Note 111 — Chapter XIV · THE REIGN OF JAMES II.

Sunderland does not appear, by the extracts from Barillon's letters published by M. Mazure, to have been the adviser of the king's most injudicious measures. He was united with the queen, who had more moderation than her husband. It is said by Barillon that both he and Petre were against the prosecution of the bishops, ii. 448. The king himself ascribes this step to Jefferies, and seems to glance also at Sunderland as its adviser. Life of James, ii. 156. He speaks more explicitly as to Jefferies in Macpherson's Extracts, 151. Yet Lord Clarendon's Diary, ii. 49, tends to acquit Jefferies. Probably the king had nobody to blame but himself. One cause of Sunderland's continuance in the apparent support of a policy which he knew to be destructive was his poverty. He was in the pay of France, and even importunate for its money. Mazure, 372; Dalrymple, 270 et post. Louis only gave him half what he demanded. Without the blindest submission to the king, he was every moment falling; and this drove him in to a step as injudicious as it was unprincipled, his pretended change of religion, which was not publicly made till June 1688, though he had been privately reconciled, it is said (Mazure, ii. 463) more than a year before by Father Petre.