grands, et qu’autrefois il a tant coute a la France pour les maintenir dans son obeissance, que vraisemblablement j’etablirois un roi pour les gouverner, et que peut-etre ce serait le partage d’un de mes petits-fils qui voudroit regner independamment.”  April 7/17 1698.  “Les royaumes de Naples et de Sicile ne peuvent se regarder comme un partage dont mon fils puisse se contenter pour lui tenir lieu de tous ses droits.  Les exemples du passe n’ont que trop appris combien ces etats content a la France le peu d’utilite dont ils sont pour elle, et la difficulte de les conserver.”  May 16. 1698.  “Je considere la cession de ces royaumes comme une source continuelle de depenses et d’embarras.  Il n’en a que trop coute a la France pour les conserver; et l’experience a fait voir la necessite indispensable d’y entretenir toujours des troupes, et d’y envoyer incessamment des vaisseaux, et combien toutes ces peines ont ete inutiles.”  May 29. 1698.  It would be easy to cite other passages of the same kind.  But these are sufficient to vindicate what I have said in the text.

FN 16 Dec. 20/30 1698.

FN 17 Commons’ Journals, February 24. 27.; March 9. 1698/9 In the Vernon Correspondence a letter about the East India question which belongs to the year 1699/1700 is put under the date of Feb. 10 1698.  The truth is that this most valuable correspondence cannot be used to good purpose by any writer who does not do for himself all that the editor ought to have done.

FN 18 I doubt whether there be extant a sentence of worse English than that on which the House divided.  It is not merely inelegant and ungrammatical but is evidently the work of a man of puzzled understanding, probably of Harley.  “It is Sir, to your loyal Commons an unspeakable grief, that any thing should be asked by Your Majesty’s message to which they cannot consent, without doing violence to that constitution Your Majesty came over to restore and preserve; and did, at that time, in your gracious declaration promise, that all those foreign forces which came over with you should be sent back.”

FN 19 It is curious that all Cowper’s biographers with whom I am acquainted, Hayley, Southey, Grimshawe Chalmers, mention the judge, the common ancestor of the poet, of his first love Theodora Cowper, and of Lady Hesketh; but that none of those biographers makes the faintest allusion to the Hertford trial, the most remarkable event in the history of the family; nor do I believe that any allusion to that trial can be found in any of the poet’s numerous letters.

FN 20 I give an example of Trenchard’s mode of showing his profound respect for an excellent Sovereign.  He speaks thus of the commencement of the reign of Henry the Third.  “The kingdom was recently delivered from a bitter tyrant, King John, and had likewise got rid of their perfidious deliverer, the Dauphin of France, who after the English had accepted him for their King, had secretly vowed their extirpation.”