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t, HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS COMMISSION.

REPORT

ON THE

MANUSCRIPTS

OF HIS GRACE

THE DUKE OF PORTLAND,

PRESERVED AT

WELBECK ABBEY.

VOL. V.

Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]

PRINTED FOR HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE,

BY THE "NORFOLK CHRONICLE" COMPANY, LTD.

And to be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from
EYRE AND SPOTTIS WOODE, EAST HARDING STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C., AND
32, ABINGDON STREET, WESTMINSTER, 8. W.; or

JOHN MENZIES & Co., 12, HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH; and
90, WEST NILE STREET, GLASGOW; or

HODGES, FIGGIS, & Co., LIMITED, 104, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN.

[C-9466.] Price 28, 9d.

INTRODUCTION.

The preceding volume of the Calendar of Harley letters and papers concluded at the end of May 1711, shortly after Robert Harley was raised to the peerage as Earl of Oxford, and his appointment to the office of Lord Treasurer. The present volume continues the selection from the family correspondence down to 1724, the year in which Lord Oxford died. Many of the later letters are addressed to Edward, Lord Harley, who succeeded him as the second Earl.

The chief features of the Harley collection were so fully gone into in the Introductions to the two volumes preceding this, that it will not be necessary to dwell at any great length on the contents of the present volume.

De Foe's correspondence with his patron, Lord Oxford, to which special attention was drawn in the Introduction to the last volume of Harley papers, was continued with a few short breaks until a month or two after Queen Anne's death. The personal interest of it is by no means so great as in the letters of earlier date. The letters are mostly signed with a peculiar symbol; in the few to which De Foe has put his name, the signature has been wholly or partly torn off; they are nearly all endorsed by Lord Oxford as received from “Guilot," " Claude "Guilot," or "Mr. Goldsmith." In the second letter from him printed in this volume (p. 13), Lord Oxford is reminded that Lord Godolphin had offered the writer a very good post in Scotland, and afterwards a commissionership of customs there, which he would have accepted, had it not been his Lordship's opinion that he might be more serviceable in a private capacity; he had chosen, therefore, rather to depend upon the Queen's goodness, than to secure for his family a more regular maintenance. From what follows it appears that after his return into Lord Oxford's service, a pension had been assigned or renewed to him, but, like other Government allowances at that period, not very regularly paid, as we learn from the ending of a letter written more than a year afterwards (p. 214). Some of De Foe's letters are filled at

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