[391] M.P. for Cambridgeshire.
[392] The note formally announcing the Treaty of Commerce and Friendship between France and the United States, was delivered to Lord Weymouth on March 13, 1778. "On Saturday," writes Sir Gilbert Elliot to Lord Malmesbury, March 20, 1778, "all the French in London were sent to the opera, plays, clubs, coffee-houses, ale-houses, and spill-houses, to publish the intelligence, which they did with all their natural impertinence."
[393] On March 19 Fox moved three resolutions: (1) that the Canadian expedition was ill concerted, (2) that it was impossible it should succeed, (3) that no sufficient instructions to co-operate had been sent to General Howe. The resolutions were lost by 164 to 44. Fox then tore up the paper on which he had written the fourth resolution, a censure on Lord G. Germain.
[394] M. de Noailles left London at six in the morning to avoid insults. He and his wife were pelted by the mob as they passed through Canterbury; but the Government ordered a salute to be fired in his honour as he left Dover.
[395] David, seventh Viscount Stormont, who succeeded (1793) his uncle as second Earl of Mansfield, was at this time ambassador at Paris. In October, 1779, he was made one of the Secretaries of State. He was afterwards President of the Council under Pitt. He died in 1796.
[396] The three American deputies were presented to Louis XVI. on March 21, 1778, by M. de Vergennes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
[397] On December 30, 1777, the Elector of Bavaria died. With him was extinguished the male line of his house. Austria took the opportunity of occupying portions of Lower Bavaria, and the King of Prussia supported against her the claims of the elector's general heir and nearest male relation, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. War began in July, 1778; but before negotiations were abandoned, Bohemia, Silesia, and Saxony were occupied by the forces of Austria and Prussia.
[398] Mr. Holroyd served as major in the Sussex Militia under the Duke of Richmond. The militia was in 1778 organized as a permanent force for the defence of the country.
[399] Miss Sarah Holroyd.
[400] Apparently an allusion to Dr. Delacour, Mrs. Gibbon's doctor at Bath.