conjuncture. He represented to me the nger I ran of being prevented by people all sides from having the merit of engagearly in this enterprise, and how unacuntable it would be for a man impeached d attainted under the present governent to take no share in bringing about a volution so near at hand and so certain. e entreated that I would defer no longer join the Chevalier, to advise and assist carrying on his affairs, and to solicit dnegotiate at the Court of France, where ⚫ friends imagined that I should not fail meet a favourable reception, and whence y made no doubt of receiving assistance a situation of affairs so critical, so unexted, and so promising. He concluded giving me a letter from the Pretender, om he had seen in his way to me, in ich I was pressed to repair without loss time to Commercy; and this instance grounded on the message which the rer of the letter had brought me from gland. In the progress of the converon with the messenger, he related a aber of facts, which satisfied me as to general disposition of the people; but gave me little satisfaction as to the sures taken to improve this disposition, driving the business on with vigour, if nded to a revolution, or for supporting o advantage, if it spun into a war. en I questioned him concerning several ons whose disinclination to the governit admitted no doubt, and whose names, lity, and experience were very essential e success of the undertaking, he owned he that they kept a great reserve, and at most but encourage others to act, by eral and dark expressions. I received account and this summons ill in my ; yet, important as the matter was, a minutes served to determine me. The amstances wanting to form a reason: inducement to engage did not excuse but the smart of a bill of attainder led in every vein, and I looked on my y to be under oppression, and to call my assistance. Besides which, I conred first that I should be certainly rmed, when I conferred with the Cheer, of many particulars unknown to gentleman; for I did not imagine that English could be so near to take up

arms as he represented them to be, on no other foundation than that which he exposed."

66

In this manner, having for some time debated with himself, and taken his resolution, he lost no time in repairing to the Pretender at Commercy, and took the seals of that nominal king, as he had formerly those of his potent mistress. But this was a terrible falling off indeed; and the very first conversation he had with this weak projector gave him the most unfavourable expectations of future success. He talked to me," says his lordship, "like a man who expected every moment to set out for England or Scotland, but who did not very well know for which: and when he entered into the particulars of his affairs, I found that concerning the former he had nothing more circumstantial or positive to go upon, than what I have already related. But the Duke of Ormond had been for some time, I cannot say how long, engaged with the Chevalier: he had taken the direction of this whole affair, as far as it related to England, upon himself; and had received a commission for this purpose, which contained the most ample powers that could be given. But still, however, all was unsettled, undetermined, and ill understood. The Duke had asked from France a small body of forces, a sum of money, and a quantity of ammunition : but to the first part of the request he received a flat denial, but was made to hope that some arms and some ammunition might be given. This was but a very gloomy prospect; yet hope swelled the depressed party so high, that they talked of nothing less than an instant and ready revolution. It was their interest to be secret and industrious; but, rendered sanguine by their passions, they made no doubt of subverting a government with which they were angry, and gave as great an alarm as would have been imprudent at the eve of a general insurrection."

Such was the state of things when Bolingbroke arrived to take up his new office at Commercy; and although he saw the deplorable state of the party with which he was embarked, yet he resolved to give his affairs the best complexion he was able, and set out for Paris, in order

discretion of the projectors, what byt private interests and ambitious views the French, the most private transactin came to light; and such of the more p dent plotters, who supposed that they trusted their heads to the keeping of or two friends, were in reality at the m of numbers. "Into such company, claims our noble writer, "was İ fall: * my sins." Still, however, he went steering in the wide ocean without a c pass, till the death of Louis XIV. and t arrival of the Duke of Ormond at Par rendered all his endeavours abortive: ye notwithstanding these unfavourable c cumstances, he still continued to des 4 several messages and directions for En land, to which he received very evi and ambiguous answers. Among th number of these, he drew up a pre Chaville, in concert with the I Ormond, Marshal Berwick, and De Tay which was sent to England just bor the death of the King of France, repre senting that France could not any th demands of their memorial, and pa directions what to do. A reply t came to him through the French Se of State, wherein they declared the unable to say anything till they sha turn affairs would take on the deco the King, which had reached the ears Upon another occasion, a message c from Scotland to press the Chev hasten their rising, he despatched senger to London to the Earl of a, b tell him that the concurrence of F in the insurrection was ardently and expected: but, instead of tha man's waiting for instructions, ka already gone into the Highlands, actually put himself at the head clans.

to procure from that court the necessary succours for his new master's invasion of England. But his reception and negotiations at Paris were still more unpromising than those at Commercy; and nothing but absolute infatuation seemed to dictate every measure taken by the party. He there found a multitude of people at work, and every one doing what seemed good in his own eyes; no subordination, no order, no concert. The Jacobites had wrought one another up to look upon the success of the present designs as infallible: every meeting-house which the populace demolished, as he himself says, every little drunken riot which happened, served to confirm them in these sanguine expectations; and there was hardly one among them who would lose the air of contributing by his intrigues to the restoration, which he took for granted would be brought about in a few weeks. Care and hope, says our author very humorously, sat on every busy Irish face; those who could read and write had letters to show, and those who had not arrived to this pitch of erudition had their secrets to whisper. No sex was excluded from this ministry: Fanny Oglethorpe kept her corner in it; and Olive Trant, a woman of the same mixed reputation, was the great wheel of this political machine. The ridiculous correspondence was carried on with England by people of like importance, and who were busy in sounding the alarm in the ears of an enemy whom it was their interest to surprise. By these means, as he himself continues to inform us, the government of England was put on its guard, so that before he came to Paris what was doing had been discovered. The little armament made at Havre de Grace, which furnished the only means to the Pretender of landing on the coasts of Britain, and which had exhausted the treasury of St. Germains, was talked of publicly. The Earl of Stair, the English minister at that city, very soon discovered its destination, and all the particulars of the intended invasion; the names of the persons from whom supplies came, and who were particularly active in the design, were whispered about at tea-tables and coffee-houses. In short, what by the in

After this, in concert wath Duke of Ormond, he despatched Mr. Hamilton, who got all the pap heart for fear of a miscarriage, to friends in England, to inform then though the Chevalier was destit succour and all reasonable hopes yet he would land as they pleased in in land or Scotland at a minute's war and therefore they might rise immed after they had sent despatches to To this message Mr. Hamilton rett

In

y soon with an answer given by Lord asdowne, in the name of all the persons vy to the secret, that since affairs grew ly worse, and would not mend by delay, : malcontents in England had resolved declare immediately, and would be dy to join the Duke of Ormond on his ding; adding, that his person would as safe in England as in Scotland, and it in every other respect it was better should land in England; that they had d their utmost endeavours, and hoped western counties would be in a good are to receive him; and that he should d as near as possible to Plymouth. th these assurances the Duke embarked, egh he had heard before of the seizure nany of his most zealous adherents, of dispersion of many more, and the sternation of all; so that upon his val at Plymouth, finding nothing in liness, he returned to Brittany. se circumstances the Pretender himself t to have a vessel got ready for him at nkirk, in which he went to Scotland, ing Lord Bolingbroke all this while Paris, to try if by any means some stance might not be procured, without ch all hopes of success were at an end. vas during this negotiation upon this erable proceeding that he was sent by Mrs. Trant (a woman who had for e time before ingratiated herself with Regent of France, by supplying him h mistresses from England), to a little se in the Bois de Boulogne, where she d with Mademoiselle Chausery, an old erannuated waiting-woman belonging he Regent. By these he was acquainted a the measures they had taken for the ice of the Duke of Ormond; although ingbroke, who was actually secretary the negotiation, had never been adted to a confidence in their secrets. was therefore a little surprised at ling such mean agents employed withhis privity, and very soon found them rly unequal to the task. He quickly, refore, withdrew himself from such tched auxiliaries, and the Regent himscemed pleased at his defection.

n the mean time the Pretender set sail Dunkirk for Scotland; and though ängbroke had all along perceived that

He

his cause was hopeless, and his projects ill-designed; although he had met with nothing but opposition and disappointment in his service; yet he considered that this, of all others, was the time he could not be permitted to relax in the cause. He now, therefore, neglected no means, forgot no argument which his understanding could suggest, in applying to the Court of France; but his success was not answerable to his industry. The King of France, not able to furnish the Pretender with money himself, had written some time before his death to his grandson, the King of Spain, and had obtained from him a promise of forty thousand crowns. A small part of this 'sum had been received by the Queen's treasurer at St. Germains, and had been sent to Scotland, or employed to defray the expenses which were daily making on the coast; at the same time Bolingbroke pressed the Spanish ambassador at Paris, and solicited the minister at the Court of Spain. took care to have a number of officers picked out of the Irish troops which serve in France, gave them their routes, and sent a ship to receive and transport them to Scotland. Still, however, the money came in so slowly, and in such trifling sums, that it turned to little account, and the officers were on their way to the Pretender. At the same time he formed a design of engaging French privateers in the expedition, that were to have carried whatever should be necessary to send to any part of Britain in their first voyage, and then to cruise under the Pretender's commission. He had actually agreed for some, and had it in his power to have made the same bargain with others: Sweden on the one side, and Scotland on the other, could have afforded them retreats; and if the war had been kept up in any part of the mountains, this armament would have been of the utmost advantage. But all his projects and negotiations failed by the Pretender's precipitate return, who was not above six weeks in his expedition, and flew out of Scotland even before all had been tried in his defence.

The expedition being in this manner totally defeated, Bolingbroke now began