kinsman, and Lord Verney, his political patron,
were all three at this time engaged together in immense transactions
in East India stock; that in 1769 the stock fell violently; that they
were unable to pay their differences; and that in the year when Edmund
Burke bought Gregories, the other three were utterly ruined, two of
them beyond retrieval. Again it is clear that, after this, Richard
Burke was engaged in land-jobbing in the West Indies; that his claims
were disputed by the Government as questionable and dishonest; and
that he lost his case. Edmund Burke was said, in the gossip of the
day, to be deeply interested in land at Saint Vincent's. But there
is no evidence. What cannot be denied is that an unpleasant taint of
speculation and financial adventurership hung at one time about the
whole connection, and that the adventures invariably came to an
unlucky end.

Whether Edmund Burke and William Burke were relations or not, and if
so, in what degree they were relations, neither of them ever knew;
they believed that their fathers sometimes called one another cousins,
and that was all that they had to say on the subject. But they were as
intimate as brothers, and when William Burke went to mend his broken
fortunes in India, Edmund Burke commended him to Philip Francis--then
fighting his deadly duel of five years with Warren Hastings at
Calcutta--as one whom he had tenderly loved, highly valued, and
continually lived with in an union not to be expressed, quite since
their boyish years. "Looking back to the course of my life," he wrote
in 1771, "I remember no one considerable benefit in the whole of it
which I did not, mediately or immediately, derive from William Burke."
There is nothing intrinsically incredible, therefore, considering this
intimacy and the community of purse and home which subsisted among the
three Burkes, in the theory that when Edmund Burke bought his property
in Buckinghamshire, he looked for help from the speculations of
Richard and William. However this may have been, from them no help
came. Many years afterwards (1783) Lord Verney filed a bill in
Chancery claiming from Edmund Burke a sum of L6000, which he alleged
that he had lent at the instigation of William Burke, to assist in
completing the purchase of Beaconsfield. Burke's sworn answer denied
all knowledge of the transaction, and the plaintiff did not get the
relief for which he had prayed.

In a letter to Shackleton (May 1, 1768), Burke g