“… I am fully prepared for the worst, and therefore am no longer under any anxiety. I would rather be gibbeted, than owe my life to the intercession such as you speak of, and such as I am afraid you half-solicited. I told you to keep very quiet. Say nothing at all about the matter to any one. Ask no questions; and only be sure to tell me precisely what you hear. I am not afraid of them. Times are coming on when we shall all have enough to do; but, in the meanwhile, I shall not worry myself to death with apprehension.…” Instead of any fear of the future, the look-out is rather toward the welfare and increase of his estate. Some plots of land have just been purchased, with the object of making freeholders of Wright, Finnerty, and others. The prospects of harvest are very bad, for the rains have been so incessant, that wheat is growing in the ear; but the trees are coming on “delightfully.” Lord Cochrane arrives home, and comes to see Botley with the tale of his grievances. Mr. Cobbett pays his occasional visit to Lord Folkestone, at Coleshill; and horses and puppies, and hares and pheasants, reappear in their order, not at all as though the threatened danger would be anything beyond a scare. * * * * * Among Mr. Cobbett’s friends was one who had become peculiarly bound up in his affairs, through circumstances which must now be noticed. Mr. John Swann, of Wolvercot and Ensham, in Oxfordshire, was an eminent paper-maker of that day; his mills being the chief sources of supply for the University of Oxford. He had supplied also the paper for the _Register_ from a very early period; and it would appear that a strong attachment existed between him and the Cobbetts. As far back as September, 1805, when purchases of land were being made in Hampshire, somewhat beyond Mr. Cobbett’s command of ready money, Mr. Swann had assisted him by discounting accommodation bills. At the death of the latter, in January, 1807, his brother James succeeded both to the paper-mills and to the accommodation paper; and to the friendship thus continued into another family, we are indebted to some further glimpses of Cobbett’s happy domestic life. Mr. Swann is initiated into the mysteries of planting: eels from the sluggish Oxford streams grace the table at Botley, and game from Hampshire that of Ensham. And, as time fled on, the perilous accumulation of “credit” seemed only to add new links of love. The following selection from correspondence belongs to the later months of 1808:-- JAMES SWANN to JOHN WRIGHT.