the author, and Mr. Cambridge[1] dined here. Mr. Hume was Secretary to Lord Hertford's Embassy at Paris, when he was received with uncommon openness, on account of his reputation as an author, and the esteem the English were in then since the late peace. His company was universally courted, and he was the first person that got admission into the Scotch College to see seven volumes of King James the Second's writing there, which he had left to that Society at his death, together with all his correspondents' letters from England, and his heart to be deposited there. The books were all wrote in his own hand, and contained an account of most part of his life. The papers he was not permitted to see, Father Gordon alleging that they contained letters from many people in England to the time of his death, who never had been suspected and might suffer by their names being known. It appears from these books that soon after the triple alliance in 1667, Charles II. concluded a Treaty with Louis XIV. with a view to establish the Roman Catholic religion in England and stipulating for the conquest and subsequent division of the Dutch territory. The only difficulty after this Treaty was which object should first take place. The Duchess of Portsmouth upon this came to England and gaining her point war broke out soon after. The King says in these memoirs that his brother, Charles II. was so bigoted that in the little Council where this Treaty was settled, he cryed for joy at the prospect of bringing in the Roman Catholic religion in England. It was signed by the Lord Arundel of Wardour at Paris on the part of the King. There were likewise several sheets of advice to his son. In them he takes his resolution for granted and advises him of all things to beware of women; he says that very far in life he was seduced by the allurement of the sex and repeats again and again to him to beware of such cattle. He desires him to make it his first and immediate object to get that pernicious Act, the habeas corpus, repealed, and that for the good of the subject. For if that was done the prerogative would
- ↑ The poet.
