ic occasions with the peeresses (I mention that because one that
offered at me was the eldest son of a peer), but that I was as well
without the title as long as I had the estate, and while I had L2000 a
year of my own I was happier than I could be in being prisoner of state
to a nobleman, for I took the ladies of that rank to be little better.

As I have mentioned Sir Robert Clayton, with whom I had the good fortune
to become acquainted, on account of the mortgage which he helped me to,
it is necessary to take notice that I had much advantage in my ordinary
affairs by his advice, and therefore I called it my good fortune; for as
he paid me so considerable an annual income as L700 a year, so I am to
acknowledge myself much a debtor, not only to the justice of his
dealings with me, but to the prudence and conduct which he guided me to,
by his advice, for the management of my estate. And as he found I was
not inclined to marry, he frequently took occasion to hint how soon I
might raise my fortune to a prodigious height if I would but order my
family economy so far within my revenue as to lay up every year
something to add to the capital.

I was convinced of the truth of what he said, and agreed to the
advantages of it. You are to take it as you go that Sir Robert supposed
by my own discourse, and especially by my woman Amy, that I had L2000 a
year income. He judged, as he said, by my way of living that I could not
spend above one thousand, and so, he added, I might prudently lay by
L1000 every year to add to the capital; and by adding every year the
additional interest or income of the money to the capital, he proved to
me that in ten years I should double the L1000 per annum that I laid by.
And he drew me out a table, as he called it, of the increase, for me to
judge by; and by which, he said, if the gentlemen of England would but
act so, every family of them would increase their fortunes to a great
degree, just as merchants do by trade; whereas now, says Sir Robert, by
the humour of living up to the extent of their fortunes, and rather
beyond, the gentlemen, says he, ay, and the nobility too, are almost all
of them borrowers, and all in necessitous circumstances.

As Sir Robert frequently visited me, and was (if I may say so from his
own mouth) very well pleased with my way of conversing with him, for he
knew nothing, not so much as guessed at what I had been; I say, as he
came often to see me, so he always entertained