Contents
Finance to cover them should be available from the 'money due [...] from the Collectors of ye Bullion' [presumably meaning Daniel Stewart's executors: see MINT00402, MINT00403, MINT00421 (Mint 19/3/131, 46, 44)] which is now being called in, from coinage duty, and from the annual parliamentary allowance of £1,200. 'I presume my Ld Treasurer will give order about it next winter', but Parliament being now in recess and no full account of the arrears owed by the collectors having been received, it is unlikely anything will be done before then. Suggests the addressee draw up a full account and present it to the Treasurer, ideally through the Secretary of State, after the recess.
Preceded on the same page by a holograph draft of MINT00426(a) (Mint 19/3/164).
Note
[NC gives the addressee as Lauderdale and suggests this may be a reply to MINT00429 (Mint 19/3/55). But see MINT00426(b) (Mint 19/3/164). Though very different in wording, the two drafts are very similar in purport, and though published in NC as separate letters of separate (conjectural) dates to separate (conjectural) correspondents, it does not seem unlikely that they represent variant drafts of the same thing, especially since both immediately follow (on the same side in both cases) a draft of a letter about Robert Millar [MINT00426(a) (Mint 19/3/164)]. That the letter about Millar is almost certainly to Seafield lends weight to the speculation that this one is as well.]
Related Material
Printed in NC, 5: 1-2.