In the beginning of September came news of the birth of a Duke of Burgundy; an event of the greatest moment to France, but not received with their usual transports. The Court had disgusted the clergy, by demanding an account of their revenues. The priests, equally ready at contriving or imputing an imposture, persuaded half the nation that the child was spurious; and to drive off the war from their own quarters, endeavoured to light up or to lay the foundation of a general war in the kingdom. The English Prelates sent Harry the Fifth to the conquest of France, to prevent a scrutiny of the same nature. The same courier brought the Marquis de Mirepoix a patent of Duke. He was much esteemed in England, having little of the manners of his country, where he had seldom lived; and except a passion which he retained for dancing, and for the gracefulness of his own figure, there was nothing in his character that did not fall in naturally enough with the seriousness of the English and German Courts,[180] where he had been Ambassador; nor any quickness of parts that could have made him offensive, if our Ministry had been inclined to take exceptions. Their suspicions seldom ascended to enemies really formidable. They bore with General Wall,[181] an artful Irishman, Ambassador from Spain, and who but last year had clandestinely sent thither several of our woollen manufacturers. Greater insults were shown to us at Paris and Berlin, where Marshal Keith and Lord Tyrconnel, two outlawed Jacobites, were reciprocally Ambassadors. Indeed, it was a constant war of piques and affronts between the King and his nephew of Prussia. The latter had insisted upon the recall of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who had sacrificed to the ruling passion of the uncle, by treating the character of the Prussian King, in his public dispatches and private letters, in the strongest terms of satire.[182] He returned to Dresden, where, about this time, he concluded a subsidiary treaty with the King of Poland, to engage his vote for the Archduke Joseph to be King of the Romans--the darling object of the ambition of the Court of Vienna, and the common gulph of our profuse politics. The King of Prussia openly, the French underhand, opposed the election. The very opposition of the latter had a politic effect, as the longer it remained in suspense, the longer would be the duration of our extravagance. In one of the King of Prussia’s rescripts, he taxed the King, whom he called the last and youngest of the Electors, with violating both his oath and the Golden Bull.