given a false alarm; and to wait till new accidents at home, and a more favourable conjuncture abroad, might tempt you to resume the enterprise.  Perhaps this would have been the wisest game you could have played:  but then you should have concerted it with us who acted for you here.  You intended no such thing, as appeared afterwards:  and therefore those who acted for the party at London, whoever they were, must be deemed inexcusable for leaving things on the foot of this message, and giving us no advice fit to be depended upon for many weeks.  Whilst preparations were to be made, and the work was to be set a-going by assistance from hence, you might reasonably expect to hear from us, and to be determined by us:  but when all hopes of this kind seemed to be gone, it was your part to determine us; and we could take no resolution here but that of conforming ourselves to whatever should come prescribed from England.

Whilst we were in this condition, the most desperate that can be imagined, we began to receive verbal messages from you that no more time was to be lost, and that the Chevalier should come away.  No man was, I believe, ever so embarrassed as I found myself at that time.  I could not imagine that you would content yourselves by loose verbal messages, after all that had happened, to call us over; and I knew by experience how little such messages are to be depended on.  For soon after I engaged in these affairs, a monk arrived at Bar, despatched, as he affirmed, by the Duke of Ormond, in whose name he insisted that the Chevalier should hasten into Britain, and that nothing but his presence was wanting to place the crown on his head.  The fellow delivered his errand so positively, and so circumstantially, that the resolution was taken at Bar to set out, and my rendezvous to join the Chevalier was appointed me.  This method to fetch a King, with as little ceremony as one would invite a friend to supper, appeared somewhat odd to me, who was then very new in these affairs.  But when I came to talk with the man, for by good luck he had been sent for from Bar to Paris, I easily discerned that he had no such commission as he pretended to, and that he acted of his own head.  I presumed to oppose the taking any resolution upon his word, though he was a monk:  and soon after we knew from the Duke of Ormond himself that he had never sent him.

This example made me cautious; but that which determined my opinion was, that I could never imagine, without supposing you all run mad, that the same men who judged this attempt unripe for execution, unless supported by regular troops from France, or at least by all the other assistances which are enumerated above, while the design was much more secret than at present; when the King had no fleet at sea, nor more than eight thousand men dispersed over the whole island; when we had the good wishes of the French Court on our side, and were sure of some particular assistances, and of