were all ill together, but are now
all better; only Lady Masham expects every day to lie in at Kensington.
There was never such a lump of lies spread about the town together as
now. I doubt not but you will have them in Dublin before this comes to
you, and all without the least grounds of truth. I have been mightily
put backward in something I am writing by my illness, but hope to fetch
it up, so as to be ready when the Parliament meets. Lord Treasurer has
had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now near quite well. I was
playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family t'other night. He
gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with: it put me in mind of Sir
William Temple.(2) I asked both him and Lady Masham seriously whether
the Queen were at all inclined to a dropsy, and they positively assured
me she was not: so did her physician Arbuthnot, who always attends her.
Yet these devils have spread that she has holes in her legs, and runs
at her navel, and I know not what. Arbuthnot has sent me from Windsor a
pretty Discourse upon Lying, and I have ordered the printer to come for
it. It is a proposal for publishing a curious piece, called The Art of
Political Lying, in two volumes, etc. And then there is an abstract of
the first volume, just like those pamphlets which they call The Works of
the Learned.(3) Pray get it when it comes out. The Queen has a little of
the gout in one of her hands. I believe she will stay a month still at
Windsor. Lord Treasurer showed me the kindest letter from her in the
world, by which I picked out one secret, that there will be soon
made some Knights of the Garter. You know another is fallen by Lord
Godolphin's death: he will be buried in a day or two at Westminster
Abbey. I saw Tom Leigh(4) in town once. The Bishop of Clogher has taken
his lodging for the winter; they are all well. I hear there are in town
abundance of people from Ireland; half a dozen bishops at least. The
poor old Bishop of London,(5) at past fourscore, fell down backward
going upstairs, and I think broke or cracked his skull; yet is now
recovering. The town is as empty as at midsummer; and if I had not
occasion for physic, I would be at Windsor still. Did I tell you of Lord
Rivers's will? He has left legacies to about twenty paltry old whores by
name, and not a farthing to any friend, dependent, or relation: he has
left from his only child, Lady Barrymore,(6) her mother's estate, and
given the whole to his heir-male, a p
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