nfortunate mother, until her
distemper increased to a most deplorable degree of the dead palsy, and
the death of her father had reduced her to a most forlorn and abject
state of distress. Then they ventured upon the execution of their
projects; and, though their aims were widely different, concurred in
their endeavours to remove the hapless boy, as the common obstacle to
both.

"Lord A-- who, as I have already observed, was a man of weak intellects,
and utterly void of any fixed principle of action, being by this time
reduced to such a pitch of misery, that he was often obliged to pawn his
wearing apparel in order to procure the common necessaries of life; and
having no other fund remaining, with which he could relieve his present
necessities, except a sale of the reversion of the A-- estate, to
which the nonage of his son was an effectual bar, he was advised by
his virtuous brother, and the rest of his counsellors, to surmount this
difficulty, by secreting his son, and spreading a report of his death.
This honest project he the more readily embraced, because he knew that
no act of his could frustrate the child's succession. Accordingly, the
boy was removed from the school at which he was then boarded, to the
house of one K--, an agent and accomplice of the present earl of A--,
where he was kept for several months closely confined; and, in the
meantime, it was industriously reported that he was dead.

"This previous measure being taken, Lord A-- published advertisements
in the gazettes, offering reversions of the A-- estate to sale; and
emissaries of various kinds were employed to inveigle such as were
ignorant of the nature of the settlement of these estates, or strangers
to the affairs of his family. Some people, imposed upon by the report of
the child's death, were drawn in to purchase, thinking themselves safe
in the concurrence of his lordship's brother, upon presumption that
he was next in remainder to the succession; others, tempted by the
smallness of the price, which rarely exceeded half a year's purchase, as
appears by many deeds, though they doubted the truth of the boy's being
dead, ran small risks, on the contingency of his dying before he should
be of age, or in hopes of his being prevailed upon to confirm the grants
of his father; and many more were treating with him on the same notions,
when their transactions were suddenly interrupted, and the scheme
of raising more money for the present, defeated by t