Travels Through North America 



of that incomparable work, the Spectator. After some 

 years residence in the university, he took a commission 

 in the regiment of horse, called the Blues, and remained in 

 it, I believe, till the death of the survivor of the tw^o ladies 

 above mentioned; who had usually resided at Leeds Castle. 

 Some time before their decease, a circumstance happened, 

 that eventually occasioned him much serious chagrin and 

 uneasiness. He had been persuaded, upon his brother 

 Henry's arriving at the age of twenty-one years, or rather 

 compelled by the ladies Culpepper and Fairfax, under a 

 menace, in case of refusal, of never inheriting the Northern 

 Neck, to cut off the entail, and to sell Denton Hall, and the 

 Yorkshire estates, belonging to this branch of the Fairfax 

 family, which had been in their possession for five or six 

 centuries, in order to redeem those of the late Lord 

 Culpepper, that had descended to his heiress, exceedingly 

 encumbered, and deeply mortgaged. This circumstance hap- 

 pened while Lord Fairfax was at Oxford, and is said to 

 have occasioned him the greater vexation, as it appeared 

 afterwards, that the estates had been disposed of, through 

 the treachery of a steward, for considerably less than their 

 value; less even than what the timber that was cut down to 

 discharge the purchase money, before the stipulated day 

 of payment came, was sold for. He conceived a violent 

 disgust against the ladies, who, as he used to say, had 

 treated him with such unparalleled cruelty; and ever after- 

 wards expressed the keenest sense of the injury that had 

 been done, as he thought, to the Fairfax family. After en- 

 tering into possession, he began to inquire into the value 

 and situation of his estates; and he soon discovered that the 

 proprietary lands in Virginia, had been extremely mis- 



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