death at Louvain, occasioned by a boar at a hunting match, caused the body to be brought over, would have the coffin opened once more to see his favourite, and attended it himself in high procession to its interment at Earl’s Colne.  I don’t know whether the “Craftsman” some years ago would not have found out that we were descended from this Vere, at least from his name and ministry:  my comfort is, that Lancerona was Earl Robert’s second wife.  But in this search I have crossed upon another descent, which I am taking great pains to verify (I don’t mean a pun)., and that is a probability of my being descended from Chaucer, whose daughter, the Lady Alice, before her espousals with Thomas Montagute,’Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards with William de la Pole, the great Duke of Suffolk, (another famous favourite), was married to a Sir John Philips, who I hope to find was of Picton Castle, and had children by her; but I have not yet brought these matters to a consistency. mr.  Chute is persuaded I shall, for he says any body with two or three hundred years of pedigree may find themselves descended from whom they please; and thank my stars and my good cousin, the present Sir John] Philips,(1454) I have a sufficient pedigree to work upon; for he drew us up one by which Ego et rex mems are derived hand in hand from Cadwallader, and the English baronetage says from the Emperor Maximus (by the Philips’s, who are Welsh, s’entend).  These Veres have thrown me into a deal of this old study:  t’other night I was reading to Mrs. Leneve and Mrs. Pigot,(1455) who has been here a few days, the description in Hall’s Chronicle of the meeting of Harry VIII. and Francis I. which is so delightfully painted in your Windsor.  We came to a paragraph, which I must transcribe; for though it means nothing in the world, it is so ridiculously worded in the old English that it made us laugh for three days.!

and the wer twoo kinges served with a banket and after mirthe, had communication in the banket time, and there sheweth the one the other their pleasure.

Would not one swear that old Hal showed all that is showed in the Tower?  I am now in the act of expecting the house of Pritchard,(1456) Dame Clive,(1457) and Mrs. Metheglin to dinner.  I promise you the Clive, and I will not show one another our pleasure during the banket time nor afterwards.  In the evening, we go to a play at Kingston, where the places are two pence a head.  Our great company at Richmond and Twickenham has been torn to pieces by civil dissensions, but they continue acting.  Mr. Lee, the ape of Garrick, not liking his part, refused to play it, and had the confidence to go into the pit as spectator.  The actress, whose benefit was in agitation, made her complaints to the audience, who obliged him to mount the stage; but since that he has retired from the company.  I am sorry he was such a coxcomb, for he was the best. . . .