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Letter 14
19 April
1769
NLS: MS 25295, ff. 146-147
My dear Lord,
I am honoured with yours of the 14^ inst. and am much obliged to you for your kind enquiries concerning my health. I thank God it is now become tolerable again.
The times are truly become miserable; not from any danger of the Public, but from the dishonour brought upon it by these mock Patriots, without parts or virtue, the Apes of those fierce Fanatics who had both, and misused them under Charles the first, to overturn a constitution which they pretended to reform. They had a foundation to work upon, real grievances; These, only fictitious. Had Charles the first the advantages of George the third, of 30000 veteran troops; and a House of Commons become odious and contemptible
But it is time to come to a more agre[e]able subject. Your Lordship does wisely to withdraw your mind from this scene of horrors, on the elegant and usefull attention to that important part of History, the Ecclesiastical. I shall devour the tract you mention (as I do every thing of yours) with exquisite pleasure: but shall be extremely concerned if the melancholy hours you mention, be not those we all pass, for the Public, but rather those of a domestic kind, in the loss of some, deservedly most dear to you—But this is the appen age of Humanity, which we are all doomed to partake of.
Your Lordship's most Obedient
and affectionate humble Servant
W. Gloucester
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