On December 2 Lady Courtenay sent feathers and shells to Mrs. Montagu for her work. She was the daughter of Heneage, 2nd Lord Aylesford, and married to Sir William Courtenay, afterwards 1st Viscount Courtenay. She was a sister of Lady Andover’s, and a great friend of Lydia Botham’s, and in this letter expresses great concern at Lydia’s sad state of health. On December 29 Mrs. Montagu writes to her sister Sarah that she had sustained the great loss of her lady housekeeper, Mrs. Isted, who had died very suddenly whilst Mr. and Mrs. Montagu had been spending a few days with Lydia Botham. The latter was then supposed to be dying. From the letters it appears Mrs. Isted was a widow lady, who had lost an only child, and had been known to Mrs. Montagu in her more prosperous years. Lydia Botham rallied for a time. [Page heading: GEORGE LEWIS SCOTT] A great dispute was going on at Leicester House at this time on the subject of Prince George’s tutors. Amongst the sub-preceptors, it will be remembered, was Mr. George Lewis Scott, Sarah’s (_née_ Robinson) husband. Soon after this he was dismissed from the list of tutors. One reason alleged was that he was a Jacobite, but there was little ground for this supposition. Though a clever man, he seems to have been quite an unsuitable person to be tutor to the princes, and Mrs. Montagu comforts Sarah by saying his true character will now appear. “You will see shortly that he and you will have justice done you, and with this difference, that to you it will be a guardian angel, to him an avenging minister. In the mean time ‘leave him to Heaven, and the thorns that prick his bosom,’ as says good Mr. Hamlet.” On December 23 she had an assembly, and writes to Mrs. Boscawen that “the Chinese Room was filled by a succession of people from eleven in the morning till eleven at night.” The year ends with a letter to Gilbert West, who had had a terrible attack of gout, sending him Birch’s[29] “Life of Archbishop Tillotson,”[30] “which Mr. Birch left for you himself.” [29] Rev. Thomas Birch, born 1705, died 1766. [30] John Tillotson, born 1630, died 1694. Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691. [Year: 1753] 1753 opens with a letter from Mrs. Donnellan on January 2, to Mrs. Montagu, then at Sandleford. In this she says-- “Two letters from Ireland informed me of a sort of determination both of Dr. Delany’s affair and my own. I had a very particular account of both from my Six Clerk and Manager, Mr. Croker, who is Six Clerk to Delany’s adversarys, and a short letter from Mrs. Delany. My Lord Chancellor has acquitted Dr. Delany of a hard word in the law, called spoliation, but has ordered an account before two masters in Chancery to be taken of all the late Mrs. Delany’s personal estate, and what she was worth when she married the Dean.”