writing impertinent letters.”  Mr. Goode sent a copy of his letter and mine to Sir Charles Frederick; and the post following, he received from the Office of Ordnance, several printed papers in the King’s name, forbidding horses grazing on the WORKS, and ordering Mr. Goode to nail those orders up in different parts of the garrison! but as I had not then learnt that either he, or his red ribband master, had any authority to give out, even the King’s orders, in a garrison I commanded, but through my hands, I took the liberty, while Mr. Goode and his assistant-son were nailing one up opposite to my parlour window, to send for a file of men and put them both into the Black-hold, an apartment Mr. Goode had himself built, being a Master-Mason.  By the time he had been ten minutes grazing under this covered way, he sent me a message, that he was asthmatic, that the place was too close, and that if he died within a year and a day, I must be deemed accessary to his death.  But as I thought Mr. Goode should have considered, that some of the poor invalids too might now and then be as subject to the asthma as he, it was a proper punishment, and I kept him there till he knew the duty of a soldier, as well as that of a mason; and as I would his betters, had they come down and ventured to have given out orders in a garrison under my command; but instead of getting me punished as a certain gentleman aimed at, that able General Lord Ligonier approved my conduct, and removed the man to another garrison, and would have dismissed him the ordnance service, had I not become a petitioner in his favour; for he was too fat and old to work, too proud and arrogant to beg, and he and his advisers too contemptible to be angry with.—­But I must return to the castle of Ham, to tell you what a dreadful black-hold there is in that tower; it is a trap called by the French des Obliettes, of so horrible a contrivance, that when the prisoners are to suffer in it, the mechanical powers are so constructed, as to render it impossible to be again opened, nor would it signify, but to see the body molue, i.e. ground to pieces.

There were formerly two or three Obliettes in this castle; one only now remains; but there are still several in the Bastile.—­When a criminal suffers this frightful death, (for perhaps it is not very painful) he has no previous notice, but being led into the apartment, is overwhelmed in an instant.  It is to be presumed, however, that none but criminals guilty of high crimes, suffer in this manner; for the state prisoners in the Bastile are not only well lodged, but liberal tables are kept for them.

An Irish officer was lately enlarged from the Bastile, who had been twenty-seven years confined there; and though he found a great sum of money in the place he had concealed it in a little before his confinement, he told Colonel C——­, of Fitz-James’s regiment, that “having out-lived his acquaintance with the world, as well as with men, he would willingly return there again.”