The Mary Hamilton Papers : Letter from Charlotte Finch to Mary Hamilton

Finch (née Fermor), Charlotte, Lady

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Letter from Charlotte Finch to Mary Hamilton. She writes that Prince Alfred looks so ‘charming’ today that she cannot resist taking up her pen to brag about it. He bathes every two days out of three. She presented him to Lord North [probably Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732-1792), prime minister] yesterday who visited for a short time and was in the area to ‘endeavour to get Sea men for manning the ships that are in so much want of men’. Finch notes that her post today brought her news of the account of the death of Lord Rockingham which she writes did not surprise her as she has had news on him before in the post. She reports that Lord Fitzwilliam will come into his Estate and his three sisters will get fifteen thousand pounds a piece and that as Lord Fitzwilliam has no children, the estate, the son of one of his sisters may be heir to it all. Finch is afraid that the death of the Bishop of Salisbury has had a profound effect of the situation and circumstance of Mary Humes.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dated at Deal Castle [Kent].</p>