Mr. Bickerstaff has received letters from Mr. Coltstaff, Mr. Whipstaff, and Mrs. Rebecca Wagstaff; all which relate chiefly to their being left out in the genealogy of the family lately published;[203] but my cousin being a clerk in the Heralds’ Office who writ that draught, and being at present under the displeasure of the chapter, it is feared, if that matter should be touched upon at this time, the young gentleman would lose his place for treason against the Kings at Arms.[204]

[Footnote 194:  Sir Richard Blackmore.  See No. 3.]

[Footnote 195:  Sir John Holt (see Examiner, vol. iv.  No. 14) was born in 1642, made Recorder of London and knighted in 1686, and appointed Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1689, a position which he filled very ably and impartially for twenty-one years.  He died March 5, 1710.]

[Footnote 196:  Britain.]

[Footnote 197:  According to a MS. note in the copy of the Tatler referred to in a note to No. 4, these justices were “Sir H. C——­ and Mr. C——­r.”  Who the latter was I do not know; the former appears to be meant for Sir Henry Colt, of whom Luttrell gives some particulars.  In April 1694, a Bill was found against Sir Henry Colt and Mr. Lake, son to the late Bishop of Chichester, for fighting a duel in St. James’s Park; the trial was to be on May 31.  Sir Henry Colt, a Justice of the Peace, had a duel with Beau Feilding on the 11th January, 1696, and Colt was run through the body.  A reward of L200 was offered for Feilding’s arrest, and he was captured in March; but in the following month he was set at liberty upon Colt promising not to prosecute.  In July 1698, Colt unsuccessfully contested Westminster, and in December the Committee of Privileges decided that his petition against the return of Mr. Chancellor Montague and Mr. Secretary Vernon was vexatious, frivolous and scandalous; and Colt was put out of the commission of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex.  In 1701, he became M.P. for Westminster, for one Parliament only.  In August 1702, he was again displaced from being a Justice for Westminster.  In July 1708, he was defeated at Westminster, and the petition which he lodged against Mr. Medlicot’s election was dismissed, after Huggins, the head bailiff, had been examined.]

[Footnote 198:  By John Banks, 1685.]

[Footnote 199:  Robert Wilks died in 1732, age 62.  See No. 182, and the Spectator, Nos. 268, 370:  “When I am commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in ‘Macbeth’, the contrition of a reformed prodigal in ‘Harry the Fourth’, the winning emptiness of a young man of good-nature and wealth in ‘The Trip to the Jubilee’, the officiousness of an artful servant in ‘The Fox’, when thus I celebrate Wilks, I talk to all the world who are engaged in any of those circumstances.”]

[Footnote 200:  Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist” was published in 1610.]