Note 328 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

The Duchess of Gordon, in June 1711, sent a silver medal to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, with a head on one side, and the inscription, "Cujus est"; on the other, the British isles, with the word "Reddite." The dean of faculty, Dundas of Arniston, presented this medal; and there seems reason to believe that a majority of the advocates voted for its reception. Somerville, p. 452. Bolingbroke, in writing on the subject to a friend, it must be owned, speaks of the proceeding with due disapprobation. Bolingbroke Correspondence, i. 343. No measures, however, were taken to mark the court's displeasure.

"Nothing is more certain," says Bolingbroke in his letter to Sir William Wyndham, perhaps the finest of his writings, "than this truth, that there was at that time no formed design in the party, whatever views some particular men might have, against his majesty's accession to the throne."—P. 22. This is in effect to confess a great deal; and in other parts of the same letter, he makes admissions of the same kind: though he says that he and other tories had determined, before the queen's death, to have no connection with the Pretender, on account of his religious bigotry. P. 111.