Twickenham, April 3, 1 705.
My dearest and Best of children, I wish you a happy Easter and many more. The Wedoe Bromly* writ me word of is ' marryed, I wish you a good Wife before next Eastor. I have found out a match that will plees you I am sure very much ; she has fower thoussand a year and ver prety, but what will plees you most is — she is but fower year old. If you are not marryed by this next Easter com twelv month, I have pro- mist to take and keepe one of Peter's children. Mrs. Went- worth is not marryed yett, which I wunder at ; why would you not take my sister Batthurst t offer, for she by me offerred to try her Retorick with her and none in the world could doe it better then she, and she asured me she would not doe it for any in the world but you, and she has a great deal of Ello- quenc, and can doe Better then any. I wish I had but half as much and then this would be les troublesom to you but baer with it and conseder it corns from a most vehement lover of you, and can never exspres how much she is, &c.
Its not a flurrish but a most sencear truith, and to the utmost of my power I will in al things prove it.
Twickenham, April 12, 1705. My dearest and best of children,
I wish you joy, for I hear you are a step higher in the Army, that you are Major- General. In peec I should lyke it, but O that I had mony enough to by it Quite ofe, and to oblidge you to sett quiet at home diverting yourself in your gardens, and Boocks, and being happy in a good wife and children — even to think of this is a pleasure to me. The
- John Bromley was Lord Raby's agent at Wakefield, and it appears
to have been part of an agent's duties in those days to look out a wealthy match, with a widow or otherwise, for his master. We shall meet with other instances of this in the correspondence. Later in this year Bromley sends an account of Lady (Betty ?) Hastings, " very handsome and a vast fortune."
t Sir Benjamin Bathurst married the writer's sister Frances Apsley. Their distinguished son Allen, created Lord Bathurst in 17 12, Pope's friend and executor, is frequently mentioned in the letters, and appears himself as a correspondent with his cousin at a later date.
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