. His son,
the novelist and voluptuary, had a long minority, and succeeded at last
to a million ready money and L100,000 a year, only to end life a
solitary, despised, exiled man. One of his daughters married the Duke of
Hamilton.

[Illustration: A LORD MAYOR AND HIS LADY (MIDDLE OF SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY). _From an Old Print._]

The Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor in 1768, was a brother of the
Earl of Oxford. He turned wine-merchant, and married the daughter of his
father's steward, according to the scandalous chronicles in the "City
Biography." He is said, in partnership with Mr. Drummond, to have made
L600,000 by taking a Government contract to pay the English army in
America with foreign gold. He was for many years "the father of the
City."

Harley first rendered himself famous in the City by seizing the boot and
petticoat which the mob were burning opposite the Mansion House, in
derision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager, at the time the sheriffs
were burning the celebrated _North Briton_. The mob were throwing the
papers about as matter of diversion, and one of the bundles fell,
unfortunately, with considerable force, against the front glass of Mr.
Sheriff Harley's chariot, which it shattered to pieces. This gave the
first alarm; the sheriffs retired into the Mansion House, and a man was
taken up and brought there for examination, as a person concerned in the
riot. The man appeared to be a mere idle spectator; but the Lord Mayor
informed the court that, in order to try the temper of the mob, he had
ordered one of his own servants to be dressed in the clothes of the
supposed offender, and conveyed to the Poultry Compter, so that if a
rescue should be effected, the prisoner would still be in custody, and
the real disposition of the people discovered. However, everything was
peaceable, and the course of justice was not interrupted, nor did any
insult accompany the commitment; whereupon the prisoner was discharged.
What followed, in the actual burning of the seditious paper, the Lord
Mayor declared (according to the best information), arose from
circumstances equally foreign to any illegal or violent designs. For
these reasons his lordship concluded by declaring that, with the
greatest respect for the sheriffs, and a firm belief that they would
have done their duty in spite of any danger, he should put a negative
upon giving the thanks of the City upon a matter that was not
sufficiently important for a publi