After Balhaldy’s departure the unfortunate Associators were kept in a state of agonising suspense, for nothing was heard from France until the end of 1742. In December of that year, Lord Traquair received a letter from Balhaldy couched in vague terms, assuring him that troops and all things necessary for a rising would be embarked early in the spring. The scheme, he wrote, was to make a landing near Aberdeen and another in Kintyre. The whole tone of the letter was so confident that the Associators felt that a French expedition might be expected almost immediately, and they were profoundly conscious that Scotland was not ready. So alarmed were the leaders at the possibility of a premature landing, and so uncertain were they about the promises vaguely conveyed in Balhaldy’s letter, that they determined to send Murray over to Paris to find out what the actual French promises were, and how they were to be performed; and moreover to warn the Government of King Louis how matters stood in Scotland.
Murray set off in January 1743. On his way he visited the Duke of Perth, then residing at York, making what friends he could among the English Jacobites. When Murray got to London, he was informed of Cardinal Fleury’s death,[47] which somewhat staggered him, but he determined to go on to France to find out how matters stood.
Murray’s visit to Paris, 1743.
On arriving in Paris, Murray met Balhaldy and Sempill. Balhaldy was surprised and not particularly glad to see him, but he treated him courteously, and discussing affairs with Murray, he patronisingly informed him that he had not been told everything. Sempill was very polite. He told Murray that a scheme had been prepared by Fleury, but that the Cardinal’s illness and death had interrupted it.[48] Sempill also told him that luckily he had persuaded the Cardinal to impart his schemes to Monsieur Amelot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. An interview with the Minister was obtained at Versailles, and on Murray’s explaining the reason of his visit, Amelot frankly told him that the King of France had full confidence in the Scots, but that nothing could be done without co-operation with the English. He further warned the Scotsmen that an enterprise such as they proposed was dangerous and precarious. The King, he said, was quite willing to send ten thousand troops to help James his master, but the Jacobites must take care not to bring ruin on the Cause by a rash attempt. Murray was startled at Amelot’s answer after the assurances he had had from Sempill and Balhaldy of the minister’s keenness to help; he was further distressed that some arrangements, which Sempill had confidently mentioned to him as being made, were unknown to Amelot, while the minister owned that he had not read the Memorials, but promised to look into them.
It was on this occasion that Murray first became suspicious of the behaviour of Balhaldy and Sempill, a state of mind which grew later to absolute frenzy. When arranging for the interview with Amelot, they hinted very plainly to Murray that he must exaggerate any accounts he gave of preparations in Scotland. He came to the conclusion that they were deceiving the French minister by overstating Jacobite prospects at home, and after the interview he was further persuaded that Balhaldy and Sempill were similarly deceiving the Jacobite leaders with exaggerated accounts of French promises. He was further mortified to find that the Earl Marischal, who was much respected in Scotland, and to whom the Jacobite Scotsmen looked as their leader in any rising, would have nothing to do with Sempill and Balhaldy; while, on their part, they described the earl as a wrong-headed man, continually setting himself in opposition to his master and those employed by him, and applied to him the epithet of ‘honourable fool.’
Apparently about this time the preparations of the English Jacobites were languishing, and Balhaldy, proud of the Scottish Association which he looked upon as his own creation, volunteered to go over to England and arrange a similar Concert among the English leaders. He and Murray went to London together, and there Murray took the opportunity of privately seeing Cecil, the Jacobite agent for England. Cecil explained his difficulties, told him of the dissensions among the English Jacobites, and of their complaints about Sempill, who, he considered, was being imposed upon by the French Ministry. It is characteristic of Jacobite plotting to find that Murray concealed, on the one side, his interviews with Cecil from Balhaldy, and, on the other, he kept it a secret from Cecil that he had ever been in France.[49] Disappointed with his mission both in France and England, Murray returned to Edinburgh in March or April.
Butler’s mission to England.
Meanwhile, Balhaldy was busy getting pledges in England and making lists of Jacobite adherents avowed and secret. Though they said they were willing to rise, he found they absolutely refused to give any pledge in writing, and he suggested, through Sempill, that the French minister should send over a man he could trust to see the state of matters for himself. Amelot selected an equerry of King Louis’s of the name of Butler, an Englishman by birth. Under pretence of purchasing horses, Butler visited racecourses in England, where he had the opportunity of meeting country gentlemen, and was astonished to find that at Lichfield, where he met three hundred lords and gentlemen, of whom, he said, the poorest possessed £3000 a year, he found only one who was not opposed to the Government. On his return to France, Butler sent in a long report on the possibilities of an English rising. He told the French Government that after going through part of England, a document had been placed in his hands giving an account of the whole country, from which it appeared that three-quarters of the well-to-do (‘qui avaient les biens-fonds’) were zealous adherents of their legitimate king, and that he had been enabled to verify this statement through men who could be trusted, some of whom indeed were partisans of the Government. He was amazed that the Government was able to exist at all where it was so generally hated. The secret, he said, was that all positions of authority—the army, the navy, the revenue offices—were in the hands of their mercenary partisans. The English noblesse were untrained to war, and a very small body of regular soldiers could easily crush large numbers of men unused to discipline. It would be necessary then to have a force of regular troops from abroad to make head against those of the Government.
French determine on an Invasion.
Letter of Louis XV. to Philip V.