[245:1] Minto MSS. On 19th October, Mr. Elliot writes,—
"I am too well acquainted with your friendly disposition to be at all surprised at the trouble you have so successfully taken about my boys. You will, however, allow me to admire your punctuality in sending me three letters all differently addressed. The short one for this place is the only one come to hand. I am impatient, on every account but what regards the establishment of the boys, for the long one sent to London. I act with implicit faith upon your short mandate; and if I could have entertained any doubt, the name of Madame Mirepoix, you very well know, was more than sufficient to remove it."
On 6th November, he is able to say,—
"I have at length received all your letters; the one intrusted to Lord March, the other wrote on the supposition of its being lost, and a third dated October 9th. They all came on the same day, and so late as the 24th of October. The two boys and their tutor, Mr. Liston, are now, I presume, settled at Paris. They had a letter for you. I had luckily directed them, if they found nobody at the Hotel de Brancas, to inquire for a Pension opposite to the Maréchale de Mirepoix." (MS. R.S.E.)
[251:1] Private Correspondence, p. 112, et seq.
[252:1] "But there is a person that has written an "Inquiry, historical and critical, into the evidence against Mary Queen of Scots;" and has attempted to refute the foregoing narrative. He quotes a single passage of the narrative, in which Mary is said simply to refuse answering; and then a single passage from Goodall, in which she boasts simply that she will answer; and he very civilly and almost directly, calls the author a liar, on account of this pretended contradiction. The whole inquiry, from beginning to end, is composed of such scandalous artifices; and, from this instance, the reader may judge of the candour, fair dealing, veracity, and good manners of the inquirer. There are, indeed, three events in our history which may be regarded as the touchstone of party men. An English Whig, who asserts the reality of the Popish plot; an Irish Catholic, who denies the massacre in 1641: and a Scotch Jacobite, who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary, must be considered as men beyond the reach of argument or reason, and must be left to their prejudices."
[252:2] There is no address on the MS., but circumstances show the letter to have been intended for Lord Elibank.
[253:1] These references are to the first edition of the "History of the House of Tudor."
[256:1] Scroll MS. R.S.E. A faint line is drawn through the concluding paragraph, and the passage may have been omitted in the letter as transmitted.
[260:1] Scroll, MS. R.S.E.