It is said that Nell Gwynn, John Churchill, and Sarah Jennings were younger than Baron Clyde indicates.  Therefore there are many discerning persons who hold that he was “idealizing” when he wrote of them being at court at the time Dunkirk was sold.

There appears to be some ground for the criticism.

But in all essential respects the baron’s history is held, justly, to be true to facts and conditions, and that, after all, is the main thing.  Exact truth is evasive; therefore the virtues of approximation are not to be deprecated.