Exile," but when he found himself thus attacked on both sides
Bolingbroke resolved to cast Jacobitism to the winds, speak out like
a man, and vindicate himself in a way that might possibly restore
him to the service of his country. So in April, 1717, at the age of
thirty-nine, he began work upon what is justly considered the best
of his writings, his Letter to Sir William Windham.

Windham was a young Tory politician of good family and great wealth,
who had married a daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and had been
accepted by the Tories in the House of Commons as a leader, after
Henry St. John had been sent to the House of Lords. Windham was
"Dear Willie" to Bolingbroke, a constant friend, and in 1715 he was
sent to the Tower as a Jacobite. But he had powerful connections,
was kindly and not dangerous, and was soon back in his place in the
House fighting the Whigs. The Letter to Windham was finished in the
summer of 1717. Its frankness was only suited to the prospect of a
pardon. It was found that there was no such prospect, and the
Letter was not published until 1753, a year or two after its
writer's death.

Bolingbroke's first wife died in November, 1718. He married in 1720
a Marquise de Villette, with whom he lived on an estate called La
Source, near Orleans, at the source of the small river Loiret.
There he talked and wrote philosophy. His pardon was obtained in
May, 1723. In 1725 he was allowed by Act of Parliament the
possession of his family inheritance; but as the attainder was not
reversed he could never again sit in Parliament. So he came home in
1725, and bought an estate at Dawley, near Uxbridge. There he
philosophised in his own way and played at farming, discoursed with
Pope and plied his pen against the Whigs. In his letter to Pope,