76 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
and as I flatter myself, that Your Royal Highness will admit that I 
am as loyal a Subject and equally entitled to the Degree of Hidalgo 
as other adventurers in a new country, I throw myself on Your Royal 
Highness’s power to have it confirmed, and to prevent its producing 
discontent, I will beg leave to point out a mode for its execution. There 
are parcels of land under the name of T'ownships granted in this coun- 
try to Heads of Societies, which possibly may in time prove beneficial 
to the proprietor, now what I have to petition to Your Royal Highness, 
is that you will have the goodness (I may add charity) to ask of the 
King the grant of a Township in the Province of Upper Canada for 
yourself, exempted from the fees to Government and obligations of 
lecation—for instance, The Township of Houghton in the County of 
Norfolk on Lake Erie, or any other adjacent one, which may not be 
already granted. Which, when Your Royal Highness has procured His 
Majesty’s Patent for, it must be transmitted through the Secretary of 
State for the Home Department to the Governor and Council of the 
Province of Upper Canada, in order that the necessary Provincial 
Deeds may be made out for possession—Your Royal Highness can on 
receiving the Royal Patent, make a legal tranfer of the Grant to me, 
and permit me to request that you will have the goodness to cause 
duplicates to be made of the transfer, as the conveyance of letters to 
this Country is irregular and uncertain. My Sister Barbara? will 
take charge of them or any other Communication Your Royal Highness 
may honour me with, she having the directions how to forward them. 
T have pointed out the Township of Houghton as it is situated 
near to my place of residence. Should Your Royal Highness succeed, 
T will have infinite happiness in paying my duty personally to express 
my very great obligation for the protection afforded to the once Gay 
Tom Talbot, it will materially assist me, Your Royal Highness’s man- 
aging so, that the Grant is exempted from the usual fees to Govern- 
ment, which there cannot be any difficulty in effecting, it being a Royal 
Patent. 
I promise myself the enjoyment of every comfort in this Country 
excepting that material one, of seeing those I most respect and love, 
a small income provides the necessary luxuries in this Province to a 
Settler as his own industry and labour procures him provisions. I 
am. out every Morning at Sun-rise in my smock frock felling and burn- 

1 Houghton was then understood to include not only the township now 
so-called, but also Bayham and Malahide. The adjacent one, which was 
then in Talbot’s mind, was Yarmouth, as appears by the correspondence pub- 
lished in U. C. Sessional Papers for 1836, No. 22. 
*Talbot’s eldest sister, who married Sir William Young, Bart. M.P. Sir 
William was appointed Governor of Tobago, where Lady Young died in 1830. 
