Chapter III: Part 3

Mrs. Trant, whom I have named above, had been preparing herself for the retired abstemious life of a Carmelite by taking a surfeit of the pleasures of Paris, when, a little before the death of the Queen, or about that time, she went into England. What she was entrusted either by the Chevalier, or any other person, to negotiate there, I am ignorant of; and it imports not much to know. In that journey she made or renewed an acquaintance with the Duke of Ormond. The scandalous chronicle affirms that she brought with her, when she returned into France, a woman of whom I have not the least knowledge, but who was probably handsome, since without beauty such a merchandise would not have been saleable, nor have answered the design of the importer; and that she made this way her court to the Regent. Whatever her merit was, she kept a correspondence with him, and put herself upon that foot of familiarity which he permits all those who contribute to his pleasures to assume. She was placed by him, as she told me herself, where I found her some time after that which I am speaking of, in the house of an ancient gentlewoman who had formerly been Maid of Honour to Madame, and who had contracted at Court a spirit of intrigue which accompanied her in her retreat.

These two had associated to them the Abbé de Tesieu in all the political parts of their business; for I will not suppose that so reverend an ecclesiastic entered into any other secret. This Abbé is the Regent’s secretary; and it was chiefly through him that the private treaty had been carried on between his master and the Earl of Stair in the King’s reign. Whether the priest had stooped at the lure of a cardinal’s hat, or whether he acted the second part by the same orders that he acted the first, I know not. This is sure, and the British Minister was not the bubble of it—that whilst he concerted measures on one hand to traverse the Pretender’s designs, he testified on the other all the inclination possible to his service. A mad fellow who had been an intendant in Normandy, and several other politicians of the lowest form, were at different times taken into this famous Junto.

With these worthy people his Grace of Ormond negotiated; and no care was omitted on his part to keep me out of the secret. The reason of which, as far as I am able to guess at, shall be explained to you by-and-by. I might very justly have taken this proceeding ill, and the duke will not be able to find in my whole conduct towards him anything like it; I protest to you very sincerely I was not in the least moved at it.

He advanced not a step in his business with these sham Ministers, and yet imagined that he got daily ground. I made no progress with the true ones, but I saw it. These, however, were not our only difficulties. We lay under another, which came from your side, and which embarrassed us more. The first hindered us from working forward to our point of view, but the second took all point of view from us.

A paper was sent into England just before the death of the King of France, which had been drawn by me at Chaville in concert with the Dukes of Ormond and Berwick, and with Monsieur de Torcy. This paper was an answer to the memorial received from thence. The state of this country was truly represented in it: the difference was fixed between what had been asked, and what might be expected from France; and upon the whole it was demanded what our friends would do, and what they would have us to do. The reply to this came through the French Secretary of State to our hands. They declared themselves unable to say anything till they should see what turn affairs would take on so great an event as the death of the King, the report of which had reached them.

Such a declaration shut our mouths and tied our hands. I confess I knew neither how to solicit, nor what to solicit; this last message suspending the project on which we had acted before, and which I kept as an instruction constantly before my eyes. It seemed to me uncertain whether you intended to go on, or whether your design was to stifle, as much as possible, all past transactions; to lie perfectly still; to throw upon the Court the odium of having given a false alarm; and to wait till new accidents at home, and a more favourable conjuncture abroad, might tempt you to resume the enterprise. Perhaps this would have been the wisest game you could have played: but then you should have concerted it with us who acted for you here. You intended no such thing, as appeared afterwards: and therefore those who acted for the party at London, whoever they were, must be deemed inexcusable for leaving things on the foot of this message, and giving us no advice fit to be depended upon for many weeks. Whilst preparations were to be made, and the work was to be set a-going by assistance from hence, you might reasonably expect to hear from us, and to be determined by us: but when all hopes of this kind seemed to be gone, it was your part to determine us; and we could take no resolution here but that of conforming ourselves to whatever should come prescribed from England.

Whilst we were in this condition, the most desperate that can be imagined, we began to receive verbal messages from you that no more time was to be lost, and that the Chevalier should come away. No man was, I believe, ever so embarrassed as I found myself at that time. I could not imagine that you would content yourselves by loose verbal messages, after all that had happened, to call us over; and I knew by experience how little such messages are to be depended on. For soon after I engaged in these affairs, a monk arrived at Bar, despatched, as he affirmed, by the Duke of Ormond, in whose name he insisted that the Chevalier should hasten into Britain, and that nothing but his presence was wanting to place the crown on his head. The fellow delivered his errand so positively, and so circumstantially, that the resolution was taken at Bar to set out, and my rendezvous to join the Chevalier was appointed me. This method to fetch a King, with as little ceremony as one would invite a friend to supper, appeared somewhat odd to me, who was then very new in these affairs. But when I came to talk with the man, for by good luck he had been sent for from Bar to Paris, I easily discerned that he had no such commission as he pretended to, and that he acted of his own head. I presumed to oppose the taking any resolution upon his word, though he was a monk: and soon after we knew from the Duke of Ormond himself that he had never sent him.

This example made me cautious; but that which determined my opinion was, that I could never imagine, without supposing you all run mad, that the same men who judged this attempt unripe for execution, unless supported by regular troops from France, or at least by all the other assistances which are enumerated above, while the design was much more secret than at present; when the King had no fleet at sea, nor more than eight thousand men dispersed over the whole island; when we had the good wishes of the French Court on our side, and were sure of some particular assistances, and of a general connivance; that the same men, I say, should press for making it now without any other preparation, when we had neither money, arms, ammunition, nor a single company of foot; when the Government of England was on its guard, national troops were raised, foreign forces sent for, and France, like all the rest of the Continent, against us. I could not conceive such a strange combination of accidents as should make the necessity of acting increase gradually upon us as the means of doing so were taken from us.

Upon the whole matter, my opinion was, and I did not observe the Duke of Ormond to differ from me, that we should wait till we heard from you in such a manner as might assure us of what you intended to do yourselves, and of what you expected from us; and that in the meanwhile we should go as far as the little money which we had, and the little favour which was shown us would allow, in getting some embarkations ready on the coast.

Sir George Byng had come into the road of Havre, and had demanded by name several ships which belonged to us to be given up to him. The Regent did not think fit to let him have the ships; but he ordered them to be unloaded, and their cargoes were put into the King’s magazines. We were in no condition to repair the loss; and therefore when I mention embarkations, you will please to understand nothing more than vessels to transport the Pretender’s person and the persons of those who should go over with him. This was all we could do, and this was not neglected.

We were thus employed when a gentleman arrived from Scotland to represent the state of that country, and to require a definitive answer from the Chevalier whether he would have the insurrection to be made immediately, which they apprehended they might not be able to make at all if they were obliged to defer it much longer. This gentleman was sent instantly back again, and was directed to let the persons he came from know that the Chevalier was desirous to have the rising of his friends in England and Scotland so adjusted that they might mutually assist each other and distract the enemy; that he had not received a final answer from his friends in England, but that he was in daily expectation of it; that it was very much to be wished that all attempts in Scotland could be suspended till such time as the English were ready; but that if the Scots were so pressed that they must either submit or rise immediately, he was of opinion they should rise, and he would make the best of his way to them.

What this forwardness in the Scots and this uncertainty and backwardness in the English must produce, it was not hard to foresee; and, therefore, that I might neglect nothing in my power to prevent any false measures—as I was conscious to myself that I had neglected nothing to promote true ones—I despatched a gentleman to London, where I supposed the Earl of Mar to be, some days before the message I have just spoken of was sent to Scotland. I desired him to make my compliments to Lord Mar, and to tell him from me that I understood it to be his sense, as well as the sense of all our friends, that Scotland could do nothing effectually without the concurrence of England, and that England would not stir without assistance from abroad; that he might assure himself no such assistance could be depended upon; and that I begged of him to make the inference from these propositions. The gentleman went; but upon his arrival at London he found that the Earl of Mar was already set out to draw the Highlanders into arms. He communicated his message to a person of confidence, who undertook to send it after his lordship; and this was the utmost which either he or I could do in such a conjuncture.

You were now visibly departed from the very scheme which you had sent us over, and from all the principles which had been ever laid down. I did what I could to keep up my own spirit, as well as the spirits of the Chevalier, and of all those with whom I was in correspondence: I endeavoured even to deceive myself. I could not remedy the mischief, and I was resolved to see the conclusion of the perilous adventure; but I own to you that I thought then, and that I have not changed my opinion since, that such measures as these would not be pursued by any reasonable man in the most common affairs of life. It was with the utmost astonishment that I saw them pursued in the conduct of an enterprise which had for its object nothing less than the disposition of crowns, and for the means of bringing it about nothing less than a civil war.

Impatient that we heard nothing from England, when we expected every moment to hear that the war was begun in Scotland, the Duke of Ormond and I resolved to send a person of confidence to London. We instructed him to repeat to you the former accounts which we had sent over, to let you know how destitute the Chevalier was either of actual support or even of reasonable hopes, and to desire that you would determine whether he should go to Scotland or throw himself on some part of the English coast. This person was further instructed to tell you that, the Chevalier being ready to take any resolution at a moment’s warning, you might depend on his setting out the instant he received your answer; and, therefore, that to save time, if your intention was to rise, you would do well to act immediately, on the assurance that the plan you prescribed, be it what it would, should be exactly complied with. We took this resolution the rather because one of the packets, which had been prepared in cypher to give you an account of things, which had been put above three weeks before into Monsieur de Torcy’s hands, and which by consequence we thought to be in yours, was by this time sent back to me by this Minister (I think, open), with an excuse that he durst not take upon him to forward it.

The person despatched to London returned very soon to us, and the answer he brought was, that since affairs grew daily worse, and could not mend by delay, our friends in England had resolved to declare immediately, and that they would be ready to join the Chevalier on his landing; that his person would be as safe there as in Scotland, and that in every other respect it was better that he should land in England; that they had used their utmost endeavours, and that they hoped the western counties were in a good posture to receive him. To this was added a general indication of the place he should come to, as near to Plymouth as possible.

You must agree that this was not the answer of men who knew what they were about. A little more precision was necessary in dictating a message which was to have such consequences, and especially since the gentleman could not fail to acquaint the persons he spoke with that the Chevalier was not able to carry men enough to secure him from being taken up even by the first constable. Notwithstanding this, the Duke of Ormond set out from Paris and the Chevalier from Bar. Some persons were sent to the North of England and others to London to give notice that they were both on their way. Their routes were so ordered that the Duke of Ormond was to sail from the coast of Normandy some days before the Chevalier arrived at St. Malo, to which place the duke was to send immediate notice of his landing; and two gentlemen acquainted with the country, and perfectly well known to all our friends in those parts, were despatched before, that the people of Devonshire and Somersetshire, who were, we concluded, in arms, might be apprised of the signals which were to be made from the ships, and might be ready to receive the duke.

On the coast of France, and before his embarkation, the duke heard that several of our principal friends had been seized immediately after the person who came last from them had left London, that the others were all dispersed, and that the consternation was universal. He embarked, notwithstanding this melancholy news, and, supported by nothing but the firmness of his temper, he went over to the place appointed; he did more than his part, and he found that our friends had done less than theirs. One of the gentlemen who had passed over before him, and had traversed part of the country, joined him on the coast, and assured him that there was not the least room to expect a rising; in a word, he was refused a night’s lodging in a country which we had been told was in a good posture to receive the Chevalier, and where the duke expected that multitudes would repair to him.

He returned to the coast of Brittany after this uncomfortable expedition, where the Chevalier arrived about the same time from Lorraine. What his Grace proposed by the second attempt, which he made as soon as the vessel could be refitted, to land in the same part of the island, I profess myself to be ignorant. I wrote him my opinion at the time, and I have always thought that the storm in which he had like to have been cast away, and which forced him back to the French coast, saved him from a much greater peril—that of perishing in an attempt as full of extravagant rashness, and as void of all reasonable meaning, as any of those adventures which have rendered the hero of La Mancha immortal.

The Chevalier had now but one of these two things left him to do: one was to return to Bar; the other was to go to Scotland, where there were people in arms for him. He took this last resolution. He left Brittany, where he had as many Ministers as there were people about him, and where he was eternally teased with noisy disputes about what was to be done in circumstances in which no reasonable thing could be done. He sent to have a vessel got ready for him at Dunkirk, and he crossed the country as privately as he could.

Whilst all these things passed I remained at Paris to try if by any means some assistance might be at last procured, without which it was evident, even to those who flattered themselves the most, that the game was up.

No sooner was the Duke of Ormond gone from Paris on the design which I have mentioned, and Mrs. Trant, who had accompanied him part of the way, returned, but I was sent for to a little house at Madrid, in the Bois de Boulogne, where she lived with Mademoiselle de Chaussery, the ancient gentlewoman with whom the Duke of Orleans had placed her. These two persons opened to me what had passed whilst the Duke of Ormond was here, and the hopes they had of drawing the Regent into all the measures necessary to support the attempts which were making in favour of the Chevalier.

By what they told me at first I saw that they had been trusted, and by what passed in the course of my treating with them it appeared that they had the access which they pretended to. All which I had been able to do by proper persons and in proper methods, since the King of France’s death, amounting to little or nothing, I resolved, at last, to try what was to be done by this indirect way. I put myself under the conduct of these female managers, and without having the same dependence on them as his Grace of Ormond had, I pushed their credit and their power as far as they reached during the time I continued to see them. I met with smoother language and greater hopes than had been given me hitherto. A note signed by the Regent, supposed to be written to a woman, but which was to be explained to be intended for the Earl of Mar, was put into my hands to be sent to Scotland. I took a copy of it, which you may see at the end of these papers. When Sir John Areskine came to press for succour, the Regent was prevailed upon by these women to see him; but he carried nothing real back with him except a quantity of gold, part of the money which we had drawn from Spain, and which was lost, with the vessel, in a very odd manner, on the Scotch coast. The Duke of Ormond had been promised seven or eight thousand arms, which were drawn out of the magazines, and said to be lodged, I think, at Compiègne. I used my utmost efforts that these arms might be carried forward to the coast, and I undertook for their transportation, but all was in vain, so that the likelihood of bringing anything to effect in time appeared to me no greater than I had found it before I entered into this intrigue.

I soon grew tired of a commerce which nothing but success could render tolerable, and resolved to be no longer amused by the pretences which were daily repeated to me, that the Regent had entertained personal prejudices against me, and that he was insensibly and by degrees to be dipped in our measures; that both these things required time, but that they would certainly be brought about, and that we should then be able to answer all the expectations of the English and the Scotch. The first of these pretences contained a fact which I could hardly persuade myself to be true, because I knew very certainly that I had never given His Royal Highness the least occasion for such prejudices; the second was a work which might spin out into a great and uncertain length. I took my resolution to drive what related to myself to an immediate explanation, and what related to others to an immediate decision; not to suffer any excuse for doing nothing to be founded on my conduct, nor the salvation, if I could hinder it, of so many gallant men as were in arms in Scotland, to rest on the success of such womanish projects. I shall tell you what I did on the first head now, and what I did on the second, hereafter, in its proper place.

The fact which it was said the Regent laid to my charge was a correspondence with Lord Stair, and having been one night at his house from whence I did not retire till three in the morning. As soon as I got hold of this I desired the Marshal of Berwick to go to him. The Marshal told him, from me, that I had been extremely concerned to hear in general that I lay under his displeasure; that a story, which it was said he believed, had been related to me; that I expected the justice, which he could deny to no man, of having the accusation proved, in which case I was contented to pass for the last of humankind, or of being justified if it could not be proved. He answered that such a story had been related to him by such persons as he thought would not have deceived him; that he had been since convinced that it was false, and that I should be satisfied of his regard for me; but that he must own he was very uneasy to find that I, who could apply to him through the Marshal d’Huxelles, could choose to treat with Mrs. Trant and the rest; for he named all the cabal, except his secretary, whom I had never met at Mademoiselle Chaussery’s. He added that these people teased him, at my instigation, to death, and that they were not fit to be trusted with any business. He applied to some of them the severest epithets. The Marshal of Berwick replied that he was sure I should receive the whole of what he had been pleased to say with the greatest satisfaction; that I had treated with those persons much against my will; and, finally, that if his Royal Highness would not employ them he was sure I would never apply to them. In a conversation which I had not long after with him he spoke to me in much the same terms as he had done to the Marshal. I went from him very ill edified as to his intentions of doing anything in favour of the Chevalier; but I carried away with me this satisfaction, that he had assigned me, from his own mouth, the person through whom I should make my applications to him, and through whom I should depend on receiving his answers; that he had disavowed all the little politic clubs, and had commanded me to have no more to do with them.

Before I resume the thread of my narration give me leave to make some reflection upon what I have been last saying to you. When I met with the Duke of Ormond at his return from the coast, he thought himself obliged to say something to excuse his keeping me out of a secret which during his absence I had been let into. His excuse was that the Regent had exacted from him that I should know nothing of the matter. You will observe that the account which I have given you seems to contradict this assertion of his Grace, since it is hard to suppose that if the Regent had exacted that I should be kept out of the secret, these women would have dared to have let me into it, and since it is still harder to suppose that the Regent would make this express condition with the Duke of Ormond, and the moment the duke’s back was turned would suffer these women to tease him from me and to bring me answers from him. I am, however, far from taxing the duke with affirming an untruth. I believe the Regent did make such a condition with him; and I will tell you how I understand all this little management, which will explain a great deal to you. This Prince, with wit and valour, has joined all the irresolution of temper possible, and is, perhaps, the man in the world the least capable of saying “no” to your face. From hence it happened that these women, like multitudes of other people, forced him to say and do enough to give them the air of having credit with him and of being trusted by him. This drew in the Duke of Ormond, who is not, I daresay, as yet undeceived. The Regent never intended from the first to do anything, even indirectly, in favour of the Jacobite cause. His interest was plainly on the other side, and he saw it. But then the same weakness in his character carried him, as it would have done his great-uncle Gaston in the same case, to keep measures with the Chevalier. His double-trimming character prevailed on him to talk with the Duke of Ormond, but it carried him no farther. I question not but he did, on this occasion, what you must have observed many men to do: we not only endeavour to impose on the world, but even on ourselves; we disguise our weakness, and work up in our minds an opinion that the measure which we fall into by the natural or habitual imperfection of our character is the effect of a principle of prudence or of some other virtue. Thus the Regent, who saw the Duke of Ormond because he could not resist the importunity of Olive Trant, and who gave hopes to the duke because he can refuse nobody, made himself believe that it was a great strain of policy to blow up the fire and to keep Britain embroiled. I am persuaded that I do not err in judging that he thought in this manner, and here I fix the reason of his excluding me out of the commerce which he had with the Duke of Ormond, of his affecting a personal dislike of me, and of his avoiding any correspondence with me upon these matters, till I forced myself in a manner upon him, and he could not keep me any longer at a distance without departing from his first principle—that of keeping measures with everybody. He then threw me, or let me slide if you will, into the hands of these women; and when he found that I pressed him hard that way, too, he took me out of their hands and put me back again into the proper channel of business, where I had not been long, as you will see by-and-by, before the scene of amusement was finished.

Sir John Areskine told me when he came from the first audience that he had of his Royal Highness, that he put him in mind of the encouragement which he had given the Earl of Mar to take arms. I never heard anything of this kind but what Sir John let drop to me. If the fact be true, you see that the Scotch general had been amused by him with a witness. The English general was so in his turn; and while this was doing, the Regent might think it best to have him to himself. Four eyes comprehend more objects than two, and I was a little better acquainted with the characters of people, and the mass of the country, than the duke, though this Court had been at first a strange country to me in comparison of the former.

An infinity of little circumstances concurred to make me form this opinion, some of which are better felt than explained, and many of which are not present to my memory. That which had the greatest weight with me, and which is, I think, decisive, I will mention. At the very time when it is pretended that the Regent treated with the Duke of Ormond on the express condition that I should know nothing of the matter, two persons of the first rank and greatest credit in this Court, when I made the most pressing instances to them in favour of the Chevalier, threw out in conversation to me that I should attach myself to the Duke of Orleans, that in my circumstances I might want him, and that he might have occasion for me. Something was intimated of pensions and establishment, and of making my peace at home. I would not understand this language, because I would not break with the people who held it: and when they saw that I would not take the hints, they ceased to give them.

I fancy that you see by this time the motives of the Regent’s conduct. I am not, I confess, able to explain to you those of the Duke of Ormond’s; I cannot so much as guess at them. When he came into France, I was careful to show him all the friendship and all the respect possible. My friends were his, my purse was his, and even my bed was his. I went further; I did all those things which touch most sensibly people who have been used to pomp. I made my court to him, and haunted his levee with assiduity. In return to this behaviour—which was the pure effect of my goodwill, and which no duty that I owed his Grace, no obligation that I had to him, imposed upon me—I have great reason to suspect that he went at least half way in all which was said or done against me. He threw himself blindly into the snare which was laid for him; and instead of hindering, as he and I in concert might have done, those affairs from languishing in the manner they did several months, he furnished this Court with an excuse for not treating with me, till it was too late to play even a saving game; and he neither drove the Regent to assist the Chevalier, nor to declare that he would not assist him; though it was fatal to the cause in general, and to the Scotch in particular, not to bring one of the two about.

It was Christmas 1715 before the Chevalier sailed for Scotland. The battle of Dunblain had been fought, the business of Preston was over: there remained not the least room to expect any commotion in his favour among the English; and many of the Scotch who had declared for him began to grow cool in the cause. No prospect of success could engage him in this expedition: but it was become necessary for his reputation. The Scotch on one side spared not to reproach him, I think unjustly, for his delay; and the French on the other were extremely eager to have him gone. Some of those who knew little of British affairs imagined that his presence would produce miraculous effects. You must not be surprised at this. As near neighbours as we are, ninety-nine in an hundred among the French are as little acquainted with the inside of our island as with that of Japan. Others of them were uneasy to see him skulking about in France, and to be told of it every hour by the Earl of Stair. Others, again, imagined that he might do their business by going into Scotland, though he should not do his own: this is, they flattered themselves that he might keep a war for some time alive, which would employ the whole attention of our Government; and for the event of which they had very little concern. Unable from their natural temper, as well as their habits, to be true to any principle, they thought and acted in this manner, whilst they affected the greatest friendship to the King, and whilst they really did desire to enter into new and more intimate engagements with him. Whilst the Pretender continued in France they could neither avow him, nor favour his cause: if he once set his foot on Scotch ground, they gave hopes of indirect assistance; and if he could maintain himself in any corner of the island, they could look upon him, it was said, as a king. This was their language to us. To the British Minister they denied, they forswore, they renounced; and yet the man of the best head in all their councils, being asked by Lord Stair what they intended to do, answered, before he was aware, that they pretended to be neuters. I leave you to judge how this slip was taken up.

As soon as I received advice that the Chevalier was sailed from Dunkirk, I renewed, I redoubled all my applications. I neglected no means, I forgot no argument which my understanding could suggest to me. What the Duke of Ormond rested upon, you have seen already. And I doubt very much whether Lord Mar, if he had been here in my place, would have been able to employ measures more effectual than those which I made use of. I may, without any imputation of arrogance, compare myself on this occasion with his lordship, since there was nothing in the management of this affair above my degree of capacity; nothing equal, either in extent or difficulty, to the business which he was a spectator of, and which I carried on when we were Secretaries of State together under the late Queen.

The King of France, who was not able to furnish the Pretender with money himself, had written some time before his death to his grandson, and had obtained a promise of four hundred thousand crowns from the King of Spain. A small part of this sum had been received by the Queen’s Treasurer at St. Germains, and had been either sent to Scotland or employed to defray the expenses which were daily making on the coast. I pressed the Spanish Ambassador at Paris; I solicited, by Lawless, Alberoni at Madrid, and I found another more private and more promising way of applying to him. I took care to have a number of officers picked out of the Irish troops which serve in that country; their routes were given them, and I sent a ship to receive and transport them. The money came in so slowly and in such trifling sums that it turned to little account, and the officers were on their way when the Chevalier returned from Scotland.

In the summer endeavours had been used to prevail on the King of Sweden to transport from Gottenburg the troops he had in that neighbourhood into Scotland or into the North of England. He had excused himself, not because he disliked the proposition, which, on the contrary, he thought agreeable to his interest, but for reasons of another kind. First, because the troops at hand for this service consisted in horse, not in foot, which had been asked, and which were alone proper for such an expedition. Secondly, because a declaration of this sort might turn the Protestant princes of the Empire, from whose offices he had still some prospect of assistance, against him. And thirdly, because although he knew that the King of Great Britain was his enemy, yet they were not in war together, nor had the latter acted yet awhile openly enough against him to justify such a rupture. At the time I am speaking of, these reasons were removed by the King of Sweden’s being beat out of the Empire by the little consequence which his management of the Protestant princes was to him, and by the declaration of war which the King, as Elector of Hanover, made. I took up this negotiation therefore again. The Regent appeared to come into it. He spoke fair to the Baron de Spar, who pressed him on his side as I pressed him on mine, and promised, besides the arrears of the subsidy due to the Swedes, an immediate advance of fifty thousand crowns for the enterprise on Britain. He kept the officer who was to be despatched I know not how long booted; sometimes on pretence that in the low state of his credit he could not find bills of exchange for the sum, and sometimes on other pretences, and by these delays he evaded his promise. The French were very frank in declaring that they could give us no money, and that they would give us no troops. Arms, ammunition, and connivance they made us hope for. The latter, in some degree, we might have had perhaps; but to what purpose was it to connive, when by a multitude of little tricks they avoided furnishing us with arms and ammunition, and when they knew that we were utterly unable to furnish ourselves with them? I had formed the design of engaging French privateers in the Pretender’s service. They were to have carried whatever we should have had to send to any part of Britain in their first voyage, and after that to have cruised under his commission. I had actually agreed for some, and it was in my power to have made the same bargains with others. Sweden on one side and Scotland on the other would have afforded them retreats. And if the war had been kept up in any part of the mountains, I conceive the execution of this design would have been of the greatest advantage to the Pretender. It failed because no other part of the work went on. He was not above six weeks in his Scotch expedition, and these were the things I endeavoured to bring to bear in his absence. I had no great opinion of my success before he went; but when he had made the last step which it was in his power to make, I resolved to suffer neither him nor the Scotch to be any longer bubbles of their own credulity and of the scandalous artifice of this Court. It would be tedious to enter into a longer narrative of all the useless pains I took. To conclude, therefore; in a conversation which I had with the M. d’Huxelles, I took occasion to declare that I would not be the instrument of amusing the Scotch, and that, since I was able to do them no other service, I would at least inform them that they must flatter themselves no longer with hopes of succour from France. I added that I would send them vessels which, with those already on the coast of Scotland, might serve to bring off the Pretender, the Earl of Mar, and as many others as possible. The Marshal approved my resolution, and advised me to execute it as the only thing which was left to do. On this occasion he showed no reserve, he was very explicit; and yet in this very point of time the promise of an order was obtained, or pretended to be obtained, from the Regent for delivering those stores of arms and ammunition which belonged to the Chevalier, and which had been put into the French magazines when Sir George Byng came to Havre. Castel Blanco is a Spaniard who married a daughter of Lord Melford, and who under that title set up for a meddler in English business. I cannot justly tell whether the honour of obtaining this promise was ascribed to him, to the Junto in the Bois de Boulogne, or to any one else. I suppose they all assumed a share of the merit. The project was that these stores should be delivered to Castel Blanco; that he should enter into a recognisance to carry them to Spain, and from thence to the West Indies; that I should provide a vessel for this purpose, which he should appear to hire or buy; and that when she was at sea she should sail directly for Scotland. You cannot believe that I reckoned much on the effect of this order, but accustomed to concur in measures the inutility of which I saw evidently enough, I concurred in this likewise. The necessary care was taken, and in a fortnight’s time the ship was ready to sail, and no suspicion of her belonging to the Chevalier or of her destination was gone abroad.

As this event made no alteration in my opinion, it made none in the despatches which I prepared and sent to Scotland. In them I gave an account of what was in negotiation. I explained to him what might be hoped for in time if he was able to maintain himself in the mountains without the succours he demanded from France. But from France I told him plainly that it was in vain to expect the least part of them. In short, I concealed nothing from him. This was all I could do to put the Chevalier and his council in a condition to judge what measures to take; but these despatches never came to his hands. He was sailed from Scotland just before the gentleman whom I sent arrived on the coast. He landed at Graveline about the 22nd of February, and the first orders he gave were to stop all the vessels which were going on his account to the country from whence he came.

I saw him the morning after his arrival at St. Germains, and he received me with open arms. I had been, as soon as we heard of his return, to acquaint the French Court with it. They were not a little uneasy; and the first thing which the M. d’Huxelles said to me upon it was that the Chevalier ought to proceed to Bar with all the diligence possible, and to take possession of his former asylum before the Duke of Lorraine had time to desire him to look out for a residence somewhere else. Nothing more was meant by this proposal than to get him out of the dominions of France immediately. I was not in my mind averse to it for other reasons. Nothing could be more disadvantageous to him than to be obliged to pass the Alps, or to reside in the Papal territory on this side of them. Avignon was already named for his retreat in common conversation, and I know not whether from the time he left Scotland he ever thought of any other. I imagined that by surprising the Duke of Lorraine we should furnish that Prince with an excuse to the King and to the Emperor; that we might draw the matter into length, and gain time to negotiate some other retreat than that of Avignon for the Chevalier. The duke’s goodwill there was no room to doubt of, and by what the Prince of Vaudemont told me at Paris some time afterwards I am apt to think we should have succeeded. In all events, it could not be wrong to try every measure, and the Pretender would have gone to Avignon with much better grace when he had done, in the sight of the world, all he could to avoid it.

I found him in no disposition to make such haste; he had a mind, on the contrary, to stay some time at St. Germains, and in the neighbourhood of Paris, and to have a private meeting with the Regent. He sent me back to Paris to solicit this meeting. I wrote, I spoke, to the Marshal d’Huxelles; I did my best to serve him in his own way. The Marshal answered me by word of mouth and by letter; he refused me by both. I remember he added this circumstance: that he found the Regent in bed, and acquainted him with what the Chevalier desired; that the Regent rose up in a passion, said that the things which were asked were puerilities, and swore that he would not see him. I returned without having been able to succeed in my commission; and I confess I thought the want of success on this occasion no great misfortune.

It was two or three o’clock on the Sunday or Monday morning when I parted from the Pretender. He acquiesced in the determination of the Regent, and declared that he would instantly set out for Lorraine; his trunks were packed, his chaise was ordered to be at the door at five, and I sent to Paris to acquaint the Minister that he was gone. He asked me how soon I should be able to follow him, gave me commissions for some things which he desired I should bring after him, and, in a word, no Italian ever embraced the man he was going to stab with greater show of affection and confidence.

Instead of taking post for Lorraine he went to the little house in the Bois de Boulogne where his female Ministers resided; and there he continued lurking for several days, and pleasing himself with the air of mystery and business, whilst the only real business which he should have had at that time lay neglected. He saw the Spanish and Swedish Ministers in this place. I cannot tell, for I never thought it worth asking, whether he saw the Duke of Orleans; possibly he might. To have been teased into such a step, which signified nothing, and which gave the cabal an air of credit and importance, is agreeable enough to the levity of his Royal Highness’s character.

The Thursday following, the Duke of Ormond came to see me, and after the compliment of telling me that he believed I should be surprised at the message he brought, he put into my hands a note to himself and a little scrip of paper directed to me, and drawn in the style of a justice of peace’s warrant. They were both in the Chevalier’s handwriting, and they were dated on the Tuesday, in order to make me believe that they had been written on the road and sent back to the duke; his Grace dropped in our conversation with great dexterity all the insinuations proper to confirm me in this opinion. I knew at this time his master was not gone, so that he gave me two very risible scenes, which are frequently to be met with when some people meddle in business; I mean that of seeing a man labour with a great deal of awkward artifice to make a secret of a nothing, and that of seeing yourself taken for a bubble when you know as much of the matter as he who thinks that he imposes on you.

I cannot recollect precisely the terms of the two papers. I remember that the kingly laconic style of one of them, and the expression of having no further occasion for my service, made me smile. The other was an order to give up the papers in my office, all which might have been contained in a letter-case of a moderate size. I gave the duke the Seals and some papers which I could readily come at. Some others—and, indeed, all such as I had not destroyed—I sent afterwards to the Chevalier; and I took care to convey to him by a safe hand several of his letters which it would have been very improper the duke should have seen. I am surprised that he did not reflect on the consequence of my obeying his order literally. It depended on me to have shown his general what an opinion the Chevalier had of his capacity. I scorned the trick, and would not appear piqued when I was far from being angry. As I gave up without scruple all the papers which remained in my hands, because I was determined never to make use of them, so I confess to you that I took a sort of pride in never asking for those of mine which were in the Pretender’s hands; I contented myself with making the duke understand how little need there was to get rid of a man in this manner who had made the bargain which I had done at my engagement, and with taking this first opportunity to declare that I would never more have to do with the Pretender or his cause.

That I might avoid being questioned and quoted in the most curious and the most babbling town in the world, I related what had passed to three or four of my friends, and hardly stirred abroad during a fortnight out of a little lodging which very few people knew of. At the end of this term the Marshal of Berwick came to see me, and asked me what I meant to confine myself to my chamber when my name was trumpeted about in all the companies of Paris, and the most infamous stories were spread concerning me. This was the first notice I had, and it was soon followed by others. I appeared immediately in the world, and found there was hardly a scurrilous tongue which had not been let loose on my subject; and that those persons whom the Duke of Ormond and Earl of Mar must influence, or might silence, were the loudest in defaming me.

Particular instances wherein I had failed were cited; and as it was the fashion for every Jacobite to affect being in the secret, you might have found a multitude of vouchers to facts which, if they had been true, could in the nature of them be known to very few persons.

This method of beating down the reputation of a man by noise and impudence imposed on the world at first, convinced people who were not acquainted with me, and staggered even my friends. But it ceased in a few days to have any effect against me. The malice was too gross to pass upon reflection. These stories died away almost as fast as they were published, for this very reason, because they were particular.

They gave out, for instance, that I had taken to my own use a very great sum of the Chevalier’s money, when it was notorious that I had spent a great sum of my own in his service, and never would be obliged to him for a farthing, in which case, I believe, I was single. Upon this head it was easy to appeal to a very honest gentleman, the Queen’s Treasurer at St. Germains, through whose hands, and not through mine, went the very little money which the Chevalier had.

They gave out that whilst he was in Scotland he never heard from me, though it was notorious that I sent him no less than five expresses during the six weeks which he consumed in this expedition. It was easy, on this head, to appeal to the persons to whom my despatches had been committed.