party was well thought of at your Court. . . . He told me that he had likewise seen your cousin. They do not choose to disoblige you, as you see.”
St. John wrote to Robethon in very flattering terms, and soliciting him to be his correspondent. His rejoinder proves that he was not won over:—
Hanover, 17th Dec, 1710.
“Sir, — I received, while I was at Gohre (from whence our Court returned three days ago), the obliging letter with which you was pleased to honour me. His Electoral Highness, who read it, has very expressly commanded me to thank you from him for the protestations which it contains, of your zeal for the interests of his family; and to assure you that he is very sensible of this, and has a very great esteem and regard for you, knowing your capacity, which renders you so deserving of the choice and confidence of the Queen.
“His Electoral Highness approves much of my having the honour of writing to you, when Mr. Bothmar may be absent from London, and business worthy of your attention shall offer. But during the residence of that minister at her Majesty’s Court you will admit, no doubt, that since he has the entire confidence of his Electoral Highness, and is perfectly acquainted with his intentions, my correspondence would be very useless, and would only weary you with the repetition of things which Mr. Bothmar will not fail to represent to you verbally, much better than I can write them. I said so to my Lord Rivers, and I must add now that they hope here you will be pleased to give Mr. Bothmar some share of your confidence, and will judge him worthy of this when you know him. He has great experience in business, with a great deal of discretion, impartiality, and known probity. I am not afraid of Mattering him in allowing him those qualities.
“As to the rest, I am very much surprised, sir, that you should ask my protection for the minister whom her Majesty shall send here. I am not upon such a footing at this Court as to be able to protect any one; and the ministers of so great a Queen have no need of any other protection than their own character. But with regard to the rendering my small services to him who shall come here, and the doing so cheerfully with all imaginable care and sincerity, I can venture to promise this, and I shall perform it with pleasure, as I endeavoured to do to the late Mr. Cresset, to my Lord Winchilsea, Mr. Poley, and Mr. How.
“I received likewise, with respect and gratitude, the polite things which Monsieur D’Hervart wrote to me bv your order. I desired him to testify this to you; and I doubt not but he has communicated to you the letter I wrote to him, entreating you to believe, that in all I can do I shall never feel any motive but that of acquiring the honour of your esteem and of being considered by you an honest man, a quality without which I would not venture to take the liberty of calling myself, with great respect, your, &c,
“De Robethon.”
The “new party” did not obtain the confidence of the Elector of Hanover. And when he was solicited to act in concert with that geographically-English government in arranging the peace with Erance, he replied that he considered himself to be actually one of the Princes of Germany, and would act accordingly, because neither practical wisdom nor good taste would justify him in anticipating a posture of affairs contingent upon the deaths of her Britannic Majesty and of his own mother.
Dean Swift angrily explains that “there was at the Elector’s Court a little Frenchman, without merit or consequence, called Robithan, who, by the assistance and encouragement of the last ministry, had insinuated himself into some degree of that Prince’s favour, which he used in giving his master the worst impressions he was able of those whom the Queen employed in her service, insinuating that the present ministers were not in the interest of his Highness’s family, that their views were towards the Pretender, that they were making an insecure and dishonourable peace, that the weight of the nation was against them, and that it was impossible for them to preserve much longer their credit or power.” In another place Swift calls Robethon “a very inconsiderable French vagrant,"” and “the channel through which all the ideas of the dispositions and designs of the Queen, the ministers, and the whole British nation were conveyed” to the Court of Hanover. These quotations are from “Swift’s Four last Years of Queen Anne,” which book further asserts that a bribe, remitted in good time, would have changed the tactics of the Right Honourable Jean Robethon. A Huguenot refugee required no bribe to take the side of Marlborough, Stanhope, and Ruvigny. And in his chastened judgment no bribe could remedy the wild confusion and petulant intolerance of a Jacobite or semi-Jacobite regime. I need not suggest to my readers that the Dean betrays his own ill-concealed conviction that Robethon was a man of consequence, if not of merit. The German statesman and general, Count Schulenburg, whose opinions regarding English politics leant strongly to the same side as the Dean’s, wrote to Leibnitz in July 1714:— “Robethon is able, but his violent passions and party spirit sometimes make him drive on the wrong side; he is hated and persecuted by the Hanoverian ministry, with the exception of Bernstorff, who supports him.” — (Kemble, p. 512.)
