AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY M.P.
SIR,—The letter on the vagaries of an eighteenth-century M.P., of which Mr. L. A. Abraham doubted the authenticity in his letter in The Spectator of December 13th, was published in Notes and Queries, znd series, August loth, 1861, page 107. The author of the article in the Dictionary of National Biography on the father of Antony Henley, M.P., accepts the letter as authentic (D.N.B., Vol. XXV, page 414). In that article, the author of the letter is described as " a jester like his father." The letter is undoubtedly a jest, for Henley stood for Southampton again in 1734, so that the statement that he was buying another borough could not have been serious. I do not believe that either the editor of Notes and Queries or the editor of the Dictionary of National Biography would have, the first published the letter, the second acknowledged its authenticity, if they were not sure of their ground.—Yours faithfully, WILFRED CROSS.
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