for some years held the post of Minister. He was one of the most capable of the diplomatists of his time, and certainly, as his reports cited in this volume show, one of the most hard-worked, besides being one of the most hardly-used, members of his profession. He was a Swiss by birth, who is entered in Mr Chance's index as LtGeneral François-Louis de Pesne de Saint-Saphorin, and his nationality suggested to the Jacobites a motion for his recall on the ground of the impropriety of employing foreigners in the British Diplomatic Service. At Vienna his reports, of which the 'Relation Générale' drawn up by him early in 1727 may be taken as a sample, were circumspect as well as close-they show him to have been suspicious of papal influence in particular. He could be implicitly depended on as a vigilant observer of the animosity fostered in ministerial quarters at Vienna against Townshend and the Walpoles. In return, he was subjected to a treatment culminating in his isolation at the Austrian Court, and finally, in his expulsion with studied rudeness from Vienna, the 'territories' and the Empire, by way of reprisal for the expulsion from this country of Baron Palm, whose memorial had censured both King George's speech of January 1727 and Bishop Hoadley's celebrated 'Enquiry.' In the edict against Saint-Saphorin was included his Secretary, Charles Harrison, who had quitted the capital six months before without having been admitted to an audience. He had been succeeded by George Woodward,* who now took his departure with Saint-Saphorin from a Court where he had never been formally received. Their journey, of which they made free use for purposes of propaganda at Ratisbon and at the South-German Courts, and the brochure in which before leaving Vienna Saint-Saphorin reviewed the situation, concludes the account of his activity to be found in this volume, and is unconnected with a notable earlier episode in his career at Vienna.†

At the Ratisbon Diet, in these critical days by no means the abode of undisturbed tranquillity, Great Britain was represented by Edward Finch-Hatton, who

* The name of the previous Secretary is given as Carrard.

+ See W. Michael, 'Engl. Gesch. im 18. Jahrh.,' vol. II, pp. 467–476.

was sent thence to Poland, on a mission which he would seem not to have executed with tact, on behalf of the persecuted Protestants; and subsequently by Isaac Le Leup. The latter diplomatist had to enter upon his task with the Deputies very cautiously and under the wing, as it were, of his able French colleague Chavigny; but in the end he had to leave Ratisbon after having sturdily but in vain sought to stiffen princely resistance.

With Spain, Austria's partner in the menace to the peace of Europe which the Alliance of Hanover was formed to prevent, war was for months an imminent issue, and, in February 1727, hostilities had opened between the two historic antagonists. For some time before the return of William Stanhope (afterwards Earl of Harrington) from Spain, where he had resided for seven years as Ambassador after brilliant military service on the side of her adversary, he had not been seen at Court, and confined himself and his efforts to interviews with the Marquis de la Paz, with whom he had long established friendly relations. The story of his Embassy and of the unique incident which preceded the interruption of its course the revelations' made to him by the fugitive Ripperda of the text of the all-important Treaty of Vienna, with additions not to be found in it-is here recalled in its general connexion with British relations to Spain and the problems of policy affecting it; and, we need not say, exhibits the moderation as well as the force characteristic of one of the most striking 'negotiators' in the annals of British diplomacy. At an early date Stanhope fostered the relinquishment to Spain of Gibraltar-whether wisely or not, is a question too large for incidental discussion. After another mission to the Spanish Court, Stanhope was one of the British Plenipotentiaries of the Congress of Soissons, and then succeeded Townshend in his Secretaryship of State. But his diplomatic activity, which concerns us here, probably shows him at the height of his powers.

Our Envoy to Portugal from 1725 was BrigadierGeneral James Dormer, who had previously passed through a military career of some adventure and distinction. At Lisbon the difficult task awaited him of preventing the accession of Portugal to the Treaty of Vienna, and it was additionally complicated by a dispute

of the semi-private sort-the Spelman-Butler imbroglio -such as at times clogs the progress of diplomacy. The statement that Dormer was at issue with our active ConsulGeneral, afterwards Sir Thomas Burnet, would appear to be a mistake: the quarrel was with Lord Tyrawley, Dormer's successor. He found valuable support in Count de Tarouca, Portuguese Envoy at The Hague and then at Vienna; and he needed it in the long period of uncertainty which in this volume is brought up to the settlement of the Spanish Portuguese marriages in 1727.

The history of British diplomacy at Berlin, in the period following on Lord Wentworth's twofold Mission to that Court, may seem involved in fewer difficulties than that of its exertions at Ratisbon and some of the lesser German Courts, if only because its efforts were concentrated on a single personality. From 1724 to 1730 General du Bourgay, whose powers were seriously taxed by the office, was British Envoy at the Court of Frederick William I-his predecessor, James Scott, only finds mention here in connexion with the joint efforts of Frederick William I and George I on behalf of the Polish Protestants. The issues with which General du Bourgay was principally concerned, and the policy which, with the support of Queen Sophia Dorothea and the co-operation of the very able French Envoy, Count Rottembourg, he strove to uphold, were determined on the one side by treaty obligations and unshifting purpose, and on the other by the vehement dictates of self-judged selfinterest. The rapidly concluded Treaty of Charlottenburg (1723) between the Kings of Great Britain and Prussia-the real object of which remains doubtful, but must be traceable to fears of the stability of the alliance with France, if not of a combination on her part with Russia and Sweden to which this Treaty could not but prove an obstacle-did not immediately stop the apprehensions of invasion; and King George's Envoy was at one time anxiously apprehensive of violent action against his Hanoverian dominions and his own personal safety.

Scott, curious to note, seems to have been a protégé of the Electress Sophia as well as of the Elector, George Lewis, and owed to their influence his appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary to Saxony (Poland), whence he was removed to Berlin to take Whitworth's place during his absence at Cambray.

These fears remained unrealised; but the Prusso-Austrian compact of Wusterhausen (1796) could not but be adverse to the wishes of the Western Powers. In the final phase reached in Mr Chance's notices of these relations Frederick William I is left in surprise and suspense; and the last of du Bourgay's 'various' reports here cited represents the King, who had trusted nobody, as deeming himself befooled on all sides.

The British Representative accredited to the Hanse Towns and resident at Hamburg was Cyril Wich (1714-45), whose father John Wich had preceded him in the exercise of the same function (1709–13), having himself been similarly preceded by his own father Sir Peter Wich, F.R.S., a correspondent of Evelyn and a linguistic and geographical scholar of repute. This accumulated family experience must have stood Cyril Wich in good stead in meeting the demands upon him when in office; for Hamburg was then, and long afterwards, a European centre of intelligence. Yet we find him, at the time of the Jacobite scare of 1725, hampered in his endeavour to discover correspondence with St Petersburg,' owing to the control assumed over the Dutch mails by the 'Anciens de la Bourse, merchants rich as Croesus who could not be gained.'

Consistently obliging towards the agents of Townshend's policy was the attitude of his old intimates, the three friends' who, as the leading statesmen of the United Netherlands, kept the slow motion of their political machine true to the course which treaty, tradition, and interest alike bound it to follow, and, in the crucial case of the Ostend Company, directed it towards ends signally affecting Dutch interests. In 1724, the British Envoy at The Hague was William Finch-Hatton, whom Mr Chance sets down as perhaps the least useful of all our Envoys, and whose identity it would seem to have been found difficult to disentangle from that of his younger brother Edward, another son of that Hanover Tory par excellence, the Earl of Nottingham, and himself in 1725 British Envoy at the Imperial Diet and then at the Saxon-Polish Court, where he was charged with

The Grand Pensionary Isaac van Hoornbeek, the Secretary to the Council Simon van Slingelandt, and the Registrary (Greffier) to the States General, Francis Fagel.

efforts on behalf of the persecuted Protestants of Thorn, and the protection of the German Protestants at large. But, though a Protestant league was talked of, he was unable either at Ratisbon or in Dresden to do effective service for a cause which King George had very sincerely at heart, though, since Russian co-operation against Poland was not to be obtained, he was unwilling to push matters to the decision of war.

We turn for a moment to the Northern Powers, in Great Britain's relations to whom lies the dominant interest of Mr Chance's researches. In the affairs of Denmark our policy was not plain sailing as it was in those of the rival Scandinavian kingdom; indeed, the question of the accession to the Alliance of Hanover on the part of the former Power was conditioned by the long protracted hesitation of the latter to come in. With neither of Great Britain's partners in the Alliance at the time of its start were the Danes on terms of amity. The understanding between Hanover and Denmark by which George I had secured Bremen and Verden for a small pecuniary acknowledgment, on condition of his adherence to the British guarantee of the possession of Ducal Schleswig by Denmark, formed a potent hindrance to a reconciliation between Russia and Great Britain, and contributed to the hostility between the two Powers which found vent in Baltic expeditions and fear of Russian invasion; nor had it changed into a British acceptance of Russia's 'griefs' at the time of Peter I's death. British interests at Copenhagen were thus dependent on a singular complication of considerations and calculations, and not easily advanced by the influence of personal diplomacy. Lord Polwarth's Embassy had come to an end in 1721; but his successor, Lord Glenorchy's period of office was interrupted by absence from ill-health' for a whole year till 1726, when he was peremptorily summoned back to his post, and it virtually came to an end in 1728, In 1727, Sir John Norris, the Admiral in command of the Baltic fleet, had been joined to him with plenipotentiary powers, and, in August 1729, BrigadierGeneral Sir Richard Sutton, M.P., arrived on a special mission to inquire into the readiness of Danish troops in view of Prussian preparations. In the same year, Walter Titley was appointed Envoy, Johann Herman, Vol. 241.-No. 478.