Through such tortuous misunderstandings and suspicions on every side, matters dragged on till Charles forced the game by embarking for Scotland secretly in June 1745. The Earl Marischal was the man whom he sent to report this step to Louis XV. ‘I hope,’ Charles writes to d’Argenson, ‘you will receive the Earl as a person of the first quality, in whom I have full confidence.’ The Earl undertook the commission.[19] On August 20, 1745, he sent in a _Mémoire_ to the French Court. Lord Clancarty had arrived, authorised (says the Earl) to speak for the English Jacobite leaders, the Duke of Beaufort, the Earl of Lichfield, Lord Orrery, Lord Barrymore, Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, and Sir John Hinde Cotton. They offered to raise the standard as soon as French troops landed in England. When they made the offer, the English Jacobites (who asked for 10,000 infantry, arms for 30,000, guns, and pay) did not know that Charles had landed in Scotland. D’Argenson naturally asked for the seals and signatures of the English leaders, as warrants of their sincerity. He could not send a _corps d’armée_ across the Channel on the word of one individual, and such an individual as the profane, drunken, slovenly, one-eyed Clancarty. The Earl, on October 23, 1745, tried to overcome the scruples of d’Argenson, but in vain.[20] Clancarty, it is pretty clear, came over as a result of the persuasions of Carte, the historian, in whom the leading English Jacobites had no confidence. ‘The wise men among them would neither trust Lord Clancarty’s nor Mr. Carte’s discretion in any scheme of business,’ says Sempil to James (September 13, 1745). Sempil was ever at odds with the Earl, who, says Sempil, ‘insists on great matters.’ French policy was to keep sending small supplies of money and men to support agitation in Scotland. The Earl did not want mere agitation and a feeble futile rising; he wanted strong measures, which might have a chance of success. ‘He can trust nobody,’ says Sempil, ‘and is persuaded that the French Court will sacrifice our country, if his firmness does not prevent it.’ The Earl was right; what he foresaw occurred. Sempil, however, was not far wrong, when he observed that the Prince was already engaged, and a little help was better than none. ‘I am sorry to see my old friend so very unfit for great affairs,’ writes Sempil. The Earl had ever been adverse to a wild attempt by the Prince, as a mere cause of misery and useless bloodshed. He probably thought that no French support and a speedy collapse of the rising were better than trivial aid, which kept up the hearts of the Highlanders, and urged them to extremes.