For what London was feeling and saying in this eventful year, 1745, search must be made in the correspondence of the time. The letters of Walpole, for instance, begin the year with the expression of a fear, if Marshal Belleisle, who had been made a prisoner at Hanover, where he was travelling without a passport, should be allowed to go at large, on his word, in England, as it was reported he would be, that mischief would come of it. ‘We could not have a worse inmate! ◆[Sidenote: _HOPES AND FEARS._]◆ So ambitious and intriguing a man, who was the author of this whole war, will be no bad general to head the Jacobites on any insurrection.’ The marshal was, at first, kept ‘magnificently close’ at Windsor, but as he cost the country there 100_l._ a day, he was sent to Nottingham, to live there as he pleased, and for the Jacobites to make what they could of him. For the moment, the Duke of Beaufort was more dangerous than the marshal. The duke was a declared, determined and an unwavering Jacobite, and led the party against Court and Ministry. At the end of April there was ‘nothing new.’ In May came the honourable catastrophe of Fontenoy, and the dishonourable sarcastic song made by Frederick, Prince of Wales, on his brother, the Duke of Cumberland’s glorious failure. Alluding to the duke, Walpole writes, ‘All the letters are full of his humanity and bravery. He will be as popular with the lower class of men as he has been for three or four years with the low women. He will be the soldiers’ ‘_Great Sir_,’ as well as theirs. I am really glad; it will be of great service to the family if any one of them come to make a figure.’ Walpole saw the necessity of having a hero opposed to the young Chevalier. One was sorely needed. Belleisle must have enchanted the Jacobites by his publicly asserting that this country was so ill-provided for defence, he would engage, with five thousand scullions of the French army, to conquer England. Walpole owned his fears. He was depressed by our disasters in Flanders, the absence of the king from England, that of ministers from London, ‘not five thousand men in the island, and not above fourteen or fifteen ships at home. Allelujah!’ [Sidenote: _HORACE WALPOLE’S IDEAS._]