Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope

by Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Whilst all these things passed I remained at Paris to try if by any means some assistance might be at last procured, without which it was evident, even to those who flattered themselves the most, that the game was up.

No sooner was the Duke of Ormond gone from Paris on the design which I have mentioned, and Mrs. Trant, who had accompanied him part of the way, returned, but I was sent for to a little house at Madrid, in the Bois de Boulogne, where she lived with Mademoiselle de Chaussery, the ancient gentlewoman with whom the Duke of Orleans had placed her. These two persons opened to me what had passed whilst the Duke of Ormond was here, and the hopes they had of drawing the Regent into all the measures necessary to support the attempts which were making in favour of the Chevalier.

By what they told me at first I saw that they had been trusted, and by what passed in the course of my treating with them it appeared that they had the access which they pretended to. All which I had been able to do by proper persons and in proper methods, since the King of France’s death, amounting to little or nothing, I resolved, at last, to try what was to be done by this indirect way. I put myself under the conduct of these female managers, and without having the same dependence on them as his Grace of Ormond had, I pushed their credit and their power as far as they reached during the time I continued to see them. I met with smoother language and greater hopes than had been given me hitherto. A note signed by the Regent, supposed to be written to a woman, but which was to be explained to be intended for the Earl of Mar, was put into my hands to be sent to Scotland. I took a copy of it, which you may see at the end of these papers. When Sir John Areskine came to press for succour, the Regent was prevailed upon by these women to see him; but he carried nothing real back with him except a quantity of gold, part of the money which we had drawn from Spain, and which was lost, with the vessel, in a very odd manner, on the Scotch coast. The Duke of Ormond had been promised seven or eight thousand arms, which were drawn out of the magazines, and said to be lodged, I think, at Compiègne. I used my utmost efforts that these arms might be carried forward to the coast, and I undertook for their transportation, but all was in vain, so that the likelihood of bringing anything to effect in time appeared to me no greater than I had found it before I entered into this intrigue.

I soon grew tired of a commerce which nothing but success could render tolerable, and resolved to be no longer amused by the pretences which were daily repeated to me, that the Regent had entertained personal prejudices against me, and that he was insensibly and by degrees to be dipped in our measures; that both these things required time, but that they would certainly be brought about, and that we should then be able to answer all the expectations of the English and the Scotch. The first of these pretences contained a fact which I could hardly persuade myself to be true, because I knew very certainly that I had never given His Royal Highness the least occasion for such prejudices; the second was a work which might spin out into a great and uncertain length. I took my resolution to drive what related to myself to an immediate explanation, and what related to others to an immediate decision; not to suffer any excuse for doing nothing to be founded on my conduct, nor the salvation, if I could hinder it, of so many gallant men as were in arms in Scotland, to rest on the success of such womanish projects. I shall tell you what I did on the first head now, and what I did on the second, hereafter, in its proper place.

The fact which it was said the Regent laid to my charge was a correspondence with Lord Stair, and having been one night at his house from whence I did not retire till three in the morning. As soon as I got hold of this I desired the Marshal of Berwick to go to him. The Marshal told him, from me, that I had been extremely concerned to hear in general that I lay under his displeasure; that a story, which it was said he believed, had been related to me; that I expected the justice, which he could deny to no man, of having the accusation proved, in which case I was contented to pass for the last of humankind, or of being justified if it could not be proved. He answered that such a story had been related to him by such persons as he thought would not have deceived him; that he had been since convinced that it was false, and that I should be satisfied of his regard for me; but that he must own he was very uneasy to find that I, who could apply to him through the Marshal d’Huxelles, could choose to treat with Mrs. Trant and the rest; for he named all the cabal, except his secretary, whom I had never met at Mademoiselle Chaussery’s. He added that these people teased him, at my instigation, to death, and that they were not fit to be trusted with any business. He applied to some of them the severest epithets. The Marshal of Berwick replied that he was sure I should receive the whole of what he had been pleased to say with the greatest satisfaction; that I had treated with those persons much against my will; and, finally, that if his Royal Highness would not employ them he was sure I would never apply to them. In a conversation which I had not long after with him he spoke to me in much the same terms as he had done to the Marshal. I went from him very ill edified as to his intentions of doing anything in favour of the Chevalier; but I carried away with me this satisfaction, that he had assigned me, from his own mouth, the person through whom I should make my applications to him, and through whom I should depend on receiving his answers; that he had disavowed all the little politic clubs, and had commanded me to have no more to do with them.

Before I resume the thread of my narration give me leave to make some reflection upon what I have been last saying to you. When I met with the Duke of Ormond at his return from the coast, he thought himself obliged to say something to excuse his keeping me out of a secret which during his absence I had been let into. His excuse was that the Regent had exacted from him that I should know nothing of the matter. You will observe that the account which I have given you seems to contradict this assertion of his Grace, since it is hard to suppose that if the Regent had exacted that I should be kept out of the secret, these women would have dared to have let me into it, and since it is still harder to suppose that the Regent would make this express condition with the Duke of Ormond, and the moment the duke’s back was turned would suffer these women to tease him from me and to bring me answers from him. I am, however, far from taxing the duke with affirming an untruth. I believe the Regent did make such a condition with him; and I will tell you how I understand all this little management, which will explain a great deal to you. This Prince, with wit and valour, has joined all the irresolution of temper possible, and is, perhaps, the man in the world the least capable of saying “no” to your face. From hence it happened that these women, like multitudes of other people, forced him to say and do enough to give them the air of having credit with him and of being trusted by him. This drew in the Duke of Ormond, who is not, I daresay, as yet undeceived. The Regent never intended from the first to do anything, even indirectly, in favour of the Jacobite cause. His interest was plainly on the other side, and he saw it. But then the same weakness in his character carried him, as it would have done his great-uncle Gaston in the same case, to keep measures with the Chevalier. His double-trimming character prevailed on him to talk with the Duke of Ormond, but it carried him no farther. I question not but he did, on this occasion, what you must have observed many men to do: we not only endeavour to impose on the world, but even on ourselves; we disguise our weakness, and work up in our minds an opinion that the measure which we fall into by the natural or habitual imperfection of our character is the effect of a principle of prudence or of some other virtue. Thus the Regent, who saw the Duke of Ormond because he could not resist the importunity of Olive Trant, and who gave hopes to the duke because he can refuse nobody, made himself believe that it was a great strain of policy to blow up the fire and to keep Britain embroiled. I am persuaded that I do not err in judging that he thought in this manner, and here I fix the reason of his excluding me out of the commerce which he had with the Duke of Ormond, of his affecting a personal dislike of me, and of his avoiding any correspondence with me upon these matters, till I forced myself in a manner upon him, and he could not keep me any longer at a distance without departing from his first principle—that of keeping measures with everybody. He then threw me, or let me slide if you will, into the hands of these women; and when he found that I pressed him hard that way, too, he took me out of their hands and put me back again into the proper channel of business, where I had not been long, as you will see by-and-by, before the scene of amusement was finished.

Sir John Areskine told me when he came from the first audience that he had of his Royal Highness, that he put him in mind of the encouragement which he had given the Earl of Mar to take arms. I never heard anything of this kind but what Sir John let drop to me. If the fact be true, you see that the Scotch general had been amused by him with a witness. The English general was so in his turn; and while this was doing, the Regent might think it best to have him to himself. Four eyes comprehend more objects than two, and I was a little better acquainted with the characters of people, and the mass of the country, than the duke, though this Court had been at first a strange country to me in comparison of the former.

An infinity of little circumstances concurred to make me form this opinion, some of which are better felt than explained, and many of which are not present to my memory. That which had the greatest weight with me, and which is, I think, decisive, I will mention. At the very time when it is pretended that the Regent treated with the Duke of Ormond on the express condition that I should know nothing of the matter, two persons of the first rank and greatest credit in this Court, when I made the most pressing instances to them in favour of the Chevalier, threw out in conversation to me that I should attach myself to the Duke of Orleans, that in my circumstances I might want him, and that he might have occasion for me. Something was intimated of pensions and establishment, and of making my peace at home. I would not understand this language, because I would not break with the people who held it: and when they saw that I would not take the hints, they ceased to give them.

I fancy that you see by this time the motives of the Regent’s conduct. I am not, I confess, able to explain to you those of the Duke of Ormond’s; I cannot so much as guess at them. When he came into France, I was careful to show him all the friendship and all the respect possible. My friends were his, my purse was his, and even my bed was his. I went further; I did all those things which touch most sensibly people who have been used to pomp. I made my court to him, and haunted his levee with assiduity. In return to this behaviour—which was the pure effect of my goodwill, and which no duty that I owed his Grace, no obligation that I had to him, imposed upon me—I have great reason to suspect that he went at least half way in all which was said or done against me. He threw himself blindly into the snare which was laid for him; and instead of hindering, as he and I in concert might have done, those affairs from languishing in the manner they did several months, he furnished this Court with an excuse for not treating with me, till it was too late to play even a saving game; and he neither drove the Regent to assist the Chevalier, nor to declare that he would not assist him; though it was fatal to the cause in general, and to the Scotch in particular, not to bring one of the two about.

It was Christmas 1715 before the Chevalier sailed for Scotland. The battle of Dunblain had been fought, the business of Preston was over: there remained not the least room to expect any commotion in his favour among the English; and many of the Scotch who had declared for him began to grow cool in the cause. No prospect of success could engage him in this expedition: but it was become necessary for his reputation. The Scotch on one side spared not to reproach him, I think unjustly, for his delay; and the French on the other were extremely eager to have him gone. Some of those who knew little of British affairs imagined that his presence would produce miraculous effects. You must not be surprised at this. As near neighbours as we are, ninety-nine in an hundred among the French are as little acquainted with the inside of our island as with that of Japan. Others of them were uneasy to see him skulking about in France, and to be told of it every hour by the Earl of Stair. Others, again, imagined that he might do their business by going into Scotland, though he should not do his own: this is, they flattered themselves that he might keep a war for some time alive, which would employ the whole attention of our Government; and for the event of which they had very little concern. Unable from their natural temper, as well as their habits, to be true to any principle, they thought and acted in this manner, whilst they affected the greatest friendship to the King, and whilst they really did desire to enter into new and more intimate engagements with him. Whilst the Pretender continued in France they could neither avow him, nor favour his cause: if he once set his foot on Scotch ground, they gave hopes of indirect assistance; and if he could maintain himself in any corner of the island, they could look upon him, it was said, as a king. This was their language to us. To the British Minister they denied, they forswore, they renounced; and yet the man of the best head in all their councils, being asked by Lord Stair what they intended to do, answered, before he was aware, that they pretended to be neuters. I leave you to judge how this slip was taken up.