“(His Majesty will be) eighty-two years of age on his next birthday.  The Court prepares to celebrate it with a great feast.  Mr. Prior is in a sad way about their refusing at home to send him his plate.  All here admired my Lord Viscount’s portrait, and said it was a masterpiece of Rigaud.  Have you seen it?  It is (at the Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square).  I think no English painter could produce such a piece.

“Our poor friend the Abbe hath been at the Bastile, but is now transported to the Conciergerie (where his friends may visit him.  They are to ask for) a remission of his sentence soon.  Let us hope the poor rogue will have repented in prison.

“(The Lord Castlewood) has had the affair of the plate made up, and departs for England.

“Is not this a dull letter?  I have a cursed headache with drinking with Mat and some more over-night, and tipsy or sober am

“Thine ever ——.”

All this letter, save some dozen of words which I have put above between brackets, was mere idle talk, though the substance of the letter was as important as any letter well could be.  It told those that had the key, that The King will take the Viscount Castlewood’s passports and travel to England under that lord’s name.  His Majesty will be at the Lady Castlewood’s house in Kensington Square, where his friends may visit him; they are to ask for the Lord Castlewood.  This note may have passed under Mr. Prior’s eyes, and those of our new allies the French, and taught them nothing; though it explains sufficiently to persons in London what the event was which was about to happen, as ’twill show those who read my memoirs a hundred years hence, what was that errand on which Colonel Esmond of late had been busy.  Silently and swiftly to do that about which others were conspiring, and thousands of Jacobites all over the country clumsily caballing; alone to effect that which the leaders here were only talking about; to bring the Prince of Wales into the country openly in the face of all, under Bolingbroke’s very eyes, the walls placarded with the proclamation signed with the Secretary’s name, and offering five hundred pounds reward for his apprehension:  this was a stroke, the playing and winning of which might well give any adventurous spirit pleasure:  the loss of the stake might involve a heavy penalty, but all our family were eager to risk that for the glorious chance of winning the game.

Nor shall it be called a game, save perhaps with the chief player, who was not more or less sceptical than most public men with whom he had acquaintance in that age. (Is there ever a public man in England that altogether believes in his party?  Is there one, however doubtful, that will not fight for it?) Young Frank was ready to fight without much thinking, he was a Jacobite as his father before him was; all the Esmonds were Royalists.  Give him but the word, he would cry, “God save King James!” before the palace