Sept. 25. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



301 



the House of Commons of England, in whose right 

 I am not to be summoned or demanded at your 

 bar ; and this is a privilege I cannot waive, and 

 dare not but assert for fear of falling into the 

 highest displeasure of that House, at whose mercy 

 I now lie for my first transgression. 



" After this, Sir, please to turn your command 

 into a favour, and admit me to be suitor to you, to 

 have leave to be present when anything relating 

 to me comes before you ; and if I have notice, by 

 any of your members, of your desire to speak with 

 me, I will wait upon you ; and if you resolve of 

 any other course, more answerable to my duty to 

 that House, and veneration to your House, of 

 which I have had the honour to be a member^ I sub- 

 mit to it. 



" But since I am insisting on the rights of that 

 House, I dare not send this by any other messen- 

 ger than by your serjeant-at-arms. 



" I am, Sir, with highest deference and respect, 

 " Your humble servant, 



" John Asgux. 

 " Presented to the House by 



Sir Eichard Levinge." 



SAME TO SAME. 



"Nov. 6, 1703, 



" Sir, — That no inference may be made by my 

 letter to you of this day, of my insisting on my 

 privilege, whereby to incline your House not to 

 proceed on Mr. Hammond's petition against me, I 

 do make it my request that the matter may be 

 heard on Monday, when I desire the leave of your 

 House to be present, and justify myself before I 

 leave the kingdom, the present summons of par- 

 liament in England commanding my attendance 

 there. 



"I am. Sir, with highest deference and respect, 

 " Your humble servant, 



" John Asgill." 



It would seem, by the resolution of the House of 

 the 10th instant following, that Asgill on that occa- 

 sion succeeded in defeating the claims of the Ken- 

 mare family, though they were afterwards allowed 

 and established, when, by a remarkable concurrence 

 of circumstances, Asgill's opposition and ability 

 were disabled from opposing them. 



The peculiarity of these letters is, that they are 

 addressed by a man who had actually been ex- 

 pelled the Irish House of Commons, to the very 

 assembly which had expelled him, and that they 

 were written in assertion of the privileges of the 

 English House, in which he had succeeded in 

 obtaining a seat for " Bramber," from which his 

 strange, unlucky book also procured his expulsion 

 in 1707, and delivered him over to an imprison- 

 ment, in which he seemed disposed to prove the 

 truth of his theory, and to " live for ever ;" for he 



actually continued in the Fleet thirty years, and 

 there died nearly one hundred years old. 



While in that prison his adversaries obtained 

 judgment against him in reference to the Kenmare 

 estates ; but he continued to " abound in his own 

 sense" of his right to them, for in his pamphlet, 

 entitled Mr. AsgilVs Defence vpon his Expulsion 

 from the House of Commons, at page 68., he says, 

 "In 1703 I made that silly purchase in Ireland 

 (with my own money for other people's use, as they 

 say)." And among my own MSS. I find the fol- 

 lowing copy of a letter from him to one of the 

 tenants on the Kenmare estate : 



" Fleet Prison, May 5, 1711. 



" Fran. Cronine, — There being an expecta- 

 tion of a new parliament in Ireland, and under- 

 standing that Col. Hassett's (Blunuchassett's) and 

 Mr. D. Crosbie's son stand candidates for^ the 

 county, 



" If I (being outlawed in Ireland, imprisoned 

 in England, my tenants turned my landlords, and 

 my servants my masters) have any interest left 

 in Kerry, I desire to devolve it on these two 

 gentlemen. 



" However, let this be seen to whom you please, 

 and what is done towards these two gentlemen 

 shall be esteemed as done to your loving friend, 



"J. ASGUX. 



" For Mr. F. Cronine, 

 At Killarney, Kerry, Dublin, Ireland." 



It seems to me that this episode in the life of 

 this strange man is worth recording ; nor may it 

 be inapplicable to observe, that the singular direc- 

 tion of Dr. Barebone to his executor Mr. Asgill, 

 " never to pay his debts," may have suggested to 

 the crotchetty executor the idea of " not fulfilling 

 his trusts " in the case of the estate of Viscount 

 Kenmare. 



Mr. Asgill's extraordinary opinion, that it was 

 " a great folly for any one to die ! " attracted 

 much attention, and gave occasion for much wit- 

 ticism at the time. From a pamphlet of the day 

 I copied the following, seemingly written " upon 

 Mr. AsgilVs being seized with a fit of illness ;" 

 " A man is lately come to town 



Whose tenets run all physic down ; 



But when infirm his body's state is, 



My readers, • visum teneatis ' 



To see him send in such condition 



To able surgeon or physician. 



To him — what's bleeding ? what are pills? 



What every crabbed name that fills 



Our long apothecary's bills ? 



Help — did he want it, they can't give, 



They oftener kill than keep alive. 



Poor soul and body, they must part 'era, 



When all is done ' secundum artem.' 



Yet he may consultations try, 



And their united powers defy, 



They can't destroy — if he can't die." 



