70 THE WENTWORTH PAPERS.
chose as he Hkes, and till of late years they have had no con- tested elections .... Lord Herbert gets petitions from a great many hands to the Queen to grant them a new charter .... Winnington's friends was to prove this an arbitrary proceed- ing and that if this was allow'd they might have all the corporations in England new model'd. Sir John Packington made a flaming speech which I won't repeat because they tell me he will print it ... . The house came to the con- clusion of approving Lord Herbert's election, and so of consequence the Queen's charter. ....
.... I have sent you a copy of the Dutchess of Ormond's letter to Lady Betty Southwell who she thought a dying,* and Lady Betty's answer which has been all the talk of the town for several vissiting days, and now there's about a hundred copy's of them, so that in a little time we may see them in print, for they print everything. They cry'd about the street TJie hasty Widdow or the Sooner the Better ; there was nothing in the paper but a parcel of proverbs (?), but the impudence was the title and coming out after the Address to the Queen, t
London, January i8, 1709. Dear Brother,
.... This day seven Lord HavershamJ made a speech, and last friday they cry'd it about the streets and I
- Lady Elizabeth Cromwell (descended from Cromwell, Earl of Essex)
married Edward Southwell, Secretary of State for Ireland. She was apparently an old flame of Lord Raby's, for on April i, 1709, Lady Wentworth writes, " Your old Mrs. is dead and left thre lovly boys behynde and a dismall mallancoUy husband ; its Lady Betty Southwell whoe made a very good wife, and he a fond husband .... She dyed of a consumtion. Her eldist son will be Lord Crumwell, but som say he will not."
t An address had been presented by both Houses of Parliament recommending a second marriage to her majesty. the Revolution, was raised to the peerage in 1696. In May 1709, Lord Raby's French correspondent in London writes : — " Le Lord Haversham, qui est pour le moins Sexagenaire, a ^pous^, en secondes noces, la veuve d'un officier qui est mort Prisonier en France, laquelle etoit sa Domestique en quality de Femme de Charge."
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