From Sir Th. Lutterell, baronet, of Dunster Castle, Somerset, to Dr H. Greenwell, Principal of S. Aldate's Hall, Oxon. — vij Aprill 1675
Reverend Sir,
Yours of the xviij past, concerning my nephew T. Lutterell at your hall, came to my hand on Holy Saturday & I shall reply now as the post permitts. I have read it twice & once more.
I take it not unkindly that you have spoken to him twice, & without amendment; that is the matter precisely upon which I would have you speake to him a third time, & not with the soft voice. He is the son of my brother Edward, gone these eleven yeares, & I have stood his father since; if he hath the looseness of his father he hath also the head, when it is putt to him; & I would rather you putt it to him sharply than that he should returne home to me at the long vacation with the same habit of minde he tooke up with him at Michaelmas.
Concerning the reckoning. The summe you state of xxxix s & odd money for the terme is no great matter, & shall be discharged at Easter as you advise, with the addition of two pieces for the candle, which I doe not begrudge him; he was ever afraid of the dark. The prayer-fines I shall not pay upon a foot-note. If there be xj of them in the one terme alone, as you write, then it is upon you to enter them ten by ten upon a list which he shall see, & to make him reade it, & to make him copy it out at the foot in his owne hand, & to make him set his name to it. The fines are nothinge; the copying is the matter. He will not forget what he hath copied with his owne hand.
Of the sack & clarett I will say onely this: my brother Edward at his age could drinke a fellow under the table & write a tolerable letter the morninge after; my nephew, by your account, can scarcely doe the one before he is unable to doe the other. The Lutterells of Dunster have not been a temperate familie. We have, however, alwayes been a writing one. See that he keepes his commonplace booke. Doe not, I beg you, signe the leafe for him when he hath not.
I am, sir, your obliged friend & well-wisher, &c.
— Th. Lutterell, of Dunster, baronet. Apud Dunster, in com. Somerset, this vij of Aprill anno Domini MDCLXXV.
post-scriptum. — My respects to Mr Sparke, your bursar. Tell him that the cask of sack he had from my house at the audit of MDCLXXIII hath been remember'd; if the hall findes itselfe short this terme he hath but to write. There is a butt new come up the channel that I had as soone see the inside of his cellar as my owne.