Yet, notwithstanding all her
insinuations, nature still maintained her influence in his heart;
and though she often found means to irritate him by artful and
malicious accusations, his resentment never extended farther than
fatherly correction. She would have found it impossible to accomplish
his ruin, had not her efforts been reinforced by a new auxiliary,
who was no other than his uncle, the present usurper of his title
and estate; yet even this confederacy was overawed, in some measure,
by the fear of alarming the unfortunate mother, until her distemper
increased to a most deplorable degree of the dead palsy, and the
death of her father had reduced her to a most forlorn and abject
state of distress. Then they ventured upon the execution of their
projects; and, though their aims were widely different, concurred
in their endeavours to remove the hapless boy, as the common obstacle
to both.
"Lord A-- who, as I have already observed, was a man of weak
intellects, and utterly void of any fixed principle of action,
being by this time reduced to such a pitch of misery, that he was
often obliged to pawn his wearing apparel in order to procure the
common necessaries of life; and having no other fund remaining,
with which he could relieve his present necessities, except a sale
of the reversion of the A-- estate, to which the nonage of his
son was an effectual bar, he was advised by his virtuous brother,
and the rest of his counsellors, to surmount this difficulty, by
secreting his son, and spreading a report of his death.
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