letter to Thurlow, asking him to exchange the two livings in Dorsetshire
for two other, of more value, in the Vale of Belvoir. Crabbe waited on
the Chancellor with the letter, but Thurlow was, or affected to be,
annoyed by the request. It was a thing, he exclaimed with an oath, that
he would not do "for any man in England." However, when the young and
beautiful duchess later appealed to him in person, he relented, and
presented Crabbe to the two livings of Muston in Leicestershire, and
Allington in Lincolnshire, both, within sight of Belvoir Castle, and (as
the crow flies) not much more than a mile apart. To the rectory house of
Muston, Crabbe brought his family in February 1789. His connection with
the two livings was to extend over five and twenty years, but during
thirteen of those years, as will be seen, he was a non-resident. For the
present he remained three years at the small and very retired village of
Muston, about five miles from Grantham. "The house in which Crabbe
lived at Muston," writes Mr. Hutton,[2] "is now pulled down. It is
replaced by one built higher up a slight hill, in a position intended,
says scandal, to prevent any view of Belvoir. Crabbe with all his
ironies had no such resentful feelings; indeed more modern successors of
his have opened what he would have called a 'vista,' and the castle
again crowns the distance as you look southward from the pretty garden."

Crabbe's first three years of residence at Muston were marked by few
incidents. Another son, Edmund, was horn in the autumn of 1790, and a
few weeks later a series of visits were paid by Crabbe, his wife and
elder boy, to their relations at Aldeburgh, Parham, and Beccles, from
which latter town, according to Crabbe's son, they visited Lowestoft,
and were so fortunate as to hear the aged John Wesley preach, on a
memorable occasion when he quoted Anacreon:--

"Oft am I by women told,