he had told me his object, I said, “Write the reign of King William, Dr. Robertson!  That is a great task!  I look on him as the greatest man of modern times since his ancestor William Prince of Orange.”  I soon found the Doctor had very little idea of him, or had taken upon trust the pitiful partialities of Dalrymple and Macpherson.  I said, “Sir, I do not doubt but that King William came over with a view to the crown.  Nor was he called upon by patriotism, for he was not an Englishman to assert our liberties.  No; his patriotism was of a higher rank.  He aimed not at the crown of England from ambition, but to employ its forces and wealth against Louis XIV. for the common cause of the liberties of Europe.  The Whigs did not understand the extent of his views, and the Tories betrayed him.  He has been thought not to have understood us; but the truth was, he took either party as it was predominant, that he might sway the Parliament to support his general plan.”  The Doctor, suspecting that I doubted his principles being enlarged enough to do justice to so great a character, told me he himself had been born and bred a Whig, though he owned he was not a moderate one--I believe, a very moderate one.  I said Macpherson had done great injustice to another hero, the Duke of Marlborough, whom he accuses of betraying the design on Brest to Louis XIV.  The truth was, as I heard often in my youth from my father, my uncle, and old persons who had lived in those times, that the Duke trusted the Duchess with the secret, and she her sister the popish Duchess of Tyrconnel, who was as poor and as bigoted as a church mouse.  A corroboration of this was the wise and sententious answer of King William to the Duke, whom he taxed with having betrayed the secret. “upon my honour, Sir,” said the Duke, “I told it to nobody but my wife.”  “I did not tell it to mine!” said the King.

I added, that Macpherson’s and Dalrymple’s invidious scandals really serve but to heighten the amazing greatness of the King’s genius; for, if they say true, he maintained the crown on his head though the nobility, the churchmen, the country gentlemen, the people were against him; and though almost all his own ministers betrayed him—­“But,” said I, “nothing is so silly as to suppose that the Duke -of Marlborough and Lord Godolphin ever meant seriously to
          restore King James.  Both had offended him too much to
expect forgiveness, especially from so remorseless a nature.  Yet a re-revolution was so probable, that it is no wonder they kept up a correspondence with him, at least to break their fall if he returned.  But as they never did effectuate the least service in his favour, when they had the fullest power, nothing can be inferred but King James’s folly in continuing to lean on them.  To imagine they meant to sacrifice his weak daughter, whom they governed absolutely, to a man who was sure of being governed-by others, one must have as little sense as James himself had.”