But this hope expiring, upon the news that France had refused to sign those articles, all was solved by recourse to the old topic of the French perfidiousness.  We loaded them plentifully with ignominious appellations; “they were a nation never to be trusted.”  The Parliament cheerfully continued their supplies, and the war went on.  The winter following began the second and last session of the preceding Parliament, noted for the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, and the occasions thereby given to the people to discover and exert their dispositions, very opposite to the designs of those who were then in power.  In the summer of one thousand seven hundred and ten, ensued a gradual change of the ministry; and in the beginning of that winter the present Parliament was called.

The King of France, whose real interests made him sincerely desirous of any tolerable peace, found it impossible to treat upon equal conditions with either of the two maritime powers engaged against him, because of the prevalency of factions in both, who acted in concert to their mutual private advantage, although directly against the general dispositions of the people in either, as well as against their several maxims of government.  But upon the great turn of affairs and councils here in England, the new Parliament and ministers acting from other motives, and upon other principles, that Prince hoped an opportunity might arise of resuming his endeavours towards a peace.

There was at this time in England a French ecclesiastic, called the Abbe Gaultier,[3] who had resided several years in London, under the protection of some foreign ministers, in whose families he used, upon occasion, to exercise his function of a priest.  After the battle of Blenheim, this gentleman went down to Nottingham, where several French prisoners of quality were kept, to whom he rendered those offices of civility suitable to persons in their condition, which, upon their return to France, they reported to his advantage.  Among the rest, the Chevalier de Croissy told his brother, the Marquis de Torcy, that whenever the French court would have a mind to make overtures of peace with England, Mons. Gaultier might be very usefully employed in handing them to the ministers here.  This was no farther thought on at present.  In the mean time the war went on, and the conferences at The Hague and Gertruydenberg miscarried, by the allies insisting upon such demands as they neither expected, nor perhaps desired, should be granted.

[Footnote 3:  See note prefixed to “A New Journey to Paris” in vol. v. of present edition.  Gaultier, although a priest, was nothing more than a superior spy in the pay of the French Court.  He had been chaplain to Tallard and the disgraced Count Gallas, and was a sort of protege of the Earl of Jersey; but his character does not bear very close scrutiny.  The Duke of Berwick could not have had any high opinion either of the man or his abilities, since in the “Memoires de Berwick” (vol. ii., p. 122, edit. 1780) he is thus referred to:  “Sa naissance etoit toute des plus ordinaires, et ses facultes a l’avenant, c’est a dire, tres pauvre.”  St. John called Gaultier his “Mercury,” and De Torcy styled him “the Angel of Peace” (Torcy’s “Memoires,” vol. ii., p. 148, edition of 1828). [T.S.]]