Mr Guthrie received from the Pelham administration a pension of £200 a-year. He was a man who knew better how to maintain his ground than the ministry did, and he managed with his pension to survive its fall. Nearly twenty years afterwards, we find him making laudable efforts for the continuance of his allowance by the then administration:—the following letter addressed to a minister, one of the coolest specimens of literary commerce on record, we cannot avoid quoting.
"My Lord,—In the year 1745–6, Mr Pelham, then first lord of the treasury, acquainted me, that it was his majesty's pleasure I should receive till better provided for, which never has happened, £200 a-year, to be paid by him and his successors in the treasury. I was satisfied with the august name made use of, and the appointment has been regularly and quarterly paid me ever since. I have been equally punctual in doing the government all the services that fell within my abilities or sphere of life, especially in those critical situations which call for unanimity in the service of the crown. Your lordship will possibly now suspect that I am an author by profession—you are not deceived; and you will be less so, if you believe that I am disposed to serve his majesty under your lordship's future patronage and protection, with greater zeal, if possible, than ever.
I have the honour to be, my lord, &c.,
This application, as appears from its date, had been addressed to a member of the Bute administration, and within a year after it was written, the author must have had to undergo the task of renewing his appeal, and changing his political principles. The path he had chosen out was one of danger and difficulty; but we have the satisfaction of knowing, that the reward of his submission to the powers that were, and of his contempt for common political prejudices, was duly continued to the day of his death.
The achievements of Guthrie in the literary world, it is not easy distinctly or satisfactorily to trace. The works which bear his name, would rank him as, perhaps, the most miscellaneous and extensive author in the world, but he is generally believed to have been as regardless of the preservation of his literary fame, as of his political constancy, and to have shielded the productions of authors less known to the world, under the sanction of his name. About the year 1763, he published "a complete History of the English Peerage, from the best authorities, illustrated with elegant copperplates of the arms of the nobility, &c." The noble personages, whose ancestors appeared in this work as the embodied models of all human perfection, were invited to correct and revise the portions in which they felt interested before they were committed to the press; nevertheless the work is full of mistakes, and has all the appearance of having been touched by a hasty though somewhat vigorous hand. Thus, the battle of Dettingen, as connected with the history of the duke of Cumberland, is mentioned as having taken place in June, 1744, while, in the account of the duke of Marlborough, the period retrogrades to 1742—both being exactly the same distance of time from the true era of the battle, which was 1743. Very nearly in the same neighbourhood, George the II. achieves the feat of leaving Hanover on the 16th of June, and reaching Aschaffenberg on the 10th of the same month; in a similar manner the house of peers is found addressing his majesty on the subject of the battle of Culloden on the 29th of August, 1746, just after the prorogation of parliament. To this work Mr Guthrie procured the assistance of Mr Ralph Bigland. Guthrie afterwards wrote a History of England in three large folios; it commences with the Conquest, and terminates, rather earlier than it would appear the author had at first intended, at the end of the Republic. This work has the merit of being
