Le Chevalier D’Eon.
In Petty-France, Westminster,
4 Septembre, 1769.
Translation of the Chevalier D’Eon’s Answer
to Dr. Musgrave’s Address.
SIR,
You will permit me to believe that you never knew any more of me, than I have the honour of knowing of you: and if in your letter of the 12th of August you had not made a wrong use of my name, I should not now find myself obliged to enter into a correspondence with you.
You pretend that “in the summer of the year 1764, overtures were made in my name to several members of parliament, importing that I was ready to impeach three persons, two of whom were peers and members of the privy council, of having sold the peace to the French:” and you seem to found thereupon the evidence of a charge, which you say you carried yourself to Lord Halifax.
I declare, therefore, here, Sir, that I never made, nor caused to be made any such overture, either in the winter or summer of the year 1764, nor at any other time: I am, on one side, too faithful to the office I filled, and on the other too zealous a friend to truth.
I confess you do not say it was I that made these overtures; but only that they were made in my name, particularly to Sir George Yonge and Mr. Fitzherbert.
I assure you I do not know either of these gentlemen, and never authorised any person whatever to make in my name such overtures, which the abhorrence alone I have for calumny, would make me detest.