91. Charles Mason, D. D. Trinity Coll:

My worthy friend, Dr. Mason, is a man of singular ingenuity and parts, and of as singular oddity. All honesty, bluntness, and rusticity, both in his person and behaviour. He is of Shropshire, was Woodwardian Professor, which, with a senior Fellowship of Trinity College, he gave up for a wife at the age of about 65, with venerable grey hairs. She is of an excellent person, and good accomplishments, and makes the Doctor an admirable wife: her name was Graham, a natural daughter, as I have been told, of the Ormond family, of the name of Butler. The Doctor lives now wholly at his rectory of Orwell, but has been in a declining way these 20 months, (I write this, Jan. 27, 1769,) and does not the parochial duty himself. He has large collections of the history of this country, both of his own collecting, and those of Mr. Rutherforth of Passworth, given to him by Professor Rutherforth his son. The Doctor has also made great progress in a map of Cambridgeshire on a large scale, which I have often seen at his chambers. He has a great turn for mechanics, and had a forge in his apartments for iron works: and by his hands one would think he had actually served an apprenticeship to a blacksmith, and never occupied any other profession."

"Poor Dr. Mason died at Orwell on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 1770, after a very painful and tedious illness: his chief complaint was a dropsy. He had been scarified at his lodgings in Cambridge about August, and soon after went to Orwell. His death was expected day after day for these six months, and if he had not been of a most athletic constitution, he could never have held out so long against the opinion of all the faculty at Cambridge, who all had sentenced him so often, that they began to suspect the rules of their art."

92. Andrew Perne, Fellow of Peter House.

"He married a Miss Dickman of Cambridge, and was presented by Mr. Piget of Basingbourn to the Rectory of Abington,

Co. Camb. on a condition of residing half the time there, and the other half at his living of Norton in Suffolk; which he complied with till Mr. Pigot relieved him from his obligation on account of his age and inconvenience, so that lately he lived wholly at Norton, where he died, 1772, or beginning of 1773. I know Mr. Oldham of Peterhouse told me yesterday [I write this, Frid. Mar. 19, 1773] at Brenet College, that he was presented by the College to Norton. Mr. Perne was a very good sort of cheerful man, and I was much obliged to him many years ago for the gift of a good part of the original MSS. of Mr. Layer's History of Cambridgeshire, which he met with as waste paper at an apothecary's at Royston. Junior Taxor, 1733. He died, 1773, and left a son at Peter House, who is now married to one of the name of Smith, near Bungay, and lives in his house at Little Abington, in which I was born: the house at Bournbridge, standing on the confines of that and Baberham, where my father's house and farm lay. His brother, John Perne, had a son at Oxford, who died, and two daughters: so that their elder brother's estate at Knapwell was sold and divided."

93. Michael Lort, B.D. Fellow of Trinity College, 1770,

"This learned and ingenious gentleman is of Welsh extraction, educated in Westminster school, afterwards in Trinity College, from whence he removed into the family of the great ornament of his profession, and most eminent scholar, Dr. Richard Mead, to whom he was librarian till his death. Mr. Lort published last year at the Commencement and Installation of his Grace the Duke of Grafton a MS. Account of the University of Cambridge, in 4to. which he gave to me, Feb. 6, 1770. Mr. Lort told me that the famous Corsican General, Pascal Paoli, was one of his audience in Lambeth chapel to see the ceremony of an Anglican Consecration. In Jan. 1771, collated by Abp. Cornwallis to the Rectory of St. Matthew, Friday Street, united to St. Peter's, Cheap, London: so that he will now quit the Vicarage of Botisham, which he has served for some few years. Dr. Thomas,

Dean of Ely, his second wife is a relation of Mr. Lort, and the Abp. is a most hearty friend to the Dean. The Abp. offered him the Rectory of St. Dunstan's in the East, vacant by the Archd. Jortin's death; but as it would have vacated his Fellowship, by being too much in the King's books, Mr. Winstanley quitted St Matthew's to accommodate it, and took St. Dunstan's.

"In the preface, p. 8, of the new edition of the Biographia Britannica, under the auspices of independent teachers, they ostentatiously hold forth the name of the Rev. Mr. Lort, Chaplain to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, at full length, as con tributor to the work: which is only that the members of the Established Church may be deceived, in believing that it was promoted and set on foot by that persuasion.

"Dr. Lort told me, Dec. 3, 1780, that he had a paper in the Gent. Mag. of Nov. signed Historicus, upon Wm. of Worcesters and that the letter signed B. in the same Mag. of Nov. upon Pul pit Cushions and Coffee, was by George Ashby of Barrow.

*Gent. Mag. for 1780, p. 513, Historicus by him, as he told me, Dec. 3, 1780.

94, Wm. Heberden, M. D. Fell. of St. John's.

"This gentleman practised with so great success his profession at Cambridge, that for many years before he left the place, which he did with regret, as he told me often both before and since, he was invited by men of the greatest name in London of his profession to come there, as Drs. Wilmot, Mead, &c. He left Cambridge in 1749, and lived in Cecil Street. He read every year for many years a course of lectures on the Materia Medica, and collected for that purpose a choice collection of specimens, which he presented in 1750 to St. John's Coll. He was for two or three seasons at Scarborough, as a physician, and met there with abundant success. A man of great and universal knowledge in books and men; of a sweet and winning aspect and behaviour; most temperate in his way of life, which as a philosopher he carries perhaps into excess. He has printed several small treatises in his way, but never published them,

.i

"Remarks on the Pump Water of London, and on the Method of procuring the purest Water, by Wm. Heberden, M. D. Fell. of the Coll. of Physicians, and of the Royal Society. Read at the College, June 22, 1767. This short essay is printed in the London Chronicle of March 26 and 29, 1768, and in the Medical Transactions published by the College of Physicians in London, vol. i. 8vo. p. 472..

“ANTIOHPIAKA, an Essay on Mithridatium and Theriaca. By W. Heber den, M. D. 1745, 8vo. Printed at Cambridge by Mr. Jos. Bentham, but not so said in title. Pages 19. Given to me by Dr. Heberden, April 27, 1745.

"In my interleaved Carter's Cambridge, at p. 260 I have long ago entered this note.

“Wm. Heberden, M.D. my most worthy friend, long practised with the greatest success at Cambridge, where he also read annually lectures on the Materia Medica at the anatomy schools opposite Queen's College Chapel, and almost contiguous to the S. W. corner of St. Catherine's Hall, ́one course of which I attended. It was no small piece of good fortune to the physic professor, Dr. Russell Plumptre, who was neither liked, nor had much practice, that Dr. Heberden's great character called him to London, where he had the greatest success and practice. He and I constantly almost spent our evenings at poor Dr. Middleton's, where, if ever we staid supper, was never any thing beside a tart and bread and cheese; both Dr. Heberden and Dr. Middleton being persons of the greatest abstemiousness I ever met with, rarely drinking more than one glass of wine. After Dr. Heberden settled in town, he married a daughter of Mr. Martin of Worcestershire, brother to Mr. Martin of Quy in Cambridgeshire, and I have dined with him several times, while I was Rector of Hornsey, near London, and during my residence there, in Cecil Street. After her death he married a daughter of Francis Wollaston, Esq. of Charter House Square, in Jan. 1760.

"Dr. Heberden, before he left Cambridge, was very desirous of marrying a daughter of Dr. Clark, Dean of Salisbury, who lived in an house opposite St. Clement's Church; but she did not accord, and married a physician of Salisbury, Dr. Jacob, formerly

Fellow of King's College, a younger man, and better person; although Dr. Heberden, a tall, thin, spare man, was perfectly well made, and of a florid countenance, shortsighted. I thought it remarkable that he should ever establish himself in London; because, whenever he had occasion to go thither from Cambridge, as he had frequent calls of that sort, I have heard him say often and often, that the air was so dissimilar to his constitution and lungs, that he could never stay there, but always lodged at some miles distant. Great Genii deal often in paradoxes. He soon reconciled him to an air that so amply filled his pockets. He has a son now at St. John's, March 9, 1773."

95. Charles Plumptre, D. D. Archdeacon of Ely, 1771. Rector of St. Mary, Woolnoth, London.

"Dr. Plumptre was son of Mr. Plumptre, Member for Nottingham, educated at Mr. Newcome's school at Hackney, then sent to Clare Hall, where he was my Fellow Collegian, and took his first degree in Arts there, where he was much in the familiarity, friendship, and acquaintance of his school-fellow, and my dear and ever esteemed friend, Tho. Western, of Rivenhall in Essex, Esq. He thence removed to a Fellowship of Queen's College, and was offered the Mastership of that College on the death of Mr. Sedgwick, but had the address to get his brother, Robert Plumptre, who married my nephew Newcome's sister, elected in his stead: he rather chusing to attach himself in his London situation to his great friend, Mr. Charles Yorke, who died, unluckily for him, just as he was made Lord Chancellor of England. The old Lord Hardwick had given him very early the Rectory of Wimpole, and got him the adjoining parish of Whaldon. Wimpole he quitted, and was succeeded in it by his brother Robert, now Master of Queen's. He is now beneficed in London, Archdeacon of Ely, and D. D. How he quitted the Chaplainship of Abp. Secker is related in another place. He is a very worthy man, thin and sharp-nosed, as is his brother; which is a presump