[814] P. 100.
[815] This treatise, subjoined to one of greater length, entitled the "Freeholder's Grand Inquest," was published in 1679; but the "Patriarcha" not till 1685.
[816] P. 39.
[817] P. 46.
[818] Collier, 902; Somers Tracts, viii. 420.
[819] Dalrymple, appendix 8; Life of James, 691. He pretended to come into a proposal of the Dutch for an alliance with Spain and the empire against the fresh encroachments of France, and to call a parliament for that purpose, but with no sincere intention, as he assured Barillon. "Je n'ai aucune intention d'assembler le parlement; ces sont des diables qui veulent ma ruine." Dalrymple, 15.
[820] He took 100,000 livres for allowing the French to seize Luxemberg; after this he offered his arbitration, and on Spain's refusal, laid the fault on her, though already bribed to decide in favour of France. Lord Rochester was a party in all these base transactions. The acquisition of Luxemberg and Strasburg was of the utmost importance to Louis, as they gave him a predominating influence over the four Rhenish electors, through whom he hoped to procure the election of the dauphin as king of the Romans. Id. 36.
[821] Dalrymple, appendix 74; Burnet; Mazure, Hist. de la Révolution de 1688, i. 340, 372. This is confirmed by, or rather confirms, the very curious notes found in the Duke of Monmouth's pocket-book when he was taken after the battle of Sedgemoor, and published in the appendix to Welwood's Memoirs. Though we should rather see more external evidence of their authority than, so far as I know, has been produced, they have great marks of it in themselves; and it is not impossible that, after the revolution, Welwood may have obtained them from the secretary of state's office.
[822] It is mentioned by Mr. Fox, as a tradition in the Duke of Richmond's family, that the Duchess of Portsmouth believed Charles II. to have been poisoned. This I find confirmed in a letter read on the trial of Francis Francia, indicted for treason in 1715. "The Duchess of Portsmouth, who is at present here, gives a great deal of offence, as I am informed, by pretending to prove that the late King James had poisoned his brother Charles; it was not expected, that after so many years' retirement in France, she should come hither to revive that vulgar report, which at so critical a time cannot be for any good purpose." State Trials, xv. 948. It is almost needless to say that the suspicion was wholly unwarrantable.
I have since been informed, on the best authority, that Mr. Fox did not derive his authority from a tradition in the Duke of Richmond's family, that of his own mother, as his editor had very naturally conjectured, but from his father, the first Lord Holland, who, while a young man travelling in France, had become acquainted with the Duchess of Portsmouth.