Autograph Letter to Lord Radstock.

8vo (23.5 x 18.5), 2 pp. Signature cut away, resulting in loss of 3.5 x 10 cm rectangle from corner at bottom and affecting four lines of text on recto. Otherwise good, on lightly aged paper with thin strip from brown paper mount adhering to inner margin on reverse. 37 lines of text (four with loss). An interesting letter written during his final illness. He begins by confirming the report which has reached the recipient of Gardner's 'having been very seriously indisposed'. He is a little better, after 'a long and tedious confinement to the House ever since the first of January /during which time I have not been able to walk thirty yards from my door or to take any exercise but very seldom in a Carriage when the weather would permit/'. His 'complaint has been water on my Breast, which my Physician tells me is removed'. Regarding the Naval Charitable Society, he is 'disposed to second the Resolution of the Committee of my Brother Officers, held at the Thatch'd House Tavern on the 4th. instant'. Asks that his name be inserted in the list of subscribers, and is sending a donation of twenty guineas. 'I will take care to have the printed Resolutions distributed throughout the Channel Fleet so soon as they are sent to me'. He is 'not well enought to write on any business, and writing at all with my difficulty of breathing is painful to me'. Wishes the committee 'every possible success'.