Bradshaw is dead, they say by his own hand:  I don’t know wherefore.  I was told it was a great political event.  If it is, our politics run as low as our plays.  From town I heard that Lord Bristol was taken speechless with a stroke of the palsy.  If he dies, Madam Chudleigh(148) must be tried by her peers, as she is certainly either duchess or countess.  Mr. Conway and his company are so pleased with Paris, that they talk of staying till Christmas.  I am glad; for they will certainly be better diverted there than here.  Your lordship’s most faithful servant.

(147) Leoni, a celebrated singer of the day, considered one of the best in England.  He was a Jew, and engaged at the synagogues, from which he is said to have been dismissed for singing in the Messiah of Handel.-E.

(148) The Duchess of Kingston; against whom an indictment for bigamy was found on the 8th of December, she having married the Duke of Kingston, having been previously married to the Hon. Augustus John Hervey, then living, and who, by the death of his brother, in March, 1775, became Earl of Bristol.-E.

Letter 80 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, Nov. 12, 1774. (page 112)

I have received a delightful letter from you of four sheets, and another since.  I shall not reply to the campaigning part (though much obliged to you for it), because I have twenty other subjects -more pressing to talk of The first is to thank you for your excessive goodness to my dear old friend-she has some indiscretions, and you must not have any to her; but she has the best heart in the world, and I am happy,, at her great age, that she has spirits enough not to he always upon her guard.  A bad heart, especially after long experience,, is but too apt to overflow inwardly with prudence.  At least, as I am but too like her, and have corrected too few of my faults, I would fain persuade myself that some of them flow from a good principle—­but I have not time to talk of myself, though you are much too Partial to me, and give me an opportunity; yet I shall not take it.

Now for English news, and then your letter again.  There has been a great mortality here; though Death has rather been pri`e than a volunteer.  Bradshaw, as I told Lady Ailesbury last post, shot himself.  He is dead, totally undone.  Whether that alone was the cause, or whether he had not done something worse, I doubt.  I cannot conceive that, with his resources, he should have been hopeless—­and, to suspect him of delicacy, impossible!

A ship is arrived from America, and I doubt with very bad news; for none but trifling letters have yet been given out--but I am here, see nobody that knows any thing,,and only hear by accident from people that drop in.  The sloop that is to bring the result of the general assembly is not yet come.  There are indeed rumours, that both the non-importation, and even non-exportation have been decreed, and that the flame is universal.  I hope this is exaggerated! yet I am told the stocks will fall very much in a day or two.