Edward Wortley was in England in the early part of the above year. In the latter part he went to Holland, where he resided, a sort of prisoner at large, by desire of his father, who allowed him a small income on condition of submission to the paternal will. ‘I hear,’ wrote Lady Mary, ‘he avoided coming near the sharpers, and is grown a good manager of his money. I incline to think he will, for the future, avoid thieves and other persons of good credit.’ When persons of really ‘good credit’ spoke well of him, as Lord Carteret did, the mother rather doubted than accepted the testimony. ‘Whenever,’ she wrote to her husband, ‘he kept much company, it would be right to get him confined, to prevent his going to the pillory or the gallows;’ and she described his excuses for his conduct as ‘those of murderers and robbers!’ Young Wortley was desirous of joining the army in Flanders; his mother doubted his sincerity, and insisted that he should go as a volunteer. If his father bought him a commission, she was sure it would be ‘pawned or sold in a twelvemonth.’ Whether as volunteer or commissioned officer, he did serve in Flanders. No news to grieve a parent’s heart came thence; upon which circumstance Lady Mary wrote to her husband in 1744: ‘I think it is an ill sign you have had no letters from Sir John Cope concerning him. I have no doubt he would be glad to commend his conduct if there were any room for it;’ and she was inclined to blame the father for over-indulgence to his son. She had no sympathy even for the amiable weaknesses of the latter; and yet she was so sentimentally affected by the tragedy of ‘George Barnwell,’ the rascal hero of which murders his real uncle in order to gratify the rapacity of a harlot, that she said, whoever could read the story or see the play without crying, deserved to be hanged. Edward Wortley’s countrymen did not think so ill of Lady Mary’s son; for in 1747 the electors of Huntingdonshire returned him, with Mr. Coulson Fellowes, member for the county. He was a silent but highly respectable member. In the year 1748 Mr. Wortley, the father, wrote to his wife some pleasant news he had heard of their son. The mother coldly replied, ‘I should be extremely pleased if I could depend on Lord Sandwich’s account of our son. As I am wholly unacquainted with him, I cannot judge how far he may be either deceived or interested.’ This singular mother cultivated her antipathies rather than her sympathies. The father seems to have considered his paternal duty was discharged by, wisely perhaps, keeping his son on a small allowance. The son lived as if he had already his inheritance in hand, and for a year or two he found society in London quite to his mind.