Note 154 — Chapter VIII

“Of this very alarming connection Mr. Pitt had the most early and authentic intelligence, together with the most positive assurances from persons of undoubted veracity, who are at this moment in no common sphere of life.” History of the Minority, p. 30. Mr. Adolphus states the treaty itself to have been communicated to Mr. Pitt by the Earl Marechal Keith, in gratitude for the reversal of his attainder, but “that the fact, if it existed, was not disclosed to the Cabinet,” Adolphus, vol. i. p. 44. This story receives some confirmation from a cotemporary memoir of the Earl Marechal recently published by the Spalding Society of Aberdeen, and supposed to have been written by Sir Robert Strange, who had once been a zealous Jacobite. Neither the Chatham Correspondence nor the Mitchell manuscripts contain anything on the subject; and the papers of the Earl Marechal, at Cumbernald, have never been thoroughly examined. The Editor is disposed to believe the intelligence received by Mr. Pitt did not go so far as the existence of the treaty, but consisted of facts sufficient, in his estimation, to leave no doubt of the object of the negotiation between France and Spain, and of the general intentions of the Spanish government. These facts he had imparted to Lord Bute, who had not drawn the same conclusions from them. Hist. of Minority, p. 33.—E.