from some who are in the secret of affairs, that | of Anjou, then an enemy to her Majesty. a resolution was taken, by those who have These were urged by Walpole with great power to execute it, to pursue me to the scaf- vehemence, and aggravated with all the elofold. My blood was to have been the cement quence of which he was master. He challenged of a new alliance, nor could my innocence be any person in behalf of the accused, and assertany security, after it had once been demanded ed, that to vindicate, were in a manner to from abroad, and resolved on at home, that it share his guilt. In this universal consternawas necessary to cut me off. Had there been tion of the tory party, none was for some time the least reason to hope for a fair and open seen to stir; but at length General Ross, who trial, after having been already prejudged un- had received favours from his Lordship, boldly heard by the two houses of Parliament, I stood up, and said, he wondered that no man should not have declined the strictest examina- more capable was found to appear in defence of tion. I challenge the most inveterate of my the accused. However, in attempting to proenemies to produce any one instance of a crim-ceed, he hesitated so much, that he was obinal correspondence, or the least corruption of any part of the administration in which I was concerned. If my zeal for the honour and dignity of my Royal Mistress, and the true interest of my country have any where transported me to let slip a warm or unguarded expression, I hope the most favourable interpretation will be put upon it. It is a comfort that will remain with me in all my misfortunes, that I served her Majesty faithfully and dutifully, in that especially which she had most at heart, relieving her people from a bloody and expensive war, and that I have also been too much an Englishman, to sacrifice the interests of my country to any foreign ally; and it is for this crime only that I am now driven from thence. You shall hear more at large from me shortly. Yours," &c. No sooner was it universally known that he was retired to France, than his flight was construed into a proof of his guilt; and his enemies accordingly set about driving on his impeachment with redoubled alacrity. Mr, afterwards Sir Robert Walpole, who had suffered a good deal by his attachment to the whig interest during the former reign, now undertook to bring in and conduct the charge against him in the House of Commons. His impeachment consisted of six articles, which Walpole read to the House, in substance as follows:-First, that whereas the Lord Bolingbroke had assured the Dutch ministers, that the Queen his mistress would make no peace but in concert with them, yet he had sent Mr Prior to France that same year with proposals for a treaty of peace with that monarch, without the consent of the allies. Secondly, that he advised and promoted the making a separate treaty of convention with France, which was signed in September. Thirdly, that he disclosed to M. Mesnager, the French minister at London, this convention, which was the preliminary instructions to her Majesty's Plenipotentiaries at Utrecht. Fourthly, that her Majesty's final instructions to her Plenipotentiaries were disclosed by him to the Abbot Gualtier, who was an emissary of France. Fifthly, that he disclosed to the French the manner how Tournay in Flanders might be gained by them. And lastly, that he advised and promoted the yielding up Spain and the West Indies to the Duke liged to sit down, observing, that he would reserve what he had to say to another opportunity. It may easily be supposed, that the whigs found no great difficulty in passing the vote for his impeachment through the House of Commons. It was brought into that House on the 10th of June, 1715, it was sent up to the House of Lords on the 6th of August ensuing, and in consequence of which he was attainted by them of high treason on the 10th of September. Nothing could be more unjust than such a sentence; but justice had been drowned in the spirit of party. Bolingbroke, thus finding all hopes cut off at home, began to think of improving his wretched fortune upon the Continent. He had left England with a very small fortune, and his attainder totally cut off all resources for the future. In this depressed situation he began to listen to some proposals which were made by the Pretender, who was then residing at Barr, in France, and who was desirous of admitting Bolingbroke into his secret councils. A proposal of this nature had been made shortly after his arrival at Paris, and be fore his attainder at home; but, while he had yet any hopes of succeeding in England, he absolutely refused, and made the best applica tions his ruined fortune would permit, to prevent the extremity of his prosecution. He had for some time waited for an opportunity of determining himself, even after he found it vain to think of making his peace at home. He let his Jacobite friends in England know that they had but to command him, and he was ready to venture in their service the little all that remained, as frankly as he had exposed all that was gone. At length, says he, talking of himself, these commands came, and were executed in the following manner. The person who was sent to me arrived in the beginning of July, 1715, at the place I had retired to in Dauphine. He spoke in the name of all his friends whose authority could influence me; and he brought word, that Scotland was not only ready to take arms, but under some sort of dissatisfaction to be withheld from beginning; that in England the people were exasperated against the government to such a degree, that, far from wanting to be encouraged, they could not be restrained from insulting it on every occasion; that the Y to be, on no other foundation than that which he exposed. The taken the direction of this whole affair, as far whole tory party was become avowedly Jacobites; that many officers of the army and the majority of the soldiers, were well affected to In this manner, having for some time debatthe cause; that the city of London was ready to ed with himself, and taken his resolution, he rise, and that the enterprises for seizing of sev- lost no time in repairing to the Pretender at eral places were ripe for execution; in a word, Commercy, and took the seals of that nominal that most of the principal tories were in con- king, as he had formerly those of his potent cert with the Duke of Ormond: for I had press- mistress. But this was a terrible falling off ed particularly to be informed whether his indeed; the very first conversation he had with Grace acted alone, or if not, who were his this weak projector, gave him the most unfaycouncil; and that the others were so disposed, ourable expectations of future success. He that there remained no doubt of their joining talked to me, says his Lordship, like a man as soon as the first blow should be struck. who expected every moment to set out for He added, that my friends were a little surpris- England or Scotland, but who did not very ed to observe that I lay neuter in such a con- well know for which: and when he entered in. juncture. He represented to me the danger I to the particulars of his affairs, I found, that ran of being prevented by people of all sides concerning the former he had nothing more cirfrom having the merit of engaging early in this cumstantial or positive to go upon, than what enterprise, and how unaccountable it would be I have already related. But the Duke of Orfor a man, impeached and attainted under the mond had been for some time, I cannot say how present government, to take no share in bring-long, engaged with the Chevalier: he had ing about a revolution, so near at hand, and so certain. He entreated that I would defer no longer to join the Chevalier, to advise and as sist in carrying on his affairs, and to solicit and negotiate at the Court of France, where my friends imagined that I should not fail to meet a favourable reception, and whence they made no doubt of receiving assistance in a situation of affairs so critical, so unexpected, and so promising. He concluded, by giving me a letter from the Pretender, whom he had seen in his way to me, in which I was pressed to repair without loss of time to Commercy; and this instance was grounded on the message which the bearer of the letter had brought me from England. In the progress of the conversation with the messenger, he related a number of facts, which satisfied me as to the general disposition of the people; but he gave me little satisfaction as to the measures taken to improve this disposition, for driving the business on with vigour, if it tended to a revolution, or for supporting it to advantage, if it spun into a When I questioned him concerning several persons whose disinclination to the government admitted no doubt, and whose names, quality, and experience, were very essential to the success of the undertaking, he owned to me that they kept a great reserve, and did at most but encourage others to act, by general and dark expressions. I received this account and this summons ill in my bed; yet, important as the matter was, a few minutes served to determine me. The circumstances wanting to form a reasonable inducement to engage did not excuse me; but the smart of a bill of attainder tingled in every vein, and I looked on my party to be under oppression, and to call for my assistance. Besides which, I considered first that I should be certainly informed, when I conferred with the Chevalier, of many particulars unknown to this gentleman; for I did not imagine that the English could be so near to take up arms as he represented them war. 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 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 then in these sanguine expectations; and there was hardly one among them, who would lose the air of contributing by his intrigues to the instead of that nobleman's waiting for instrucrestoration, which he took for granted would tions, he had already gone into the Highlands, be brought about in a few weeks. Care and and there actually put himself at the head of hope, says our author very humorously, sat on his clans. After this, in concert with the every busy Irish face; those who could read Duke of Ormond, he despatched one Mr Haand write had letters to show, and those who milton, who got all the papers by heart for fear had not arrived to this pitch of erudition had of a miscarriage, to their friends in England, their secrets to whisper. No sex was excluded to inform them that though the Chevalier was from this ministry; Fanny Oglethorpe kept destitute of succour, and all reasonable hopes her corner in it; and Olive Trant, a woman of it, yet he would land as they pleased in Engof the same mixed reputation, was the great land or Scotland at a minute's warning; and wheel of this political machine. The ridi- therefore they might rise immediately after culous correspondence was carried on with they had sent despatches to him. To this mesEngland by people of like importance, and who sage Mr Hamilton returned very soon with an were busy in sounding the alarm in the ears of answer given by Lord Lansdowne, in the name an enemy, whom it was their interest to sur- of all the persons privy to the secret, that since prise. By these means, as he himself continues affairs grew daily worse, and would not mend to inform us, the government of England was by delay, the malecontents in England had reput on its guard, so that before he came to solved to declare immediately, and would be Paris, what was doing had been discovered. ready to join the Duke of Ormond on his land.. The little armament made at Havre de Grace, ing; adding, that his person would be as safe which furnished the only means to the Preten- in England as in Scotland, and that in every der of landing on the coasts of Britain, and other respect it was better he should land which had exhausted the treasury of St Ger- in England; that they had used their utmost mains, was talked of publicly. The earl of endeavours, and hoped the western counties Stair, the English minister at that city, very would be in a good posture to receive him; soon discovered its destination, and all the par- and that he should land as near as possible to ticulars of the intended invasion; the names of Plymouth. With these assurances the duke the persons from whom supplies came, and who embarked, though he had heard before of the were particularly active in the design, were seizure of many of his most zealous adherents, whispered about at tea-tables and coffee-houses. of the dispersion of many more, and the conIn short, what by the indiscretion of the pro- sternation of all; so that upon his arrival at jectors, what by the private interests and ambi. Plymouth, finding nothing in readiness, he retious views of the French, the most private turned to Brittany. In these circumstances transactions came to light; and such of the the Pretender himself sent to have a vessel got more prudent plotters, who supposed that they ready for him at Dunkirk, in which he went had trusted their heads to the keeping of one to Scotland, leaving Lord Bolingbroke all this or two friends, were in reality at the mercy of while at Paris, to try if by any means some asnumbers. Into such company, exclaims our sistance might not be procured without which noble writer, was I fallen for my sins. Still, all hopes of success were at an end. It was however, he went on, steering in the wide during this negotiation upon this miserable proocean without a compass, till the death of ceeding, that he was sent for by Mrs Trant, (a Louis XIV. and the arrival of the duke of woman who had for some time before ingraOrmond at Paris, rendered all his endeavours tiated herself with the Regent of France, by abortive: yet, notwithstanding these unfavour- supplying him with mistresses from England) able circumstances, he still continued to des- to a little house in the Bois de Boulogne, patch several messages and directions for Eng- where she lived with Mademoiselle Chausery, land, to which he received very evasive and an old superannuated waiting-woman belonging ambiguous answers. Among the number of to the Regent. By these he was acquainted these, he drew up a paper at Chaville, in con- with the measures they had taken for the sercert with the duke of Ormond, Marshal Ber- vice of the Duke of Ormond; although Bowick, and De Torcy, which was sent to Eng-lingbroke, who was actually secretary to the land just before the death of the king of France, representing that France could not answer the demands of their memorial, and praying directions what to do. A reply to this came through the French secretary of state, wherein they declared themselves unable to say any thing, till they saw what turn affairs would take on the death of the king, which had reached their ears. Upon another occasion a message coming from Scotland to press the Chevalier to hasten their rising, he despatched a messenger to London to the earl of Mar, to tell him that the concurrence of England in the insurrection was ardently wished and expected: but, negotiation, had never been admitted to a confidence in their secrets. He was therefore a little surprised at finding such mean agents employed without his privity, and very soon found them utterly unequal for the task. quickly therefore withdrew himself from such wretched auxiliaries, and the Regent himself seemed pleased at his defection. He In the meantime the Pretender set sail from Dunkirk for Scotland; and though Bolingbroke had all along perceived that his cause was hopeless, and his projects ill-designed; although he had met with nothing but opposition and disappointment in his service; yet he con and advised him to execute it, as the only thing which was left to do; but in the meantime the Pretender landed at Graveline, and gave orders to stop all vessels, bound on his account to Scotland; and Bolingbroke saw him the morning after his arrival at St Germains, and he received him with open arms. As it was the Secretary's business, as soon as Bolingbroke heard of his return, he went to acquaint the French court with it; when it was recommended to him to advise the Pretender to proceed to Barr with all possible diligence; and in this measure Bolingbroke entirely concurred. But the Pretender himself was in no such haste: he had a mind to stay some time at St Germains, and in the neighbourhood of Paris, and to have a private meeting with the Regent: he accordingly sent Bolingbroke to solicit this meeting, who exerted all his influence in the negotiation. He wrote and spoke to the Marshal de Huxelles, who answered him by word of mouth, and by letters, refusing him by both, and assuring him that the Regent said the things which were asked were puerilities, and swore he would not see him. The Secretary, no ways displeased with his ill success, returned with this answer to his master, who acquiesced in this determination, and declared he would instantly set out for Lorrain, at the same time assuring Bolingbroke of his firm reliance on his integrity. sidered 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 ministers at the court of Spain. He 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 parted for several days seeing the Spanish and 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 to think that it was his duty as well as interest to save the poor remains of the disappointed party. He never had any great opinion of the Pretender's success before he set off; but when this adventurer had taken the last step which it was in his power to make, our Secretary then resolved to suffer neither him, nor the Scots, to be any longer bubbles of their own credulity, and of the scandalous artifices of the French court. In a conversation he had with the Marshal de Huxelles, he took occasion to declare, that he would not be the instrument of amusing the Scots; and since he was able to do them no other service, he would at least inform them of what little dependence they might place upon assistance from France. He added, that he 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 possiThe Marshal approved his resolution, ble. However, the Pretender, instead of taking post for Lorrain, as he had promised, went to a little house in the Bois de Boulogne, where his female ministers resided, and there continu Swedish ministers, and even the Regent himself. It might have been in these interviews that he was set against his new Secretary, and taught to believe that he had been remiss in his duty and false to his trust: Be this as it will, a few days after the Duke of Ormond came to see Bolingbroke, and, having first prepared him for the surprise, put into his hands a note directed to the duke, and a little scrip of paper directed to the Secretary: they were both in the Pretender's hand writing, and dated as if written by him on his way to Lorrain; but in this Bolingbroke was not to be deceived, who knew the place of his present residence. In one of these papers the Pretender declared that he had no farther occasion for the Secretary's service; and the other was an order to him to give up the papers in his office; all which, he observes, might have been contained in a letter-case of a moderate size. He gave the Duke the seals, and some papers which he could readily come at; but for some others, in which there were several insinuations, under the Pretender's own hand, reflecting upon the Duke himself, these he took care to convey by a safe hand, since it would have been very improper that the Duke should have seen them. As he thus gave up without scruple all the papers which remained in his hands, because he was determined never to make use of them, so he declares he took a secret pride | denial. Bolingbroke, being thus dismissed from the Lastly, the Pretender wrote to his Lordship by every occasion after his arrival in Scotland; and though there were many oppor tunities of writing in return, yet from the time he landed there, to the day he left it, he never received any letter from his Lorrdship. Such were the articles, by a very extraordinary reverse of fortune, preferred against Lord Bolingbroke, in less than a year after similar articles were drawn up against him by the opposite party at home. It is not easy to find out what he could have done thus to disoblige all sides; but he had learned by this time to make out happiness from the consciousness of his own designs, and to consider all the rest of mankind as uniting in a faction to oppress virtue. But though it was mortifying to be thus rejected on both sides, yet he was not remiss in vindicating himself from all. Against these articles of impeachment, therefore, he drew up an elaborate answer, in which he vindicates himself with great plausibility. He had long, as he asserts, wished to leave the Pretender's service, but was entirely at a loss how to conduct himself in so difficult a resignation; but at length, says he, the Pretender and his council disposed of things better for me, than I could have done for myself. I had resolved, on his return from Scotland, to follow him till his residence should be fixed somewhere; after which, having served the tories in this, which I looked upon as their last struggle for power, and having continued to act in the Pretender's affairs till the end of the term for which I embarked with him, I should have esteemed myself to be at liberty, and should, in the civilest manner I was able, have taken my leave of him. Had we parted thus, I should have remained in a very strange situation all the rest of my life; on one side he would have thought that he had a right on any future occasion to call me out of my retreat, the tories would probably have thought the same thing, my resolution was taken to refuse them both, and I foresaw that both would condemn me: on the other side, the consideration of his having kept measures with me, joined to that of having once openly declared for him, would have created a point of honour, by which I should have been tied down, not only from ever engaging against him, but also from making my peace at home. The Pretender cut this Gordian knot asunder at one blow: he broke the links of that chain which former engagements had fastened on me, and gave me a right to esteem myself as free from all obligations of keeping measures with him, as I should have continued if I had never engaged in his interest. It is not to be supposed that one so very delicate to preserve his honour, would previously have basely betrayed his employer: a man conscious of acting so infamous à part, would have undertaken no defence, but let the accusations, which could not materially affect him, blow over, and wait for the calm that was to succeed |