In the interval between June, 1707 (after the Union with Scotland), and February, 1708, the following entries occur in the Council Books:— ‘1 July, 1707. The Rt. Hon. Robert Harley, one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, delivered up the old signet of office—which was thereupon broken before Her Majesty—and received a new one by the Queen’s command.’ The entry is followed by the note:—‘This order was thus drawn by Mr. Harley’s particular direction.’ (_Register of Privy Council_, Anne, vol. iii, p. 395.) ‘8 January, 170⅞. The Rt. Hon. R. Harley, ... having this day presented to Her Majesty in her Privy Council a new signet with supporters, Her Majesty was pleased to deliver it back to him, whereupon he returned to Her Majesty the old signet, which was immediately defaced,’ &c. (Ib., p. 485.) Footnote 36: Swift’s account of their first interview after Harley’s partial recovery merits quotation:—‘I went in the evening,’ he notes on the 5th of April, ‘to see Mr. Harley. Mr. Secretary was just going out of the door, but I made him come back; and there was the old Saturday club, Lord Keeper [Harcourt], Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I; the first time since his stabbing. Mr. Secretary went away, but I stayed till nine, and made Mr. Harley show me his breast and tell all his story.... I measured and found that the penknife would have killed him, if it had gone but half the breadth of my thumb-nail lower; so near was he to death. I was so curious as to ask him what were his thoughts while they were carrying him home in the chair. He said he concluded himself a dead man.’—_Journal to Stella_, as before, pp. 255, 256. Footnote 37: The original letters of the Elector to Harley are in Lansdowne MS. 1236, ff. 272–294. They range, in date, from 15 December, 1710, to 15 June, 1714. There also are several letters (in autograph) of the Electress Sophia. The earliest of these bears date 26 May, 1707. The latest is undated, but was written in May, 1714, very few days before the writer’s death. Footnote 38: The chief passages in the Stuart Correspondence upon which a confident assertion has been based of his ultimate complicity in the Jacobite conspiracies are given, textually, in a note at the end of this chapter. Footnote 39: Thus, for example, at one stage of the proceedings before the Privy Council about Barbadoes, we find the Lord Keeper Coventry reporting to the Board upon an order of reference: ‘I am of opinion that Barbadoes is not one of the Caribbee Islands.... But ... I am also of opinion that the proof on Lord Carlisle’s part that Barbadoes was intended to be passed in his Patent is very strong.’—_Colonial Papers_, April 18, 1629, vol. v, § 11. See also The King to Wolverton, _Ib._, § 13. Footnote 40: