"We, taking the premises and the circumstances of the petitioner into our royal consideration, are graciously pleased to extend our royal mercy to the petitioner. Our will and pleasure therefore is, that you prepare a bill for our royal signature, to pass our great seal, containing our gracious and free pardon unto him, the said Daniel De Foe, of the offences aforementioned, and of all indictments, convictions, pains, penalties, and forfeitures incurred thereby; and you are to insert therein all such apt beneficial clauses as you shall deem requisite to make this our intended pardon more full, valid, and effectual; and for so doing, this shall be your warrant. Given at our castle at Windsor, the twentieth day of November, 1713, in the twentieth year of our reign. By her majesty's command. BOLINGBROKE. Let any indifferent man judge whether I was not treated with particular malice in this matter; who was, notwithstanding this, reproached in the daily public prints with having written treasonable books in behalf of the pretender; nay, and in some of those books, as before, the queen herself was reproached with having granted her pardon to an author who writ for the pretender. I think I might with much more justice say, I was the first man that ever was obliged to seek a pardon for writing for the Hanover succession, and the first man that these people ever sought to ruin for writing against the pretender. For, if ever a book was sincerely designed to further and propagate the affection and zeal of the nation against the pretender, nay, and was made use of, and that with success too, for that purpose, these books were so; and I ask no more favour of the world to determine the opinion of honest men for or against me, than what is drawn constructively from these books. Let one word, either written or spoken by me, either published or not published, be produced, that was in the least disrespectful to the protestant succession, or to any branch of the family of Hanover, or that can be judged to be favourable to the interest or person of the pretender, and I will be willing to waive her majesty's pardon, and render myself to public justice, to be punished for it, as I should well deserve.