By the Rev. Canon J. E. JacJcson, F.S.A. 283 



2. The Duke of Marlborough to Robert Harley (afterwards 

 Earl of Oxford), Threatening to Break a Printer's Bones. 



[The Duke had been often attacked and slandered in some weekly 

 publications, particularly in one called the '* Observator." The 

 following letter was sent by some private hand, the names both 

 of the sender and receiver being suppressed.] 



"Oct. 11. 1706 [on the Continent, hut no place named.'] 

 "I have by this post sent an "Observator" to M' St Johns. I shou'd be 

 extreamly obliged to you if you wou'd speak to L*" Keeper, and see if there be 

 any methode to protect me against this rogue who is set on by Lord Havershame,* 

 if I can't have justice done me, I must find some fiiend that will break his, and 

 the printer's bones, which I hope will be approved on by al honest Englishmen 

 since I serve my Queen and country with all my heart. When I have been at 

 the Hague I shall he better able to let you know if Franco's coming may be of 

 any use, but I fear the ill humour is already gone beyond his reach. 



Address on cover : 

 " To your self." 



XXXV. — 1708-9. Henry St. John (Fikst Viscount Boling- 

 broke) . 



[The first Viscount Bolingbroke, the celebrated statesman (see W^ilis 

 Mag., vii., 14-3) married for his first wife, Frances, daughter and 

 co-heiress of Sir Henry Winchcombe of Bucklebury, Co. Berks : 

 and in right of his wife resided there occasionally (Lyson's Berks, 

 253).' In the third of the following letters he speaks of (West) 

 Lavington as his hunting residence. He must have lived there 

 only as occupier : because the house then standing (of which, as 

 also of its famous gardens, described by Aubrey, " Natural History 

 of Wilts," no traces are left) belonged in 1709 to Montagu Bertie, 

 Second Earl of Abingdon, whose father had obtained a large 



• Sir John Thompson, created Lord Haversham, 1696, a leading M.P. and a great promoter of the 

 Revolution. 



' In a letter, 15th May, 1711, H. St. John thanks Mr. Drummond for some 

 bay-trees imported, and desires to know of their arrival " that I may have one of 

 my gardeners readj' to take them out of the ship and to convey them to Buckle- 

 bury. I cannot plunge myself so far into the thoughts of public business, as to 

 foi-get the quiet of a country retreat, whither I will go some time or other, and 

 am always ready to go at an hour's warning." 



