After we had remained a little time, one of his lordship's _toad-eaters_ came to reconnoitre; and, as soon as he discovered us in the ranks, he retreated to carry the astounding intelligence to his patron. Messages now passed backwards and forwards, from the troop to his lordship's house, for nearly an hour before he made his appearance; a delay which had never before occurred. The cause was not only anticipated by Hancock and myself, but by all the members of the troop, and just as I was proposing to march to his lordship, since he did not appear disposed to come to us, he at last made his appearance, riding on his charger with slow and solemn pace. I have since understood that, during this delay, several messages passed between his lordship's house, Savernake Lodge, and Tottenham Park, the seat of his father, the Earl of Aylesbury. Before I proceed, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to make the reader acquainted with the origin of this business. It turned out that Lord Bruce had been induced to write the aforesaid letters to me and Mr. Hancock at the earnest suggestion of his father, Lord Aylesbury, who had prevailed upon him, much against his own inclination and better judgment, to turn us out of the troop; though he had no other complaint to make against me but that I was too good a shot at his father's pheasants, and consequently a very unfit person to oppose the French in case of an invasion. His lordship saw and felt the difficulty of his situation, and for a long time he held out against the entreaties of his father; but the old earl was inexorable, and I am told that his mandate was at length delivered in such a _tone_ and such a manner, that his son did not feel it prudent to resist any longer. The particulars I subsequently learned from one of the keepers, who was present at the interview when the earl came down from London; which I understand he did on purpose. Some envious and cringing tool of his lordship's having heard of our successful day's sport at Grove, on the first of October, wrote up to him an exaggerated account of it, stating that I, in company with Mr. Hancock, had killed an immense number of pheasants upon his lordship's manors; but at the same time this worthy intelligencer took care not to state where, and upon what manor we had been sporting. The old earl, who was the most tenacious, perhaps, about his game of any man in England, no sooner got the letter than he came post from town, in a great passion; and when he arrived at Tottenham, he immediately summoned all his keepers, to demand an account of their conduct for suffering his game to be destroyed in such a way. It was in vain that they all declared that we had not been into or near any of his preserves; that we had only been shooting upon a distant manor, where his lordship did not even appoint a keeper; and which manor he had expressly appropriated for the sport of the people of _his Borough_ of Marlborough, and their friends.