upon reference to it for advice or information on the part of the Secretary of State."[1] The latter was the course now adopted, and Shelburne, who held the seals of the Southern department, was directed to carry it out in conjunction with Hillsborough the President of the Board. Hillsborough appears to have been ready not only to accept his office reduced to even a smaller degree of importance than it had occupied before the minute of 1752,[2] which was now revoked, but to have insisted on the new commission being made out in terms which could leave no loophole to the Board for advancing claims to independent action at any future time. Freed from this embarrassment Shelburne was able to give undivided attention to his department.
Ever since the peace, Choiseul and Grimaldi had been scheming how to win back what they had lost. They had gained Austria to their alliance;[3] they were intriguing in Stockholm,[4] and plotting in Copenhagen;[5] they were fishing in the troubled waters of Polish politics;[6] their emissaries traversed the English Colonies;[7] their spies surveyed the defences of the English coast;[8] Portsmouth was to be destroyed,[9] and Gibraltar to be seized by a coup de main;[10] Avignon was to be annexed to France,[11] and Portugal to Spain;[12] Corsica was to be invaded;[13] Geneva was threatened.[14] But the time for overt action had not yet arrived, and the two ministers resolved to wait, until
- ↑ Marginal note by Hillsborough on a letter from Shelburne on August 16th, 1766.
- ↑ See Vol. I. p. 174 for an account of the relations of the Board of Trade and the office of the Secretary of State. For the settlement now made, see Order in Council, August 8th, 1766; Hillsborough to Shelburne, August 14th, 1766; Shelburne to Hillsborough, August 16th, 1766; Hillsborough to Shelburne, August 25th, 1766; Shelburne to Hillsborough, August 26th, 1766.
- ↑ Rochfort to Halifax, June 25th, 1764, June 9th, 1765.
- ↑ Sir John Goodricke to Conway, November 10th, 1766, and a paper at Lansdowne House "endorsed French views on Sweden."
- ↑ Gunning to Conway, October 21st, 1766.
- ↑ Wroughton to Conway, November 12th, 1766.
- ↑ See the authorities quoted by Bancroft, v. 19.
- ↑ See Stanhope, v. 247.
- ↑ See the secret despatches of Rochfort, September 17th, 1764, and February 25th, 1765, given in Coxe's Memoirs of the House of Bourbon, iii. 298.
- ↑ Shelburne to Devisme, December 2oth, 1766.
- ↑ Coxe, iii. 339; Henri Martin, xvi. livre 6.
- ↑ Coxe, iii. 297; Devisme to Shelburne, November 1766, February 9th, 1767.
- ↑ Hertford to Halifax, August 12th, 1764.
- ↑ Hutton to Shelburne, November 1766.
