2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
Autograph Letter Signed, “David Merick” 2p. folio, London, December 21, 1761, with integral leaf addressed “The Rev. Mr. Noah Merick Springfield, N. England” and reads in part: “...By the favour of Heaven I am in good health...and hope in time to be in a condition to return to N. England....you have doubtless heard of Mr. Pitt’s resignation, how much it is regretted may be judged by these lines called England’s Epithat. His jacent England’s Glory, Wisdom, Wit O Strange! all raised & buried in a Pitt. Sir, I can’t well omit giving you some account of the most magnificient sight I ever saw or perhaps ever shall, viz, that, as it is customary for the Kings, of England, the first year after they are crowned to dine in the City Hall with the Lord Mayor on the day that he is sworn, the ninth of last month was the day appointed, when I went to see the grand procession and it is thought to exceed that of the Coronation, indeed it is far beyond any discription I can give of it. Where I saw the King & Queen in their coach of state draawn by eight cream colour’d hroses with their manes tied up with blue ribbands, and all their royal attendance. I saw likewise the Princess Dowager the Kings mother and all the young Princes & Princesses and all the Royal family, almost all the Dukes and Lords of the Kingdom, all the foreign ambassadors, and the Lord Mayor with his attendance in his Superb Cargo Coach all over gilt so that if it had been all gold it could not have made a more grand appearance. And the entertainment is thought to be the grandest that ever was in London the King said it was the grandest that ever he saw, there were four hundred different dishes at the table and the most different sorts of wine that were ever known in England before. The whole cost the city nine thousand pounds sterling, one chandelier that hung over the Kings head cost eleven hundred pounds sterling. But what was remarkable was that Mr. Pitt came in the close of the Procession & had almost as much honour done him as the king himself...” VG. George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738– 29 January 1820 [N.S.]) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until 1 January 1801, and thereafter of the United Kingdom, formed by the union of Great Britain and Ireland, until his death. He was concurrently Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and thus prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire, until he became King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, and the first of Hanover to be born in Britain and speak English as his first language. George III's long reign was marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdom and much of the rest of Europe. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of its American colonies were soon lost in the American Revolutionary War, which led to the establishment of the United States. Later, the kingdom became involved in a series of wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, which finally concluded in the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
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