In reply to this, I would observe, that it is not even probable, as this statement would imply, that the interview of Pope with Colonel Cecil was directly after the battle.  There might have been intervening years.  Moreover, Croker goes upon the presumption that the birth of Oglethorpe was in 1698.  Now, to assign his birth to that year would make him only eighty-seven years old when he died; but Dr. Lettsom, in “a letter on prisons,” in the Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol.  LXXI. p. 21, has this remark:  “I spent an evening, which agreeably continued till two o’clock in the morning, with the late General Oglethorpe, when this veteran was in the ninety-sixth year of his age; who told me, that he planted Georgia chiefly from prisons.”  And Hannah More writes of being in company with him when he was much above ninety years of age.  He was, therefore, born before 1698.  And, finally, the record of his admission into Corpus Christi College, at Oxford, decides the matter beyond all controversy; and, by certifying his age to be sixteen, proves that he was born in sixteen hundred and eighty-eight.  For the month and day, I receive the testimony of William Stephens, Esq., Secretary for the affairs of the Trustees in Georgia, in the first volume of his Journal.  On Thursday, December, 21st, [1738,] he makes this record.

“Another heavy rain of all last night, and this whole day’s continuance; which, whatever impediments it might occasion to our other affairs, was no hindrance to our celebration of the General’s birth-day, as had been always the custom hitherto; and in the very same manner as we did last year, under the discharge of cannon, &c.”  And McCall, who has named December 21st, says, “I am indebted to the Encyclopedia Perthensis, and to the Journal of a private gentleman in Georgia, where his birth-day was celebrated, for the date which I have inserted."[1]

[Footnote 1:  History of Georgia, Vol.  I. p. 321.]

This assignment will tally with the other dates and their attendant circumstances; allow time, with becoming propriety, for finishing his education at the University; and show that he was not so precocious a soldier as has been represented, but that, instead of the juvenile age of eleven, he entered the army at the manly age of twenty-one.

Memorandum.  This attempt to ascertain the exact age of Oglethorpe, was written in 1837.  I have, since then, received the following letter, dated London, October 2d, 1840.

  My Dear Sir. 
    In compliance with your request, I. have been, this morning,
  to the vestry of St. James, Westminster, where I examined
  the record of Oglethorpe’s baptism, of which the following is
  an exact copy in substance and form.

Bapt. | June 1689
2. | James Oglethorpe of Sir Theophilus and
| his lady Elinor, b. 1.