Note 37 — Chapter XXV

[Lord William Hervey, then First Secretary of Embassy at Paris, had taken up the question of the Spanish Marriages with extreme warmth. He it was who mainly disinterred and relied upon the renunciations annexed to the Treaty of Utrecht, which were designed to exclude any other branch of the House of Bourbon from the Spanish throne. Lord Palmerston adopted these arguments, but without effect, as, indeed, the whole state of Europe had changed; and Lord John Russell never thought there was much weight in them. Lord William Hervey was a highly accomplished and honourable diplomatist, third son of the Marquis of Bristol. His health was bad, and he died in May 1850, at the age of forty-five.]