Richd How I (Luin) to Chas, Coleburn Esq, Contradicting rumours that he has an estate...

HW/87/69

Richd How I (Luin) to Chas, Coleburn Esq, Contradicting rumours that he has an estate worth £500 p.a,, or of value £12,000, which may mislead friends at Mortlake, whom he begs to inform of the correct position : "I think I have not a foot of land more than I had at the time I compounded with my creditors who were very numerous & some of them very judicious & inspectious. the son-in-law of my chief trade creditor went to Bedfordshire at the time & to the village where my estate lays, made the strictest enquiry of the neighbours & of my own servant privately. yet on the report he made neither his father nor any other of the creditors thought it to take all my real estate & personall effects which I offered then but rather to accept 8/ in the pound which I verily believe in more than they could have made of everything of mine. This however is only a circumstantiall proof. I Will now give thee plain & direct facts.

"My wife bath hath a farm & 2 cottages of forty pounds a year purchased with mony given for her separate uses and vested in trustees. The farm 'being occupied by me In taxt together with my own estates, whereby something is saved. The whole together is taxt at somewhat less than one hundred & fifty pounds a year. I do not know the exact rents, haveing been purchast at severall times of diffring persons. but thus much I am positive of, all my own, exclusive of my wife's £40 a year hath never been lett for so much as one hundred & fifty pounds a year gross rent, & there are nine houses & cottages the repairs of which drawback onsiderably, On my estates there are four mortgagee for upwards of fifteen hundred pounds besides twenty three pounds a year annuitys on three lives payable thereout.

"But tis said I keep a chariott. which I acknowledge is true, tho' allmost tke whole use I make of it is to carry my wife once a week to meeting. However the horses were not paid for with her nor my mony but were bought and are maintain'd by a relation, tko' they go to cart & plow & do other business for me.

"Tis said my garden is kept up at considerable expense which is also true, but that expence is only in part sustained by me.

"Tis said I have built a magnificent house at many thousand pound expence. This is by no means true tho' I acknowledge to have laid out some money in building in the country within about 13 years past, but how much I cannot say, but I believe not much exceeding half of one thousand Pounds, what I have built haveing been a wash-house & room over it & small vault under it, a small counting house & warehouse with vault under them, & a little apartment over which I have lot to three tenants one after another for £6 a year. a coach house a dove house & a brick wall on one side of my garden. This is all the new building I recollect except a dwarf wall to the front of the courtyard. And as to repairs they have chiefly been on my outhouses such as barns & stable, for as to my dwelling house which was a good old building sasht by my brother before I had it, I durst scarse touch that for fear of fulfilling the Proverb of pulling an old house on my head, wherefore I did little but plaister the outside (it being brick & stud), new floor one room & rebuild the staircase, except necessary amendmentt of tileing or suck other unavoidable repairs. ."

English