Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Catherine Otway Cave to Lady Morgan, 14 August [1839]
Thomas’s Hotel,
Wednesday Evening, August 14th.
My dear Lady Morgan,
I am going to be very troublesome, but I am quite sure
you will be kind and indulgent. The case is this:—The Lord Chancellor has fixed to-morrow afternoon, at
half-past three o’clock, to give judgment as to my claim to the
Braye Peerage, and it is my
business to obtain a sufficient number of peers to form the committee; numbers
of whom, as you know are gone out of town, and I have a thousand fears, lest we
should ![]()
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fail in obtaining the right number, for a female,
and an aged one like myself, must of course find it a
difficult task, without the aid of kind friends. The purport, therefore, of
this application, my dear Madam, is to request you would do me the favour to
ask any peers, who are friends of yours (and very many,
I know, are on your list), to be at the House of Lords to-morrow, rather before
three o’clock, as that is the hour which the Lord Chancellor has fixed to
give the final judgment. If you can, without inconvenience, do me this favour,
I need not say what an essential service you would render me, and my servant
shall call at your house to-morrow morning, at any hour you may kindly appoint,
in case you may write any notes for him to convey; and, perhaps, you would be
so good as to give him the directions to each. I am quite distressed to give
you such trouble, but will not detain you with more of this.
Remaining with best compliments to Sir Charles,
Your much obliged,
PS.—I would have called
to petition you in person, but my carriage has been in a distant quarter
all the day, and I could not leave the house.
I shall hope to call very soon, after the present
fatigue is over.
Sir Thomas Charles Morgan (1780-1843)
English physician and philosophical essayist who married the novelist Sydney Owenson in
1812; he was the author of
Sketches of the Philosophy of Morals
(1822). He corresponded with Cyrus Redding.
Sarah Otway, baroness Braye [née Cave] (1768-1862)
The daughter of Sir Thomas Cave, sixth baronet; in 1790 she married Henry Otway; in 1839
she succeeded to the title of third Baroness Braye.
