Spar, who pressed him on his side as I pressed him on mine, and promised, besides the arrears of the subsidy due to the Swedes, an immediate advance of fifty thousand crowns for the enterprise on Britain.  He kept the officer who was to be despatched I know not how long booted; sometimes on pretence that in the low state of his credit he could not find bills of exchange for the sum, and sometimes on other pretences, and by these delays he evaded his promise.  The French were very frank in declaring that they could give us no money, and that they would give us no troops.  Arms, ammunition, and connivance they made us hope for.  The latter, in some degree, we might have had perhaps; but to what purpose was it to connive, when by a multitude of little tricks they avoided furnishing us with arms and ammunition, and when they knew that we were utterly unable to furnish ourselves with them?  I had formed the design of engaging French privateers in the Pretender’s service.  They were to have carried whatever we should have had to send to any part of Britain in their first voyage, and after that to have cruised under his commission.  I had actually agreed for some, and it was in my power to have made the same bargains with others.  Sweden on one side and Scotland on the other would have afforded them retreats.  And if the war had been kept up in any part of the mountains, I conceive the execution of this design would have been of the greatest advantage to the Pretender.  It failed because no other part of the work went on.  He was not above six weeks in his Scotch expedition, and these were the things I endeavoured to bring to bear in his absence.  I had no great opinion of my success before he went; but when he had made the last step which it was in his power to make, I resolved to suffer neither him nor the Scotch to be any longer bubbles of their own credulity and of the scandalous artifice of this Court.  It would be tedious to enter into a longer narrative of all the useless pains I took.  To conclude, therefore; in a conversation which I had with the M. d’Huxelles, I took occasion to declare that I would not be the instrument of amusing the Scotch, and that, since I was able to do them no other service, I would at least inform them that they must flatter themselves no longer with hopes of succour from France.  I added that I would send them vessels which, with those already on the coast of Scotland, might serve to bring off the Pretender, the Earl of Mar, and as many others as possible.  The Marshal approved my resolution, and advised me to execute it as the only thing which was left to do.  On this occasion he showed no reserve, he was very explicit; and yet in this very point of time the promise of an order was obtained, or pretended to be obtained, from the Regent for delivering those stores of arms and ammunition which belonged to the Chevalier, and which had been put into the French magazines when Sir George Byng came to Havre.  Castel Blanco is