ng James the Third, was their rightful
sovereign. He made a very edifying end, as his daughter told Esmond, and,
not a little to her surprise, after his death (for he had lived always
very poorly) my lady found that her father had left no less a sum than
3,000_l._ behind him, which he bequeathed to her.

With this little fortune Lady Castlewood was enabled, when her daughter's
turn at Court came, to come to London, where she took a small genteel
house at Kensington, in the neighbourhood of the Court, bringing her
children with her, and here it was that Esmond found his friends.

As for the young lord, his University career had ended rather abruptly.
Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young gentleman quite
ungovernable. My lord worried his life away with tricks; and broke out, as
home-bred lads will, into a hundred youthful extravagances, so that Dr.
Bentley, the new master of Trinity, thought fit to write to the
Viscountess Castlewood, my lord's mother, and beg her to remove the young
nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he only did
harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to
Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir
Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor's man that
wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave a dinner party on the
Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within a fortnight of his own, and
the twenty young gentlemen then present sallied out after their wine,
having toasted King James's health with open windows, and sung cavalier
songs, and shouted, "God save the King!" in the great court, so that the
master came out of his lodge at midnight, and dissipated the riotous
assembly.

This was my lord's crowning freak, and the Rev. Thomas Tusher, domestic
chaplain to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Castlewood, finding his
prayers and sermons of no earthly avail to his lordship, gave up his
duties of governor; went and married his brewer's widow at Southampton,
and took her and her money to his parsonage-house at Castlewood.

My lady could not be angry with her son for drinking King James's health,
being herself a loyal Tory, as all the Castlewood family were, and
acquiesced with a sigh, knowing, perhaps, that her refusal would be of no
avail to the young lord's desire for a military life. She would have liked
him to be in Mr. Esmond's regiment, hoping that Harry might act as
guardian and adv