After narrating his disposal of his wealth among his children and charities, the chronicler states that ‘To his son George, who sailed a short time since to the West Indies, he has bequeathed three guineas a week during life, to be paid only to his own receipt.’ One would like to know if this all but disinherited young fellow took heart of grace, and, after all, made his way creditably in the world. Such sons often succeed in life better than their brothers. Look around you _now_. See the sons born to inherit the colossal fortune which their father has built up. What brainless asses the most of them become! Had they been born to little instead of to over-much, their wits would perhaps have been equal to their wants, and they would have been as good men as their fathers. It was a son of misfortune, who, on a July night of 1773, entered the _King’s Head_ at Enfield, weary, hungry, penniless, and wearing the garb of a clergyman. He was taken in, poor guest as he was, and in the hospitable inn he died within a few days. It was then discovered that he was the Rev. Samuel Bickley. In his pockets were found three manuscript sermons, and an extraordinary petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated the previous February. The prayer of the petition was to this effect: ‘Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays, that if an audience from your Grace should be deemed too great a favour, you will at least grant him some relief, though it be only a temporary one, in our deplorable necessity and distress; and,’ said the petitioner with a simplicity or an impudence which may have accounted for his condition, ‘let your Grace’s charity cover the multitude of his sins.’ He then continues: ‘There never yet was anyone in England doomed to starve; but I am nearly, if not altogether so; denied to exercise the sacred functions wherein I was educated, driven from the doors of the rich laymen to the clergy for relief; by the clergy, denied; so that I may justly take up the speech of the Gospel Prodigal, and say: ‘How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, while I perish with hunger!’ Here was, possibly, an heir of great expectations, who, scholar as he was, had come to grief, while, only a little while before him, there died a fortunate impostor, as appears from this record: ‘Mr. Colvill, in Old Street, aged 83. He was much resorted to as a fortune-teller, by which he acquired upwards of 4,000_l._;’ at the same time, a man in London was quintupling that sum by the invention and sale of peppermint lozenges.