does God at one time or other visit our errors and bring our sins to remembrance! How he will get extricated the wisest seem not to know. I have just got a letter from a friend whose habits lay open much information to him. He tells me that a Gentleman of his acquaintance on whom the firmest reliance may be placed is lately come from the Continent. Passing through a small town in he stopped at an Inn and desired to see a good bed. On being shown one, he said it was not large enough for him and his Wife –"Not large enough," said the Mistress of the Inn, "why the Princess of Wales and the Baron her Chamberlain Slept in it last week, and so they have done twenty times before and they never complained that it was too small." You don’t mean that they slept together said the gentleman? Yes replied the woman I do, as they have always done." One or two such testimonies woud be proof positive. But then in what a distracted state would it place this poor country.^* – I fear we are emulating in all its parricidal horrors! What a Providential escape of the Ministers I grieve to think what a flood of drunkenness, idleness and perjury this premature Parliamentary election will introduce, – A propos. I am desired to request your vote and interest for Lord John Russel who is canvassing your county. I know nothing of him, but that I fear he is what I call, on the wrong side. They speak well of his talents^*