“It may be doubted, indeed, whether Bifrons was an Englishman, or _even_ an Irishman: _he certainly could not have been a British subject in 1761, unless he was a prisoner of war: for in that year we were at war with France_. But if a prisoner of war, how unlikely that he could be at Paris to witness an _auto-da-fé_ of heretical works: he would have been confined in the interior of the kingdom, not left at large to indulge his curiosity in the capital.” Now, assuming (as all these writers do), that Bifrons-Junius actually saw what he says he saw, how does the circumstance bear on the claims of the several candidates? What was Lyttelton in August, 1761? An Eton boy, enjoying his holidays. Where was Lord Temple? At Stowe (see the _Grenville Letters_) caballing with Pitt. Where was Burke? At Battersea, preparing to join Gerard Hamilton in Ireland. Where were Burke the younger, Lord George Sackville, and the rest of the illustrious persons implicated in some people’s suspicions? Not in Paris, we may safely answer, without pursuing our inquiry farther. But it is undoubtedly possible that Bifrons-Junius, after all, did not himself see the _auto-da-fé_ in question: he may have heard of it, or read of it, and may have described himself as a witness for effect, by way of a flourish, or even by way of false lure to throw inquirers off the scent. It would then only remain to inquire, in what way, by what association of ideas, Bifrons-Junius came to give so circumstantial a description, and in so prominent a manner, of an occurrence which had passed in a time of war, almost unmarked by the English public, and which had excited in England but very little attention or interest since? Now let us see how either supposition bears on the “Franciscan theory.” Francis was a very young clerk in Mr. Pitt’s department (which answered to the Foreign Office of these days) in 1759. In that year he accompanied Lord Kinnoul on his special mission to Portugal. His lordship returned in November, 1760, with all his staff, and the youthful Francis (in all probability) returned to his desk at the same time. He was certainly at work in the same office between October, 1761, and August 1768; for he says of himself (_Parl. Debates_, xxii. 97), that he “possessed Lord Egremont’s favour in the Secretary of State’s Office.” That nobleman came into office in October, 1761, and died in August, 1763. In the latter year Francis was removed to the War Office, where he remained until 1772. Where was he in August, 1761? According to all reasonable presumption, at work in Pitt’s department. And yet Lady Francis, in that biographical account of her husband which was published by Lord Campbell—an account evidently incorrect in some details, yet authentic in striking particulars, as might be expected from a lady’s reminiscences of what she heard from an older man—says, “_He was at the Court of France in Louis XV.’s time, when the Jesuits were driven out by Madame de Pompadour_.”