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Wooburn, near Beaconsfield, Bucks, 12th. Sepr. 1790.

My dear Grenville,

Though I was very much obliged to you for Your Letter of the 5th. Inst. which I received yesterday, yet I will own that its contents surprized me exceedingly.

After the Pains I took, in two Conversations with Symes before His Departure for Gibraltar, & in Two Letters I wrote Him in the strongest Terms since He has been gone, I very little expected He could have so egregiously have mistaken me, as to have required what is next to an Impossibility at my Hands.

Whether P: Edward's Income is, or is not, adequate to His Expences, is by no means the Question before Us; the point at present We are to think of, is, where the money is to come from before the next Quarter Payment, not one single Six pence of H. R. H. being in my Hands, as Col. Symes very well knows. Do either P. Edward or the Colonel expect me to do, what the richest Banker in London would laugh at them for asking, namely, that I, a private person, should, without a Shadow of Security, lend H. R. H. £ 500? I own to You very fairly it is neither in my Power nor my Inclination to do so; Not only the Domestick Duty I owe my own Family prevents my running any Risques, that the Duty I owe to the D. of York while I am in the Honor of being His Treasurer, forbids my being a Lender of Money to any Creature breathing. If I was so, I might be justly liable to very Ill- natured Suspicions. I set out with Steadily refusing the being so when I was first made Treasurer to the Prince of Wales, have continued