By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, 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 r St Johns. I shou'd be 

 extrearuly obliged to you if you wou'd speak to L d Keeper, and see if there he 

 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 friend 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 be 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. Heney St. John (First Viscount Boling- 

 broke) . 



[The first Viscount Bolingbroke, the celebrated statesman (see Wilts 

 Mag., vii., 143) 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). 1 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. 



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

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

 my gardeners ready 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 

 forget 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." 



