to have decided that a little financial oil was what was needed to start the diplomatic machinery of the agency into motion in his behalf. He, therefore, on December 19, 1748, writes Mr. Palmer again, stating that he has sold out some interests he had, for £100 sterling, a bill of exchange for which amount he encloses therewith, the same to be cashed by Mr. Palmer, and he is directed to keep for further orders "what you hant occaision to spend in my business, the event whereof I wait to hear with somewhat of impatience.'

But black fate seems certainly to have been against him, for no sooner was this missive sent than she again snipped her shears through his well-woven thread and Mr. Palmer died May 18, 1749, just five months after the money was remitted, and the unfortunate Mr. Pierrepont was again obliged to seek another advocate to plead his cause.

This time he sent by a Col. Williams a letter dated October 24, 1749, to the agent for Connecticut in London (whose name he apparently did not know), enclosing copies of his previous letters to Mr. Palmer and the Duke, and urging him to look into the matter and "if you find that he (Mr. Palmer) had made a beginning I Intreat you'd carry it onto perfection, but if he had not begun, I intreat you'd wait upon his Grace (as Mr. Palmer intended) and do your best to accomplish the thing proposed. If his Grace ye Duke of Kingston has not had my letter, I treat you'd rather deliver the Inclosed, than that sent Mr. Palmer, because it is sealed with ye Arms of ye Family which I have got cutt since I wrote him," and then in the following words he drops a faint-hearted suggestion that he might be willing to give up the idea of a formal recognition of his relationship by the Duke, if his Grace would assist him to a slice of political pie instead.

"If you should obtain his Graces smiles upon me, if not to that Degree as to permit me to pay my duty to him in person, (which I should be sorry for) yet so far as that he would be willing to bestow some Honble Commission upon ye Eldest of ye Name here I should be glad, (if ye Govenmt of ye Massachusetts be vacant as is here expected since Gov' Sherley is

gone home) youd suitably mention it to his Grace as a favorable opportunity for him to extend his benign Influences to these remote parts of ye British Empire as well as putting Honour here upon the name that is so Honable in Great Britain, but this matter I must leave wholly to your Discretion."

The letter to the Duke, which he enclosed (of which a copy has been preserved), is but a sample of the others he had already written him and contains no mention of any desire for political preferment.

Now it happened that the agent for the Connecticut Colony at this time was Mr. Richard Partridge, whose son-in-law, Dr. Wells of Sheffield, as luck would have it, was physician to the Duke of Kingston. To Dr. Wells, therefore, did Mr. Partridge send his correspondent's letter with a request that he deliver it to the Duke, and this gentleman unwillingly, I have no doubt, after waiting a little for what he considered a favorable opportunity, tremblingly presented the epistle to his august patient. The result from Mr. Pierrepont's point of view was far from satisfactory, and is best told in the words of Dr. Wells' own letter to his father-in-law in London:

"I doubt much is not to be expected from the Duke of Kingston for the Gentleman in New England- I think the Duke did not seem quite pleased with the letter tho' a good deal of caution & address were used in introducing it-He says however that if J. Pierrepont either on his own accot or any of his children (if he hath any) hath a view to any place under the Government in wch he apprehends the Dukes Interest can be of Service, the affair may be mentioned to him & he will hear it tho' he will not promise to undertake it But totally declines encouraging the Gentleman to come over purely to visit him, he says he has heard of the person before & tho' the name & arms may be the same with his own yet he does not much reckon that there is any Relationship between them- I am sorry I cant give a better acco1 of this undertaking but I hope I shall be held blameless for I durst not urge it further The Duke.

is now in Town & Phaps if Col Williams is still with you he may importune thee to wait upon the Duke with some further solicitation

-But as I know the Dukes Temper so very well I could wish that (if possible) thou wou'dst decline meddling with it-for I am confident no good consequence will attend it

Gul" Wells"

This grudging reception of his appeal, presented under what appeared to be such favorable conditions, apparently destroyed all hopes James Pierrepont may have entertained of reaching his object by a direct appeal to the lord of Holme Pierrepont, and must have been a bitter disappointment to him; and yet if he had known the festive career his noble cousin was then leading in the gay world of London (assuming that he ever could have pictured it in sober New Haven), he would not perhaps have been surprised that his humble efforts to obtain a recognition had met with such scant courtesy.

Evelyn Pierrepont, who had succeeded to the title and estates of the Duke of Kingston in 1726, had since been appointed Master of the Staghounds and a Knight of the Garter. “A weak man" Horace Walpole called him, "but the handsomest in all England." His rank, his wealth, his good looks and his very weakness made him a popular figure in the Court of George II, and as became a member of that Royal household, he was less often referred to in Court circles as "an illustrious example of virtue as well as of Literature" as James Pierrepont had called him in one of his petitions to him, than he was in his character of the devoted and accepted lover of Elizabeth Chudleigh, one of the beauties of the period.

The very fair and equally frail Elizabeth, from the story of whose life Thackeray is said to have drawn the character of Beatrice Esmond and that of the Baroness Bernstein, deserves a paper to herself, but I must here condense her history (prior to the time her shadow fell across the path of Mr. James Pierrepont) to a few lines. She was born in 1720 and was the daughter of Col. Thomas Chudleigh, Lieut. Governor of Chelsea Hospital. Her father died when she was quite young and after a residence in the country she returned to London with her mother. Through the influence of the Earl of Bath, who was attracted by her beauty, she received the appointment of Maid

of Honor and at once began her conquests. The scalps that hung at her belt were already many when she met, at the Winchester race course, the Hon. Augustus J. Hervey, a Lieutenant in the Royal navy, and a grandson of the Earl of Bristol. After a short acquaintance they were married, but the affair was kept a profound secret lest she lose her position as Maid of Honor.

The wedding was soon followed by orders sending him to sea again, and he remained away from home until 1746. In this year he returned to England and at once rejoined his wife at Chelsea. To settle down to a humdrum married life at Chelsea had no charms for the vivacious Chudleigh, however, and she soon left him and returned to the Court, where, apart from her husband, she led a wild life. Routs, balls and other gaieties were all she cared for, and her audacity was the talk of London. "To record the absurdities of Miss Chudleigh," says Macaulay, "was among other small things, one of the grave employments of Walpole's long life," and the learned Lady Wortley Montagu herself has written of the scandalous costume in which Mistress Elizabeth appeared at a fancy dress ball, given in honor of the King's birthday.

Such performances, though not to be commended, attracted the Court gallants, and the King himself showed her such marks of royal favor that, in spite of her indiscretions, her place in the social world was not to be gainsaid. All this popularity, with others, naturally caused jealousy on the part of Hervey, and after many quarrels they finally agreed to separate, and permanently live apart. This having been accomplished, Elizabeth thought that she would now be free to accept one of her many titled suitors, provided the records of her secret marriage could be destroyed. To accomplish this she went to the chapel where the ceremony had been performed, asked to see the marriage register, and while a friend distracted the attention of the Chaplain, she succeeded in tearing out the pages on which the objectionable entry stood. Hardly had she burned this bridge, however, than in 1759 her husband's grandfather, the Earl of Bristol, fell ill and the canny Elizabeth, who saw that in event of his death Hervey would be heir to the Earldom,

at once realized that she had herself just destroyed the very means by which she could lay claim to be his wife and share the exalted position he would then occupy, and that it, therefore, now behooved her without further delay to establish the fact of the marriage, by restoring the record in the register as soon as possible.

She first confided the facts to her Royal Mistress and then sought out the clergyman who had tied the knot. She found the poor man on his deathbed, but she was without pity, and compelled him to linger long enough to reënter, with his fading strength, the record of her secret marriage. With this anchor well placed to windward, she now felt that she need take no further thought concerning the morrow, and she plunged once more into the mad whirl of her gay circle.

As I have said, among the prominent ornaments of society at this time the handsome Duke of Kingston naturally figured and soon his attentions to Miss Chudleigh and the money that he lavished upon her, which enabled her to live in great style, became the talk of London. A letter from Sir Horace Walpole to George Montagu, dated March 27, 1760, describes her house as follows:

"I breakfasted the day before yesterday at Aelia Laelia Chudleigh's.

There was a concert for Prince Edward's birthday, and at three a vast cold collation, and all the town. The house is not fine nor in good taste but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another's backs and loaded with terrenes, filligree, figures and everything on earth.

Every favor she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden china. There is a glass case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis lazuli, cameos, toothpick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings; another cupboard full of the finest Japan and Candlesticks and vases of rock crystal ready to be thrown down in every corner."

This home in London was soon abandoned by Miss Chudleigh for a short trip on the Continent, where she everywhere