the
House of Commons amounted to 106,543 pounds 5 shillings and 6 pence,
exclusive of antecedent settlements. Two different allowances of 15,000
pounds and of 10,000 pounds were moved for Mr. Gibbon; but, on the
question being put, it was carried without a division for the smaller
sum. On these ruins, with the skill and credit, of which parliament had
not been able to despoil him, my grandfather at a mature age erected
the edifice of a new fortune: the labours of sixteen years were amply
rewarded; and I have reason to believe that the second structure was not
much inferior to the first. He had realized a very considerable property
in Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, and the New River Company; and
had acquired a spacious house, with gardens and lands, at Putney, in
Surrey, where he resided in decent hospitality. He died in December
1736, at the age of seventy; and by his last will, at the expense
of Edward, his only son, (with whose marriage he was not perfectly
reconciled,) enriched his two daughters, Catherine and Hester. The
former became the wife of Mr. Edward Elliston, an East India captain:
their daughter and heiress Catherine was married in the year 1756 to
Edward Eliot, Esq. (now lord Eliot), of Port Eliot, in the county of
Cornwall; and their three sons are my nearest male relations on the
father's side. A life of devotion and celibacy was the choice of my
aunt, Mrs. Hester Gibbon, who, at the age of eighty-five, still resides
in a hermitage at Cliffe, in Northamptonshire; having long survived
her spiritual guide and faithful companion Mr. William Law, who, at an
advanced age, about the year 1761, died in her house. In our family he
had left the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
he professed, and practised all that he enjoined. The character of a
non-juror, which he maintained to the last, is a sufficient evidence
of his principles in church and state; and the sacrifice of interest to
conscience will be always respectable. His theological writings, which
our domestic connection has tempted me to peruse, preserve an imperfect
sort of life, and I can pronounce with more confidence and knowledge on
the merits of the author. His last compositions are darkly tinctured by
the incomprehensible visions of Jacob Behmen; and his discourse on the
absolute unlawfulness of stage entertainments is sometimes quoted for
a ridiculous intemperance of sentiment and language.--"The actors and
spectators