(335) Amelia D’Arcy, Baroness Conyers, daughter of Robert, fourth Earl of Holderness, Married to Lord Carmarthen; who had eloped with Captain John Byron, father of the great poet.-E.

Letter 154 To The Earl Of Buchan.(336) Arlington Street, Dec. 24, 1778. (page 209)

It was an additional mortification to my illness, my lord, that I was nut able to thank your lordship with my own hand for the honour of your letter, and for your goodness in remembering an old man, who must with reason consider himself as forgotten, when he never was of importance, and is now almost useless to himself.  Frequent severe fits of the gout have a good deal disabled me from pursuing the trifling studies in which I could pretend to know any thing; or at least has given me an indifference, that makes me less ready in answering questions than I may have been formerly; and as my papers are in the country, whither at present I am not able to go, I fear I can give but unsatisfactory replies to your lordship’s queries.

The two very curious pictures of King James and his Queen (I cannot recollect whether the third or fourth of the name, but I know that she was a princess of Sweden or Denmark,(337) and that her arms are on her portrait,) were at the palace at Kensington, and I imagine are there still.  I had obtained leave from the Lord Chamberlain to have drawings made of them, and Mr. Wale actually began them for me, but made such slow progress, and I was so called off from the thought of them by indispositions and other avocations, that they were never finished; and Mr..  Wale may, perhaps, still have the beginnings he made.

At the Duke of Devonshire’s at Hardwicke, there is a valuable though poorly painted picture of James V. and Mary of Guise, his second queen:  it is remarkable from the great resemblance of Mary Queen of Scots to her father; I mean in Lord Morton’s picture of her, and in the image of her on her tomb at Westminster, which agree together, and which I take to be the genuine likeness.  I have doubts on Lord Burlington’s picture, and on Dr. Mead’s.  The nose in both is thicker, and also fuller at bottom than on the tomb; though it is a little supported by her coins.

There is a much finer portrait,—­indeed, an excellent head,—­of the Lady Margaret Douglas at Mr. Carteret’s at Hawnes in Bedfordshire, the late Lord Granville’s.  It is a shrewd countenance, and at the same time with great goodness of character.  Lord Scarborough has a good picture, in the style of Holbein at least, of Queen Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry vii., and of her second or third husband (for, if I don’t mistake, she had three); but indeed, my lord, these things are so much out of my memory at present, that I speak with great diffidence.  I cannot even recollect any thing else to your lordship’s purpose; but I flatter myself, that these imperfect notices will at least be a testimony of my readiness to obey your lordship’s commands, as that I am, with great respect, my lord, your lordship’s obedient humble servant.