Note 196 — Chapter L · JAMES II. IN IRELAND, 1689

Avaux to Louis, May 27. Writing to Croissy on October 21 he calls Melfort ‘grand fourbe et qui ment plus effrontément qu’aucun homme que j’ai jamais vu.’ For Melfort’s opinion of Avaux, see Pointis on September 5 in Rousset’s Louvois, ii. 214. Afterwards, when Melfort was at Rome, Mary of Modena insisted on his forgiving Tyrconnel. He obeyed: ‘but without a fault to let loose a pack of about fifty nephews against me, besides the females, and all the time protest all manner of friendship and respect for me, swearing he could not tell what could be done when I was gone, to send his Duchess to cry an hour at my lodgings and make me cry too for company, and all this while harbour malice in his heart is horrible,’ Ellis’s Original Letters, 2nd series, iv. 187. ‘The King went to Ireland only in order to go to England,’ Melfort’s memorial of October 20, 1689, in Macpherson, i. 334.