I am extremely pleased with Monsieur de Mirepoix’s(1491) being named for this embassy; and I beg you will desire Princess Craon to recommend me to Madame, for I would be particularly acquainted with her as she is their daughter.  Hogarth has run a great risk since the peace; he went to France, and was so imprudent as to be taking a sketch of the drawbridge at Calais.  He was seized and carried to the governor, where he was forced to prove his vocation by producing several caricatures of the French; particularly a scene(1492) of the shore, with an immense piece of beef landing for the lion-d’argent, the English inn at Calais, and several hungry friars following it.(1493) They were much diverted with his drawings, and dismissed him.

Mr. Chute lives at the herald’s office in your service, and yesterday got particularly acquainted with your great-great-grandmother.  I says, by her character, she would be extremely shocked at your wet-brown-paperness, and that she was particularly famous for breaking her own pads.  Adieu!

(1482) At the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the French court proposed to establish Prince Charles at Fribourg in Switzerland, with the title of Prince of Wales, a company of guards, and a sufficient pension; but he placed a romantic point of Honour in ’braving ‘the orders from Hanover,’ as he called them, and positively refused to depart from Paris.  Threats, entreaties, arguments, were tried on him in vain.  He withstood even a letter obtained from his father at Rome, and commanding his departure.  He still nourished some secret expectation, that King Louis would not venture to use force against a kinsman; but he found himself deceived.  As he went to the Opera on the evening of the 11th of December, his coach was stopped by a party of French guards, himself seized, bound hand and foot, and conveyed, with a single attendant, to the state-prison of Vincennes, where he was thrust into a dungeon seven feet wide and eight feet long.  After this public insult, he was carried to Pont de Beauvoisin, on the frontier of Savoy, and there restored to his wandering and desolate freedom.” lord Mahon, vol .iii. p. 552.-E.

(1483) The proud Duke of Somerset.-D.

(1484) Charlotte Finch, sister of the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, second wife of Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset; by whom she had two daughters, Lady Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, and lady Charlotte to Lord Guernsey, eldest son of the Earl of Aylesford.

(1485) Midhurst, in Sussex.-D.

(1486) Afterwards Earl of Egremont.-D.

(1487) Afterwards created Earl of Thomond in Ireland.-D.

(1488) George Grenville. issue of that marriage were the late Marquis of Buckingham, the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville, and Lord Grenville; besides several daughters.-D.

(1489) The Duke’s first wife was the heiress of the house of Northumberland — she made a settlement of her estate, in case her sons died without heirs male, on the children of her daughters.  Her eldest daughter, Catherine, married Sir William Windham, whose son, Sir Charles, by the death of Lord Beauchamp, only son of Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and afterwards Duke of Somerset, succeeded to the greatest part of the Percy estate, preferably to Elizabeth, daughter of the same Algernon, who was married to Sir Hugh Smithson.