I have been so entertained with your book, that I have stayed at home on purpose, and gone through three parts of it.  It makes me wish earnestly some time or other to go through all your collections, for I have already found twenty things of great moment to me.  One Is particularly satisfactory to me; it is in Mr. Baker’s MSS. at Cambridge; the title of Eglesham’s book against the Duke of Bucks,(530) mentioned by me in the account of Gerbier, from Vertue, who fished out every thing, and always proves in the right.  This piece I must get transcribed by Mr. Gray’s assistance.  I fear I shall detain your manuscript prisoner a little, for the notices I have found, but I will take infinite care of it, as it deserves.  I have got among my new old prints a most curious one of one Toole.  It seems to be a burlesque.  He lived in temp.  Jac.  I. and appears to have been an adventurer, like Sir Ant.  Sherley:(531) can you tell me any thing of him?

I must repeat how infinitely I think myself obliged to you both for the print and the use of your manuscript, which is of the greatest use and entertainment to me; but you frighten me about Mr. Baker’s MSS. from the neglect of them.  I should lose all patience if yours were to be treated so.  Bind them in iron, and leave them in a chest of cedar.  They are, I am sure, most valuable, from what I have found already.

(530) This libellous book, written by a Scotch physician, and which is reprinted in the second volume of the Harleian Miscellany, and in the fifth volume of the Somers’ Collection of Tracts, was considered by Sir Henry Wotton “as one of the alleged incentives which hurried Felton to become an assassin."-E.

(531) Sherley’s various embassies will be found in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas.  An article upon his travels, which were published in 1601, occurs likewise in the second volume of the Retrospective Review.  The travels of the three brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, and Master Robert Sherley, were published from the original manuscripts in 1825.-E.

Letter 196 To The Earl Of Hertford.  Strawberry Hill, March 11, 1764. (page 297)

My dear lord, the last was so busy a week with me, that I had not a minute’s time to tell you of Lord Hardwicke’s(532) death.  I had so many auctions, dinners, loo-parties, so many sick acquaintance, with the addition of a long day in the House of Commons, (which, by the way, I quitted for a sale of books,) and a ball, that I left the common newspapers to inform you of an event, which two months ago would have been of much consequence.  The Yorkes are fixed, and the contest(533) at Cambridge will but make them strike deeper root in opposition.  I have not heard how their father has portioned out his immense treasures.  The election at Cambridge is to be on Tuesday, 24th; Charles Townshend is gone thither, and I suppose, by this time, has ranted, and romanced, and turned every one of their ideas topsyturvy.