And from that time I saw more of him and loved him better than any man save my grandfather.  He gave me a pony on my next birthday, and a little hogskin saddle made especially by Master Wythe, the London saddler in the town, with a silver-mounted bridle.  Indeed, rarely did the captain return from one of his long journeys without something for me and a handsome present for my mother.  Mr. Carvel would have had him make his home with us when we were in town, but this he would not do.  He lodged in Church Street, over against the Coffee House, dining at that hostelry when not bidden out, or when not with us.  He was much sought after.  I believe there was scarce a man of note in any of the colonies not numbered among his friends.  ’Twas said he loved my mother, and could never come to care for any other woman, and he promised my father in the forests to look after her welfare and mine.  This promise, you shall see, he faithfully kept.

Though you have often heard from my lips the story of my mother, I must for the sake of those who are to come after you, set it down here as briefly as I may.  My grandfather’s bark ‘Charming Sally’, Captain Stanwix, having set out from Bristol on the 15th of April, 1736, with a fair wind astern and a full cargo of English goods below, near the Madeiras fell in with foul weather, which increased as she entered the trades.  Captain Stanwix being a prudent man, shortened sail, knowing the harbour of Funchal to be but a shallow bight in the rock, and worse than the open sea in a southeaster.  The third day he hove the Sally to; being a stout craft and not overladen she weathered the gale with the loss of a jib, and was about making topsails again when a full-rigged ship was descried in the offing giving signals of distress.  Night was coming on very fast, and the sea was yet running too high for a boat to live, but the gallant captain furled his topsails once more to await the morning.  It could be seen from her signals that the ship was living throughout the night, but at dawn she foundered before the Sally’s boats could be put in the water; one of them was ground to pieces on the falls.  Out of the ship’s company and passengers they picked up but five souls, four sailors and a little girl of two years or thereabouts.  The men knew nothing more of her than that she had come aboard at Brest with her mother, a quiet, delicate lady who spoke little with the other passengers.  The ship was ‘La Favourite du Roy’, bound for the French Indies.

Captain Stanwix’s wife, who was a good, motherly person, took charge of the little orphan, and arriving at Carvel Hall delivered her to my grandfather, who brought her up as his own daughter.  You may be sure the emblem of Catholicism found upon her was destroyed, and she was baptized straightway by Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather’s chaplain, into the Established Church.  Her clothes were of the finest quality, and her little handkerchief had worked into the corner of it a coronet, with the initials “E