The most apparent merit of the Chevalier’s Court is the great regularity of his finances, and the economy of his exchequer. His income before the Rebellion was about 23,000_l._ a year, arising chiefly from pensions from the Pope and from Spain, from contributions from England, and some irregular donations from other Courts. Yet his payments were not only most exact, but he had saved a large sum of money, which was squandered on the unfortunate attempt in Scotland. Besides the loss of a Crown, to which he thought he had a just title, besides a series of disappointments from his birth, besides that mortifying rotation of friends, to which his situation has constantly exposed him, as often as faction and piques and baffled ambition have driven the great men of England to apply to or desert his forlorn hopes, he has, in the latter part of his life, seen his own little Court and his parental affections torn to pieces, and tortured by the seeds of faction, sown by that master-hand of sedition, the famous Bolingbroke, who insinuated into their councils a project for the Chevalier’s resigning his pretensions to his eldest son, as more likely to conciliate the affections of the English to his family. The father, and the ancient Jacobites, never could be induced to relish this scheme. The boy and his adherents embraced it as eagerly as if the father had really a Crown to resign. Slender as their Cabinet was, these parties divided it; and when I was at Rome, Lord Winton was a patriot at that Court, and the ragged type of a minority, which was comprehended in his single person. In September, the Margrave of Anspach, nephew of the late Queen, and to whom on that relation the King had given the Order of the Garter, wrote a circular letter to the Princes of the Empire, to dissuade them from holding a Diet of Election, till it was declared necessary to have a King of the Romans. The King was unlucky in his German alliances. The Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Saxe Gotha, the one father-in-law of the Princess Mary, the other, brother of the Princess of Wales, declared themselves against the election.