Council.

"Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set
myself down to work, and in about four days sent the duke as regular
a plan as I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could
bring to support it, drawn out on several sheets of paper; and soon
received a message from the Duke, by Mr. Carrington, acquainting me
that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it
would be complied with.

"The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately
depositing 600_l._ in my hands; at which small charge I undertook to
demolish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into
such order, that no such gangs should ever be able for the future,
to form themselves into bodies, or at least to remain any time
formidable to the public.

"I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the
repeated advice of my physical acquaintances, and the ardent desire
of my warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep
jaundice; in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be
almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire to demolish this
gang of villains and cut-throats....

"After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a
few days, after 200_l._ of it had come into my hands, the whole gang
of cut-throats was entirely dispersed...."

Further on, he says--

"I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the
winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public
or the poor of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder
both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking;
on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of
porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been
universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a
man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had
reduced an income of about 500_l._, a year of the dirtiest money
upon earth, to little more than 300_l._, a considerable portion of
which remained with my clerk."

160 He came of a Suffolk family--one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire.
The famous "starling" was actually the family crest.

161 "It was in this parish" (of Animo, in Wick