The person despatched to London returned very soon to us, and the answer he brought was, that since affairs grew daily worse, and could not mend by delay, our friends in England had resolved to declare immediately, and that they would be ready to join the Chevalier on his landing; that his person would be as safe there as in Scotland, and that in every other respect it was better that he should land in England; that they had used their utmost endeavours, and that they hoped the western counties were in a good posture to receive him.  To this was added a general indication of the place he should come to, as near to Plymouth as possible.

You must agree that this was not the answer of men who knew what they were about.  A little more precision was necessary in dictating a message which was to have such consequences, and especially since the gentleman could not fail to acquaint the persons he spoke with that the Chevalier was not able to carry men enough to secure him from being taken up even by the first constable.  Notwithstanding this, the Duke of Ormond set out from Paris and the Chevalier from Bar.  Some persons were sent to the North of England and others to London to give notice that they were both on their way.  Their routes were so ordered that the Duke of Ormond was to sail from the coast of Normandy some days before the Chevalier arrived at St. Malo, to which place the duke was to send immediate notice of his landing; and two gentlemen acquainted with the country, and perfectly well known to all our friends in those parts, were despatched before, that the people of Devonshire and Somersetshire, who were, we concluded, in arms, might be apprised of the signals which were to be made from the ships, and might be ready to receive the duke.

On the coast of France, and before his embarkation, the duke heard that several of our principal friends had been seized immediately after the person who came last from them had left London, that the others were all dispersed, and that the consternation was universal.  He embarked, notwithstanding this melancholy news, and, supported by nothing but the firmness of his temper, he went over to the place appointed; he did more than his part, and he found that our friends had done less than theirs.  One of the gentlemen who had passed over before him, and had traversed part of the country, joined him on the coast, and assured him that there was not the least room to expect a rising; in a word, he was refused a night’s lodging in a country which we had been told was in a good posture to receive the Chevalier, and where the duke expected that multitudes would repair to him.

He returned to the coast of Brittany after this uncomfortable expedition, where the Chevalier arrived about the same time from Lorraine.  What his Grace proposed by the second attempt, which he made as soon as the vessel could be refitted, to land in the same part of the island, I profess myself to be ignorant.  I wrote him my opinion at the time, and I have always thought that the storm in which he had like to have been cast away, and which forced him back to the French coast, saved him from a much greater peril—­that of perishing in an attempt as full of extravagant rashness, and as void of all reasonable meaning, as any of those adventures which have rendered the hero of La Mancha immortal.