The Mary Hamilton Papers : Letter from Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier, to Mary Hamilton

Napier, Francis Scott, 8th Lord

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Letter from Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier, to Mary Hamilton. The letter relates to Napier's family and to political news. He writes that his daughter is ill, there is snow on the ground and that the ‘suspense, in which we find ourselves, Relative to our Political Rulers, give me neither Spirits, nor inclination for writing’. He continues on the trial of Lord Melville and on the King, whom he feels for, as he will be ‘forced to smile on the friends of Bonaparte, in his Cabinet’. Napier has no intention of distressing himself by meeting the new ministers in Parliament and so will not go to London at least until the trial of Melville, and in the meantime Lord Morton ‘has my Proxy, with Instructions not to use it in censuring Mr Pitt or the measures of his administration – not to emancipate the Irish Roman Catholics – not to approve of Peace with Bonaparte, in the present state of the Country’. He continues the letter by noting the high spirits of the opposition over the expectation of Lauderdale and Fox in power.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dated at Queen Street, [Edinburgh].</p>