“I am in abundance of pain about our dear child:  though I am convinced in my reason ’tis both silly and wicked to set one’s heart too fondly on anything in this world, yet I cannot overcome myself so far as to think of parting with him with the resignation that I ought to do,” the mother wrote from Middlethorpe at the end of July.  “I hope and I beg of God he may live to be a comfort to us both.  They tell me there is nothing extraordinary in want of teeth at his age, but his weakness makes me very apprehensive; he is almost never out of my sight.  Mrs. Behn says that the cold bath is the best medicine for weak children, but I am very fearful and unwilling to try any hazardous remedies.  He is very cheerful and full of play.”

“I hope the child is better than he was,” she mentioned a little later; “but I wish you would let Dr. Garth know he has a bigness in his joints, but not much; his ankles seem chiefly to have a weakness.  I should be very glad of his advice upon it, and whether he approves rubbing them with spirits, which I am told is good for him.”  Then came more favourable news about young Edward.  “I thank God this cold well agrees with the child; and he seems stronger and better every day,” Lady Mary was able to report.  “But I should be very glad, if you saw Dr. Garth, if you asked his opinion concerning the use of cold baths for young children.  I hope you love the child as well as I do; but if you love me at all, you’ll desire the preservation of his health, for I should certainly break my heart for him.”  Garth, it may be assumed, was the famous Samuel Garth, afterwards physician-in-ordinary to George I and author of The Dispensary.  His views on cold baths for children of fifteen months have not been handed down to posterity by Lady Mary.

Meantime things were happening in the Pierrepont family.  Lady Mary’s sister, Lady Frances, had, on March 8, 1712, married John, second Baron Gower, who afterwards was created Earl Gower.  Lady Mary’s other sister, Lady Evelyn, on July 26, 1714, became the second wife of John Erskine, sixth or eleventh Earl of Mar of the Erskine line, who presently came into prominence as an adherent of the Pretender in the rebellion of ’15, after which he fled the country.  He was created Duke of Mar by the Pretender.  Finally, the Marquess of Dorchester, being then in his fiftieth year, took for his second wife, on August 2, 1714, Lady Isabella Bentinck, fifth daughter of William, first Earl of Portland and his first wife, Anne, sister of Edward, first Earl of Jersey.  There was issue of this marriage two daughters:  Caroline, who married Thomas Brand, of Kempton, Hertfordshire; and Anne, who died unmarried in 1739 at the age of twenty.

Already, on July 1, 1723, had died Lord Dorchester’s only son and heir, William, who took the style of Earl of Kingston.  He had married Rachel, daughter of Thomas Baynton, of Little Chalfield, Wiltshire, by whom he had one son, named Evelyn, after his grandfather, whom he succeeded in 1726 as the second Duke of Kingston.