"I can assure your Lordship," he continues, "my master has so many good qualities, that he will make the nation happie, and wants but to be known to be beloved; and I dare promise in his name, that there is not any thing you could ask of him, reasonable, for yourself and your friends, but he would agree to. My master is young, in perfect good health, and as likely to live as any who has pretensions to his crown, and he is now about marrying, which, in all appearance, will perpetuate rightfull successors to him of his own body, who will ever have more friends in those kingdoms, as well as abroad, than to allow the house of Hanover to continue in possession of their right without continual disturbance."
The Earl then suggests that George the First should secure to himself the possession of "his old and just inheritance, and by the assistance of 'his master,' and those who would join, acquire such new ones on the Continent as would make his family more considerable than any of its neighbours.
"Britain and Ireland will have reason to bless your master for so good and Christian an action; and Europe no less for the repose it would have by it: and your master would live the remainder of his life in all the tranquillity and splendour that could be required, and end his days with the character of good and just."
Lord Mar was at this time on the borders of France, where he proposed to wait until he received Lord Sunderland's reply, in hopes that the Minister of George the First might be induced to give him a meeting, either in France or Flanders. "If you approve not of what I have said," he adds, "let it be buried on your side, as, upon my honour, it shall be on mine." "I am afraid," he adds in a postscript, "you know not my hand; but I have no other way of assuring you of this being no counterfeit than by writing it myself, and putting my seal to it."
The following remarks on this letter are interesting; they were penned by Dr. Coxe:
"Singular as this overture, made at such a period, may appear, we have strong proofs that it was not discouraged by Sunderland; for he not only procured a pension for the exiled nobleman, but even flattered the Jacobites with hopes that he was inclined to favour their cause. This we find by intelligence given at a subsequent period by the Jacobite spies."
The following addition to the above-stated remark of Dr. Coxe is even yet more astonishing:
"On the death of Lord Sunderland the secret of this correspondence became by some means known to the Regent Duke of Orleans, and he hastened to make so important a communication to the King of England. The letter written on this occasion by the British agent at Paris, Sir Luke Schwaub, and the reply of his friend Lord Carteret, then Secretary of State, are highly curious, because they prove, not only the correspondence, but the fact that it was known and approved by the King."[155]
How near were the unfortunate Stuarts to that throne which they were destined never to ascend!