493 President Holyoke to William Palmer

    Cambridge Oct. 9, 1750

    Reverend Sir

    I received your kind Letter of March 13th last past not before the beginning of the last Month and hereby gratefully acknowledge our Obligation to You, for that Favor but am very much affraid whether We shall be able to recover any thing of the Legacy you mention; We have been in the Law already upon the Affair and have expended upon it about 50s Sterling to no purpose and concluded the prosecution of the Matter in the year 1737, despairing of any success unless We had gone into much higher Charges which our Treasury could not afford. However Sir You seem to revive our hope, what therefore We begg of You, is to give us some account how that affair now stands, that We ourselves may judge what reason We may have for said hope. And in doing this, Pray you’l send us a Copy of that paragraph in Esq. Doddridge’s Will why the said Legacy is bequeathed to us as also copies of such other Papers as being duly authenticated may further instruct us how the Matter lies at Present, for which (as I have told Mr. Screech) I will refund you with Honour. As to the Cost of further Prosecution, whatever may be our incouragement doubt whether or not we shall be able to come into it, except upon the following Lay, viz. of no purchase no pay. It is now I think about sixty four year since We received any Thing of the said Legacy and had not received above five years of it before it faild; now as there are so great Arrearages due, if any Gentleman skilled in the Law will undertake the prosecution of the Matter, upon the abovementioned Lay, we shall immediately send powers over and our obligations to award him one hundred pound Sterl. or more of the said Arrearages if he shall succeed in the affair; but whether you can at present obtain such an Undertaker or not, if you will please to send the Copies abovementioned, for which as I said you shall be honourably paid, You’ll much oblige most humble Servant.

    Edwd. Holyoke

    Sir I begg you’d be so good as to give me an Answer to this and Please to superscribe it to me at Cambridge.

    [Endorsed:] Copy of a Letter to the Reverend Mr. William Palmer at Fremington near Barnstaple in the County of Devon, Gr. Britain, October 1750 respecting Esq. Doddridge bequest.

    College Papers, 1. 87 (No. 181). This is in answer to No. 491.