Germains; Jacobites known and secret; great in station and humble; about the Court and the Queen; in the Parliament, Church, and among the merchants in the City.  The Prince had friends numberless in the army, in the Privy Council, and the Officers of State.  The great object, as it seemed, to the small band of persons who had concerted that bold stroke, who had brought the Queen’s brother into his native country, was, that his visit should remain unknown till the proper time came, when his presence should surprise friends and enemies alike; and the latter should be found so unprepared and disunited, that they should not find time to attack him.  We feared more from his friends than from his enemies.  The lies and tittle-tattle sent over to St. Germains by the Jacobite agents about London, had done an incalculable mischief to his cause, and wofully misguided him, and it was from these especially, that the persons engaged in the present venture were anxious to defend the chief actor in it.*

* The managers were the Bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist Divine, a lady in the highest favor at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a member of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions than one in behalf of the Stuart family.

The party reached London by nightfall, leaving their horses at the Posting-House over against Westminster, and being ferried over the water, where Lady Esmond’s coach was already in waiting.  In another hour we were all landed at Kensington, and the mistress of the house had that satisfaction which her heart had yearned after for many years, once more to embrace her son, who, on his side, with all his waywardness, ever retained a most tender affection for his parent.

She did not refrain from this expression of her feeling, though the domestics were by, and my Lord Castlewood’s attendant stood in the hall.  Esmond had to whisper to him in French to take his hat off.  Monsieur Baptiste was constantly neglecting his part with an inconceivable levity:  more than once on the ride to London, little observations of the stranger, light remarks, and words betokening the greatest ignorance of the country the Prince came to govern, had hurt the susceptibility of the two gentlemen forming his escort; nor could either help owning in his secret mind that they would have had his behavior otherwise, and that the laughter and the lightness, not to say license, which characterized his talk, scarce befitted such a great Prince, and such a solemn occasion.  Not but that he could act at proper times with spirit and dignity.  He had behaved, as we all knew, in a very courageous manner on the field.  Esmond had seen a copy of the letter the Prince had writ with his own hand when urged by his friends in England to abjure his religion, and admired that manly and magnanimous reply by which he refused to yield to