And there followed—oh philosophy!—a squabble with Keith’s mistress about the frugal inheritance of one who scorned to enrich himself! ‘My brother had just held Bohemia to ransom, and he leaves me sixty ducats,’ wrote the Earl to Madame Geoffrin. In December 1758, Frederick determined to send the Earl to Spain, where ‘nobody is so capable as you of making himself beloved.’ He wanted peace, but peace with honour. The Earl was merely to watch over Frederick’s interests, and to sound Spain as to her mediation. The King feared a separate Anglo-French peace, with Prussia left out. By January 6, 1759, Frederick was trying to secure the Earl’s pardon in England, and wrote to Knyphausen and Michell in London. The death of Lord Kintore, the Earl’s cousin, devolved an estate upon him. This Marischal wished to obtain, but he had not changed sides in hope of gaining these lands. Andrew Mitchell wrote to Lord Holderness, on January 8, 1759, from Breslau, saying that Frederick had remarked, ‘I know Lord Marischal to be so thorough an honest man that I am willing to be surety for his future conduct.’ He enclosed a letter to be discreetly submitted to George II., submitting Frederick’s desire for the Earl’s pardon. By February 5, news reached Prussia that George had graciously consented. There must have been a delay caused by formalities, for the Earl did not send his letter of thanks from Madrid to Sir Andrew Mitchell ‘gratefully acknowledging the goodness of the King’ till August 24, 1759. So there was ‘the end of an auld sang.’ Charles was hanging about the French coast, for the expedition under Conflans was preparing to carry him, as he hoped, to England: James, in Rome, was receiving his sanguine letters. It was 1744 over again; but the Earl was now of the other party, and James must have felt the loss severely. The bell which was regularly rung at home for the Earl’s birthday, cracked when the news came to Aberdeenshire. ‘I’ll never say “cheep” for _you_ again, Earl Marischal!’—so some local Jacobite translated the broken voice of the old bell. But the Earl manifestly did not win his pardon by discovering and betraying the secret of the family compact between France and Spain, as historians have conjectured. Dates render this, happily, impossible.[27] The Earl took a humorous view of Jacobite French adventures. ‘The conquest of Ireland by M. Thurot has miscarried,’ he writes to Mitchell (April 2, 1760).[28] Thurot had but two small ships. The Earl now desired to visit England on his private affairs, and Frederick granted permission. He went in peace, where he had gone in war, but Scotland no longer pleased him. True, his Bill was carried through Parliament, admitting him to the Kintore estates, and, from the Edinburgh newspapers, he heard of a new honour—he was elected Provost of Kintore!