The Earl disliked the tiny jealous Court; the impotent cabals, the priests who tried to convert him. Writing to David Hume long afterwards, in 1762, he said, ‘I wish I could see you, to answer honestly all your [historical] questions: for, though I had my share of folly with others, yet, as my intentions were at bottom honest, I should open to you my whole budget.’ When he wrote thus he had made his peace with England. Why he did so we shall try to point out later. Always scrupulously honest (except when diplomatic duties forbade, and even then he hated lying), the Earl told his brother that he found the Jacobite Court at Rome no place for an honest man. He does not give details, but he seems to hint at some enterprise which, in his opinion, was not honourable. James, moreover, was sunk in devotion, weeping and praying at the tomb of Clementina. From this uncongenial society the Earl departed, and took up his abode at the Papal city of Avignon, where Ormonde now resided. He liked the charming old place, and thought it especially rich in original characters. By 1736, however, he had returned to Spain, where, as he said, he was always sure to find ‘his old friend, the Sun.’ News of the Earl comes through some very harmless correspondence, intercepted at Leyden, in 1736, by an unidentified spy.[13] Don Ezekiel del Toboso (Hamilton) was now out of favour with James, which, judging by his very foolish letters, is no marvel. He resided at Leyden, corresponding with Ormonde and George Kelly. George, after fourteen years of the Tower, since Atterbury’s Plot, had escaped in a manner at once ingenious, romantic, and strictly honourable. Carte, the historian, was another correspondent; but gossip was the staple of their budgets—gossip and abuse of James’s favourites, Dunbar and Inverness. In Spain the Earl officially represented James, but his chief employments were shooting and reading. His Spanish pension was unpaid (he had a small allowance from the Duke of Hamilton), and he was minded ‘to live contentedly upon a small matter,’ he says, rather than to ‘pay court in anti-chambers to under Ministers whom I despise.’ ‘I wo na gie an inch o’ my will for an ell o’ my wealth,’ he remarks, in the Scots proverbial phrase. A Protestant canton in Switzerland would suit him best, where a little money will furnish all that he requires. ‘I am naturally sober enough, as to my eating, more as to my drinking, I do not game, and am a Knight Errant _sin amor_, so that I need not great sums for my maintenance.’ A Knight _sin amor_ the Earl seems usually to have been. He must have been over forty at this time, and he had not yet acquired his celebrated fair Turkish captive. The Earl, however, had not given up all hope of active Jacobite service. ‘I propose to try if I can still do anything, or have even the hopes of doing something.’ He had a ‘project,’ and, as far as the hints in his letters can now be deciphered, it was