Reported On This Day 280 Years Ago (July 10 1739): Prince of Wales gives cash gift to woman for her jailed husband

LONDON, June 19.

On their royal highnesses the prince and princess of Wales’s return from Gildford races, they alighted at Windsor, and walk’d thro’ the park at Datchet; but a shower of rain falling, their royal highnesses stood under a tree some time for shelter, when a woman of that town, whose husband was in goal for a debt of upwards of 10l. came up to his royal highness, and told him her husband’s case, whereupon his royal highness order’d eleven guineas to be given to the woman to free her husband. [The £10 debt is equivalent to about £2,400 in today’s money, the prince’s donation about £250. The prince was son of King George II, but estranged from him. He never reached the throne himself, but his son, aged one at this time, would become George III, the ‘king who lost America’]

Next week his grace the duke of Devonshire, lord lieutenant of Ireland, sets out for his seat at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, and goes from thence to Chester to embark for Ireland. [The 3rd duke was lord lieutenant of Ireland. The family had been a rich British family for more than 200 years and still is so today, with a grand Irish castle]

On the 19th instant the General Synod being assembled at Dunganon, the Rev. Mr John Cochran, dissenting minister of Killraights, the Moderator, preach’d an excellent Sermon from Rom. ii. 21. Thou therefore which reachest another, teachest thou not they self?

At which time he was succeeded in the Chair by the Rev. Mr. Robert Mc.Master, of the City of Dublin; and the General Synod was appointed to meet at Dungannon on the third Tuesday in June next.