It ought to be remarked that, in the Life of James compiled from his own Papers, the assurances of support which he received from Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin Shrewsbury, and other men of note are mentioned with very copious details.  But there is not a word indicating that any such assurances were ever received from Caermarthen.

FN 467 A Journal of several Remarkable Passages relating to the East India Trade, 1693.

FN 468 See the Monthly Mercuries and London Gazettes of September, October, November and December 1693; Dangeau, Sept. 5. 27., Oct. 21., Nov. 21.; the Price of the Abdication, 1693.

FN 469 Correspondence of William and Heinsius; Danish Note, dated Dec 11/21 1693.  The note delivered by Avaux to the Swedish government at this time will be found in Lamberty’s Collection and in the Memoires et Negotiations de la Paix de Ryswick.

FN 470 “Sir John Lowther says, nobody can know one day what a House of Commons would do the next; in which all agreed with him.”  These remarkable words were written by Caermarthen on the margin of a paper drawn up by Rochester in August 1692.  Dalrymple, Appendix to part ii. chap. 7.

FN 471 See Sunderland’s celebrated Narrative which has often been printed, and his wife’s letters, which are among the Sidney papers, published by the late Serjeant Blencowe.

FN 472 Van Citters, May 6/16. 1690.

FN 473 Evelyn, April 24. 1691.

FN 474 Lords’ Journals, April 28. 1693.

FN 475 L’Hermitage, Sept. 19/29, Oct 2/12 1693.

FN 476 It is amusing to see how Johnson’s Toryism breaks out where we should hardly expect to find it.  Hastings says, in the Third Part of Henry the Sixth,

“Let us be back’d with God and with the seas
Which He hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps alone defend ourselves.”

“This,” says Johnson in a note, “has been the advice of every man who, in any age, understood and favoured the interest of England.”

FN 477 Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen’s last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities, who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottom of his heart.  In the Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen’s Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one unconversable fault, formality.  It is not very easy to understand how the same man can be the most unreserved of companions and yet err on the side of formality.  Yet there may be truth in both the descriptions.  It is well known that Swift loved to take rude liberties with men of high rank and fancied that, by doing so, he asserted his own independence.  He has been justly blamed for this fault by his two illustrious biographers, both of them men of spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott.  I suspect that he showed a disposition to behave with offensive familiarity to Somers, and that Somers, not choosing to submit to impertinence, and not wishing to be forced to resent it, resorted, in selfdefence, to a ceremonious politeness which he never would have practised towards Locke or Addison.