The council met as soon as possible, the next morning at latest.  There Archbishop Wake, with whom one copy of the will had been deposited, (as another was, I think, with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle, who had a pension for sacrificing it, which, I know, the late Duke of Newcastle transacted,) advanced and delivered the will to the King, who put it into his pocket, and went out of council without opening it, the Archbishop- not having courage or presence of mind to desire it to b’ read,. as he ought to have done.

These circumstances, which I solemnly assure you are strictly true, prove that my father neither advised, nor was consulted; nor is it credible that the King in one night’s time should have passed from the intention of disgracing him, to make him his bosom Confidant on so delicate an affair.

I was once talking to the late Lady Suffolk, the former mistress, on that extraordinary event.  She said, “I cannot justify the deed to the legatees; but towards his father, the late King was justifiable, for George the First had burnt two wills made in favour of George the Second.”  I suppose these were the testaments of the Duke and Duchess of Zell, parents of George the First’s wife, whose treatment of her they always resented.

I said, I know the transactions of the Duke of Newcastle.  The late Lord Waldegrave showed me a letter from that Duke to The first Earl of Waldegrave, then ambassador at Paris, with directions about that transaction, or, at least, about payment of the pension, I forget which.(327) I have somewhere, but cannot turn to it now, a memorandum of that affair, and who the Prince was, whom I may mistake in calling Duke of Wolfenbuttle.  There was a third copy of the will, I likewise forget with whom deposited.  The newspaper says, which is true, that Lord Chesterfield filed a bill in chancery against the late King to oblige him to produce the will, and was silenced, I think, by payment of twenty thousand Pounds.  There was another legacy to his own daughter, the Queen of Prussia, which has at times been, and, I believe, is still claimed by the King of Prussia.

Do not mention any part of this story, but it is worth preserving, I am sure you are satisfied with my scrupulous veracity.  It may Perhaps be authenticated hereafter by collateral evidence that may come out.  If ever true history does come to light my father’s character will have just honour paid to it.  Lord Chesterfield, one of his sharpest enemies, has not, with all his prejudices, left a very unfavourable account of him, and it would alone be raised by a comparison of their two characters.  Think of one who calls Sir Robert the corrupter of youth, leaving a system of education to poison them from their nursery!  Chesterfield, Pulteney, and Bolingbroke were the saints that reviled my father!  I beg your pardon, but you will allow Me to open my heart to you when it is full.  Yours ever.

(326) Malosine de Schulenbourg, a natural daughter of George I. by Miss Schulenbourg, afterwards created Duchess of Kendal.  She was created, in 1722, Countess of Walsingham and Baroness of Aldborough, and was the widow of Philip Dormer Stanhope, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who died in 1773-E.