for any comment at our hands. In the Gentleman’s Magazine of February 1736 there are two notices of deaths, one commencing the list, which is curious, and the other immediately following, which cannot fail to be interesting:—
SIR Brownlowe Sherard, Bt in Burlington Gardens. He was of a human Disposition, kind to his Servants dislik’d all extravagant Expence, but very liberal of his Fortune, as well to his Relations and Friends, as to Numbers of distressed Objects; and in particular, to St. George’s Hospital, near Hyde-Park Corner.
Bernard Lintott, Esq., formerly an eminent Bookseller in Fleet-street. High Sheriff for Sussex, aged 61.
Also the Earl of Derby, and several men who are noted to have died worth sums varying from £13,000 to £100,000, find obituary notices. These give particulars of the lives of the deceased, and the ways in which the various properties are disposed of, very different from the short announcements of modern days. Thus we find that by the death of the Hon. Walter Chetwynd, the barony of Rathdown in the county of Dublin, and viscounty of Chetwynd of Beerhaven in the county of Cork, both in the peerage of Ireland, became extinct, but that his brother, John Chetwynd, was consoled by an estate of £3000 per annum; that Mrs Eliza Barber succumbed to “an illness she had contracted in Newgate on a prosecution of her master, a baronet of Leicestershire, of which being honourably acquitted, and a copy of her indictment granted, she had brought an action of £1000 damages;” that Mr Fellows was an eminent sugar-baker; and that Gilbert Campbell had during his life got himself into trouble for misinterpreting his duties as an attorney. The marriage lists have also the admirable fashion of giving the sums of money obtained with the brides or bridegrooms as the case may be, and in some instances the amounts of revenue.
In the London Journal of February 7, 1730, there