to his army, which was encamped round the basin of La Hogue, on the northern coast of the peninsula known by the name of the Cotentin.  Before he quitted Saint Germains, he held a Chapter of the Garter for the purpose of admitting his son into the order.  Two noblemen were honoured with the same distinction, Powis, who, among his brother exiles, was now called a Duke, and Melfort, who had returned from Rome, and was again James’s Prime Minister.256 Even at this moment, when it was of the greatest importance to conciliate the members of the Church of England, none but members of the Church of Rome were thought worthy of any mark of royal favour.  Powis indeed was an eminent member of the English aristocracy; and his countrymen disliked him as little as they disliked any conspicuous Papist.  But Melfort was not even an Englishman; he had never held office in England; he had never sate in the English Parliament; and he had therefore no pretensions to a dignity peculiarly English.  He was moreover hated by all the contending factions of all the three kingdoms.  Royal letters countersigned by him had been sent both to the Convention at Westminster and to the Convention at Edinburgh; and, both at Westminster and at Edinburgh, the sight of his odious name and handwriting had made the most zealous friends of hereditary right hang down their heads in shame.  It seems strange that even James should have chosen, at such a conjuncture, to proclaim to the world that the men whom his people most abhorred were the men whom he most delighted to honour.

Still more injurious to his interests was the Declaration in which he announced his intentions to his subjects.  Of all the State papers which were put forth even by him it was the most elaborately and ostentatiously injudicious.  When it had disgusted and exasperated all good Englishmen of all parties, the Papists at Saint Germains pretended that it had been drawn up by a stanch Protestant, Edward Herbert, who had been Chief Justice of the Common Pleas before the Revolution, and who now bore the empty title of Chancellor.257 But it is certain that Herbert was never consulted about any matter of importance, and that the Declaration was the work of Melfort and of Melfort alone.258 In truth, those qualities of head and heart which had made Melfort the favourite of his master shone forth in every sentence.  Not a word was to be found indicating that three years of banishment had made the King wiser, that he had repented of a single error, that he took to himself even the smallest part of the blame of that revolution which had dethroned him, or that he purposed to follow a course in any respect differing from that which had already been fatal to him.  All the charges which had been brought against him he pronounced to be utterly unfounded.  Wicked men had put forth calumnies.  Weak men had believed those calumnies.  He alone had been faultless.  He held out no hope that he would consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power to which he had formerly