The Mysteries of the Court of London by Pauline Clarendon — page 146: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE POCKETBOOK 143 to the task of deciphering the writing on the piece that remained; and after some degree of trouble,—for the traces of the ink were so deadened by time that they ap- peared only of a dingy brown in some parts and of a light dirty yellow in others, while the paper itself was so dis- coloured and brittle that it seemed as if 1t had been scorched at the fire, — the commercial traveller succeeded in making out the following fragment; written in a bold masculine hand: “ Take notice, all ye whom it men, by these presents, that I Wales, do hereby declare and a and solemnly consider to be my heaven and before God, the lik e Lightfoot, whom | sincerely, te all my heart and with all my so tenderly, and devotedly loveth heart and all her soul: and kno it may concern, that I do solem myself, before God and in the si when the will of the Almighty august and well-beloved father assent and most gracious permi of my marriage with the under or, In case.of perseverance in th grieves me, — then, on my acces these realms, on my sire’s demi I declare that I will, without de — and in token that we do alrea husband and wife, we have join to this document, in the pre this third day of April, One Th “ Witness, “WILLIAM STAMFORD, Bart.”’ Nothing could’ exceed the vexation and disappointment of the commercial traveller when, having perused the above fragment, he again and again sought fruitlessly amongst the contents of the pocketbook for the other halt of the paper. © That the document, if perfect, involved an important a — aaa tei eonnichool SS (GO)