an implacable and restless cruelty.  His mother, indeed, could not affect others with the same barbarity, and though she, whose tender sollicitudes should have supported him, had launched him into the ocean of life, yet was he not wholly abandoned.  The lady Mason, mother to the countess, undertook to transact with the nurse, and superintend the education of the child.  She placed him at a grammar school near St. Albans, where he was called by the name of his nurse, without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other.  While he was at this school, his father, the earl of Rivers, was seized with a distemper which in a short time put an end to his life.  While the earl lay on his death-bed, he thought it his duty to provide for him, amongst his other natural children, and therefore demanded a positive account of him.  His mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, determined, at least, to give such, as should deprive him for ever of that happiness which competency affords, and declared him dead; which is, perhaps, the first instance of a falshood invented by a mother, to deprive her son of a provision which was designed him by another.  The earl did not imagine that there could exist in nature, a mother that would ruin her son, without enriching herself, and therefore bestowed upon another son six thousand pounds, which he had before in his will bequeathed to Savage.  The same cruelty which incited her to intercept this provision intended him, suggested another project, worthy of such a disposition.  She endeavoured to rid herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by sending him secretly to the American Plantations; but in this contrivance her malice was defeated.

Being still restless in the persecution of her son, she formed another scheme of burying him in poverty and obscurity; and that the state of his life, if not the place of his residence, might keep him for ever at a distance from her, she ordered him to be placed with a Shoemaker in Holbourn, that after the usual time of trial he might become his apprentice.  It is generally reported, that this project was, for some time, successful, and that Savage was employed at the awl longer than he was willing to confess; but an unexpected discovery determined him to quit his occupation.

About this time his nurse, who had always treated him as her own son, died; and it was natural for him to take care of those effects, which by her death were, as he imagined, become his own.  He therefore went to her house, opened her boxes, examined her papers, and found some letters written to her by the lady Mason, which informed him of his birth, and the reasons for which it was concealed.

He was now no longer satisfied with the employment which had been allotted him, but thought he had a right to share the affluence of his mother, and therefore, without scruple, applied to her as her son, and made use of every art to awake her tenderness, and attract her regard.  It was to no purpose that he frequently sollicited her to admit him to see her, she avoided him with the utmost precaution, and ordered him to be excluded from her house, by whomsoever he might be introduced, and what reason soever he might give for entering it.