FN 802 Characters of all the three French ministers are given by
Saint Simon.

FN 803 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick.

FN 804 An engraving and ground plan of the mansion will be found in the Actes et Memoires.

FN 805 Whoever wishes to be fully informed as to the idle controversies and mummeries in which the Congress wasted its time, may consult the Actes et Memoires.

FN 806 Saint Simon was certainly as good a judge of men as any of those English grumblers who called Portland a dunce and a boor; Saint Simon too had every opportunity of forming a correct judgment; for he saw Portland in a situation full of difficulties; and Saint Simon says, in one place, “Benting, discret, secret, poli aux autres, fidele a son maitre, adroit en affaires, le servit tres utilement;” in another, “Portland parut avec un eclat personnel, une politesse, un air de monde et de cour, une galanterie et des graces qui surprirent; avec cela, beaucoup de dignite, meme (le hauteur, mais avec discernement et un jugement prompt sans rien de hasarde.”  Boufflers too extols Portland’s good breeding and tact.  Boufflers to Lewis, July 9. 1697.  This letter is in the archives of the French Foreign Office.  A translation will be found in the valuable collection published by M. Grimblot.

FN 807 Boufflers to Lewis, June 21/July 1 1697; Lewis to Boufflers, June 22/July 2; Boufflers to Lewis, June 25/July 5

FN 808 Boufflers to Lewis June 28/July 8, June 29/July 9 1697

FN 809 My account of this negotiation I have taken chiefly from the despatches in the French Foreign Office.  Translations of those despatches have been published by M. Grimblot.  See also Burnet, ii. 200, 201.

It has been frequently asserted that William promised to pay Mary of Modena fifty thousand pounds a year.  Whoever takes the trouble to read the Protocol of Sept. 10/20 1697, among the Acts of the Peace of Ryswick, will see that my account is correct.  Prior evidently understood the protocol as I understand it.  For he says, in a letter to Lexington of Sept. 17. 1697, “No. 2. is the thing to which the King consents as to Queen Marie’s settlements.  It is fairly giving her what the law allows her.  The mediator is to dictate this paper to the French, and enter it into his protocol; and so I think we shall come off a bon marche upon that article.”

It was rumoured at the time (see Boyer’s History of King William iii. 1703) that Portland and Boufflers had agreed on a secret article by which it was stipulated that, after the death of William, the Prince of Wales should succeed to the English throne.  This fable has often been repeated, but was never believed by men of sense, and can hardly, since the publication of the letters which passed between Lewis and Boufflers, find credit even with the weakest.  Dalrymple and other writers imagined that they had found in the Life of James (ii. 574,