to take care of me, and I can lie in the Tower the night before.”――My lady has quarrelled with Sir Charles Windham, for calling the two lords, malefactors. The idea seems to be general, for ’tis said, Lord Cromartie is to be transported, which diverts me for the dignity of the peerage. The Ministry really gave it as a reason against their casting lots for pardon, that it was below their dignity.’ Walpole, who has thus pictured one part of London, in 1746, says, in a subsequent letter,――‘My Lady Townshend, who fell in love with Lord Kilmarnock, at his trial, will go nowhere to dinner, for fear of meeting with a rebel-pie. She says, everybody is so bloody-minded that they eat rebels.’ [Sidenote: _LORD CROMARTIE._] The Earl of Cromartie, the smallest hero of the Jacobite group, was among the most fortunate. He owed his comparative good luck to the energy of his countess who, having driven him into rebellion, moved heaven and earth to save him from the consequences. One Sunday, she obtained admission to St. James’s, and presented a petition to the king, for her husband’s pardon. The sovereign was civil, but he would not at all give her any hope. He passed on, and Lady Cromartie swooned away. On the following Wednesday, she presented herself at Leicester House, to procure the good offices of the Princess of Wales, accompanied by her four children. The princess, seeing the force and tendency of this argument, ‘made no other answer,’ says Gray, in a letter to Wharton, ‘than by bringing in her own children, and placing them by her; which, if true, is one of the prettiest things I ever heard.’ Lady Cromartie and her daughter, who was as actively engaged as her mother, prevailed in the end. Her lord was pardoned; and Walpole made this comment thereupon: ‘If wives and children become an argument for saving rebels, there will cease to be a reason against their going into rebellion.’ Walpole’s remarks are only the ebullition of a little ill-temper. Writing to Mann, in August, 1746, he says, ‘The Prince of Wales, whose intercession saved Lord Cromartie, says he did it in return for old Sir William Gordon (Lady Cromartie’s father), coming down out of his death-bed, to vote against my father in the Chippenham election. If His Royal Highness,’ adds Walpole, ‘had not countenanced inveteracy, like that of Sir Gordon, he would have no occasion to exert his gratitude now, in favour of rebels.’ [Sidenote: _LORD KILMARNOCK._]