LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 61 



you may do God and his church, and this whole state such 

 good service as all that know you do assuredly expect. 



I shall be ever, Sir, 



Your most affectionate friend to honour and serve you, 



CHARLES POTTER. 



THOMAS LYDYAT TO WILLIAM BOSWELL. 



[MS. Bodl. 313.] 



Mr. Boswell, Although the course that you have taken in 

 my business, to treat with Mrs. Hare for some remission, be 

 diverse from the intent of my petition, (the preferment where- 

 of to his Majesty and procuring a gracious answer, was my 

 whole suit unto you,) yet have I that opinion both of your 

 true well-meaning toward me, and of your wisdom, that you 

 did it in sincere good-will unto me, and for the best. For by 

 this means, to move the more commiseration of my case, is 

 the extremity of mine adversary's hard dealing with me, not 

 only manifested and confirmed, but also aggravated, yea 

 doubled. It is manifested and confirmed, in that she hath 

 partly concealed and smothered, and partly altered and falsi- 

 fied, the true state of our controversy, and manner of my debt 

 unto her ; as you may perceive by my petition, whereunto, to 

 avoid needless repetitions, I refer you : wherein that 1 have 

 truly stated and declared the one and the other, both my bro- 

 thers and nephews grants under their hands and seals, that I 

 have to shew, will evict, and our whole country both can and 

 will testify on my behalf. And this main wrong of her con- 

 cealing and shifting and falsifying the state of the contro- 

 versy, is aggravated, yea, at least doubled, by her heaping 

 thereupon a sort of slanderous reports to my defamation, a 

 greater wrong than my five years 5 imprisonment, (yet I ac- 

 count that so great, that although she were worth a brace of 

 thousand pounds more than she is worth, she could not make 

 me amends for it,) whereby she would make the world believe 

 she hath cause to deal so uncharitably and unconscionably 

 with me, which otherwise she would not choose but be 

 ashamed of. The unlikelyhood of my threatening to feed my 

 brother in prison with her money (whereof I never received 



nor was surety for ) you may easily conceive by my 



complaining in my petition of , wilfully defeating me of 



their grant made unto me, after I had so far engaged myself 

 in their debts. Touching my being w r ont in Bocardo to flout 



