own, and enjoined her never to inform him of his true parents. Instead
of defending his tender years, she took delight to see him struggling
with misery, and continued her persecution, from the first hour of his
life to the last, with an implacable and restless cruelty. His mother,
indeed, could not affect others with the same barbarity, and though she,
whose tender sollicitudes should have supported him, had launched him
into the ocean of life, yet was he not wholly abandoned. The lady Mason,
mother to the countess, undertook to transact with the nurse, and
superintend the education of the child. She placed him at a grammar
school near St. Albans, where he was called by the name of his nurse,
without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other. While he
was at this school, his father, the earl of Rivers, was seized with a
distemper which in a short time put an end to his life. While the earl
lay on his death-bed, he thought it his duty to provide for him, amongst
his other natural children, and therefore demanded a positive account of
him. His mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, determined, at
least, to give such, as should deprive him for ever of that happiness
which competency affords, and declared him dead; which is, perhaps, the
first instance of a falshood invented by a mother, to deprive her son of
a provision which was designed him by another. The earl did not imagine
that there could exist in nature, a mother that would ruin her son,
without enriching herself, and therefore bestowed upon another son six
thousand pounds, which he had before in his will bequeathed to Savage.
The same cruelty which incited her to intercept this provision intended
him, suggested another project, worthy of such a disposition. She
endeavoured to rid herself from the danger of being at any time made
known to him, by sending him secretly to the American Plantations; but
in this contrivance her malice was defeated.

Being still restless in the persecution of her son, she formed another