Autograph letter signed : Holly Lodge, to C[harles] Ross, 1859 Feb. 24.

Commenting on an account of the circumstances surrounding the receipt of the news of Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown by Lord George [Germain]; referring to a dispatch by Sir Henry Clinton "which is now lying before me. Mine bears date the 29th of October 1781. It was brought to England by the Rattlesnake Sloop, and was published in London on Tuesday the 27th of November, the day of the meeting of Parliament. That dispatch certainly does not contain the articles of the Capitulation of York Town. but it contains very much more than gloomy anticipation. Indeed a dispatch containing nothing worse than gloomy anticipations, even if those anticipations were confirmed by French reports, would hardly have been thought sufficient to justify the King in announcing to his Parliament, as an unquestioned fact, that he has lost an army. Sir Henry's words are 'He cannot entertain the least doubt of his Lordship's having capitulated'. Wraxall says that the dispatch arrived in Pall Mall about noon on the 25th - a circumstance which he can have learned only from the report of others. He may have been misinformed; and the endorsement which you mention makes it probable that he was misinformed, and that the news reached Lord George [Germain] before daybreak. But surely such a mistake does not justify us in believing that the whole story of the dinner and the conversation is a circumstantial and deliberate lie. In general I think that Wraxall may be trusted as to the substance of what he himself heard and saw. It was when he repeated what others had told him that he was utterly untrustworthy. For my part I have no doubt that he dined with Lord George on this memorable Sunday and that the table talk was such as is related in the Memoirs. Some inaccuracies there will be in the most veracious and exact account - which any man can give, from memory, of events which happened more than thirty years ago. Such inaccuracies there are in this part of Wraxall's narrative, but I really think only such. It is from no partiality to Sir Nathaniel that on this occasion I take this part. I dislike his politics, his temper, his style, I think ill of his principles, and I despise his understanding. But of the particular charge which you bring against him, I must acquit him;" concluding that he feels his book is "full of interest" but if he should reread it, he will mention any errors he finds.