Lord Ravensworth grew unquiet. Fawcett’s various and uncertain behaviour distressed him: though the world was willing to believe the accused Jacobites, the evidence did not tend to corroborate the opinion: was drinking a treasonable health all the treason committed by men from whom so much danger was apprehended? Were no proofs of disloyalty more recent than of twenty years to be found against men who were supposed involved in the most pernicious measures? If no acts of a treacherous dye could be produced against them since they came into the King’s service, might it not well be supposed, that their views and establishment under the present Government had washed out any stains contracted by education or former adulation? and it did appear that Vernon the Mercer had actually made Murray the heir of his fortunes. Lord Ravensworth consulted the Speaker, who advised him to establish his own truth, in having received the advertisement from Fawcett--but neither was that denied, nor the drinking the healths disbelieved, though both Stone and Murray at the last session of the Council on the 26th, when the latter made an incomparable oration, took each a solemn oath, that the charge was absolutely false. The Council made their report to the King, signed unanimously, that Fawcett’s account was false and scandalous--yet the Duke of Grafton, one of the unanimous, owned to Princess Emily, that Fawcett being asked if he had seen Mr. Murray since he had been in town, confessed he had, that he had been sent to him by Harry Vane. “What did Mr. Murray say to you?” “He advised me to contradict what I had said.” And the Chancellor, who communicated the whole transaction to the Duke of Bedford, seemed to own Mr. Murray guilty. How his jealousy of Murray, and his mean court to Stone, made him choose to distinguish between them, will appear still more strongly hereafter.