EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE.

TO ARCHBISHOP KING.

MY LORD,

London, Jan. 8, 1711-12.

I CANNOT in conscience take up your grace's time with an empty letter; and it is not every day one can furnish what will be worth your reading. I had all your grace's packets; and I humbly thank your grace for your good instructions to me, which I shall observe as soon as ever it shall please God to put me into a way of life where I can have leisure for such speculations.

In above twenty years that I have known something of courts and ministers, I never saw so strange and odd a complicated disposition of affairs as what we have had for six weeks past. The facts your grace may have met with in every common newspaper; but the springs of them are hardly discoverable even by those who had most opportunity of observing. Neither do I find those who should know best, agree upon the matter. There is a perpetual trial of skill between those who are out and those who are in; and the former are generally more industrious at watching opportunities. Last