Mr. Budgell had held the considerable places of under secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and secretary to the Lords Justices for four years, during which time he had never been absent four days from his office, nor ten miles from Dublin.  His application was indefatigable, and his natural spirits capable of carrying him through any difficulty.  He had lived always genteelly, but frugally, and had saved a large sum of money, which he now engaged in the South-Sea scheme.  During his abode in Ireland, he had collected materials for writing a History of that kingdom, for which he had great advantages, by having an easy recourse to all the public offices; but what is become of it, and whether he ever finished it, we are not certainly informed.  It is undoubtedly a considerable loss, because there is no tolerable history of that nation, and because we might have expected a satisfactory account from so pleasing a writer.

He wrote a pamphlet, after he came to England, against the famous Peerage Bill, which was very well received by the public, but highly offended the earl of Sunderland.  It was exceedingly cried up by the opposition, and produced some overtures of friendship at the time, from Mr. Robert Walpole, to our author.  Mr. Addison’s death, in the year 1719, put an end, however, to all his hopes of succeeding at court, where he continued, nevertheless, to make several attempts, but was constantly kept down by the weight of the duke of Bolton.  In the September of that year he went into France, through all the strong places in Flanders and Brabant, and all the considerable towns in Holland, and then went to Hanover, from whence he returned with his Majesty’s retinue the November following.

But the fatal year of the South-Sea, 1720, ruined our author entirely, for he lost above 20,000 l. in it; however he was very active on that occasion, and made many speeches at the general courts of the South-Sea Company in Merchant-Taylors Hall, and one in particular, which was afterwards printed both in French and English, and run to a third edition.  And in 1721 he published a pamphlet with success, called, A Letter to a Friend in the Country, occasioned by a Report that there is a Design still forming by the late Directors of the South-Sea Company, their Agents and Associates, to issue the Receipts of the 3d and 4th Subscriptions at 1000 l. per Cent. and to extort about 10 Millions more from the miserable People of Great Britain; with some Observations on the present State of Affairs both at Home and Abroad.  In the same year he published A Letter to Mr. Law upon his Arrival in Great Britain, which run through seven editions very soon.  Not long afterwards the duke of Portland, whose fortune had been likewise destroyed by the South-Sea, was appointed governor of Jamaica, upon which he immediately told Mr. Budgell he should go with him as his secretary, and should always live in the same manner with himself, and that he would contrive every method of making the employment profitable and agreeable to him:  but his grace did not know how obnoxious our author had rendered himself; for within a few days after this offer’s taking air, he was acquainted in form by a secretary of state, that if he thought of Mr. Budgell, the government would appoint another governor in his room.