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ARCHAEOLOGIA:

or,

MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS,

&c.

 

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I. Lord Coningsby's Account of the State of Political Parties during the Reign of Queen Anne. Communicated by Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., F.S.A., in a Letter to Augustus W. Franks, Esq., M.A., Director.

 

Read 29 April and 20 May, 1858.

 

Bedford Square,
4th March, 1858.

My dear Sir,

Among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum there is a short Memoir of the State of Political Parties in England from the last year of the reign of William the Third to the death of Queen Anne, written by the Earl of Coningsby (at least so afterwards created), who was throughout engaged in the ministerial divisions of that period, and divisions they were of no ordinary character.

It is said upon its Title to have been presented to King George the First, evidently for his information as to the state of parties then engaged in politics; but, although it professedly extends to the month of July 1716, it gives no details of any events subsequent to Lord Coningsby's dismissal from office in July 1710.

Whether His Majesty gained much information from the entanglement of the detail may, I think, be doubted. The King himself knew but little of the Consti-