The King of France, whose real interests made him sincerely desirous of any tolerable peace, found it impossible to treat upon equal conditions with either of the two maritime powers engaged against him, because of the prevalency of factions in both, who acted in concert to their mutual private advantage, although directly against the general dispositions of the people in either, as well as against their several maxims of government. But upon the great turn of affairs and councils here in England, the new Parliament and ministers acting from other motives, and upon other principles, that Prince hoped an opportunity might arise of resuming his endeavours towards a peace. There was at this time in England a French ecclesiastic, called the Abbé Gaultier,[3] who had resided several years in London, under the protection of some foreign ministers, in whose families he used, upon occasion, to exercise his function of a priest. After the battle of Blenheim, this gentleman went down to Nottingham, where several French prisoners of quality were kept, to whom he rendered those offices of civility suitable to persons in their condition, which, upon their return to France, they reported to his advantage. Among the rest, the Chevalier de Croissy told his brother, the Marquis de Torcy, that whenever the French court would have a mind to make overtures of peace with England, Mons. Gaultier might be very usefully employed in handing them to the ministers here. This was no farther thought on at present. In the mean time the war went on, and the conferences at The Hague and Gertruydenberg miscarried, by the allies insisting upon such demands as they neither expected, nor perhaps desired, should be granted. [Footnote 3: See note prefixed to "A New Journey to Paris" in vol. v. of present edition. Gaultier, although a priest, was nothing more than a superior spy in the pay of the French Court. He had been chaplain to Tallard and the disgraced Count Gallas, and was a sort of _protégé_ of the Earl of Jersey; but his character does not bear very close scrutiny. The Duke of Berwick could not have had any high opinion either of the man or his abilities, since in the "Mémoires de Berwick" (vol. ii., p. 122, edit. 1780) he is thus referred to: "Sa naissance étoit toute des plus ordinaires, et ses facultés à l'avenant, c'est à dire, très pauvre." St. John called Gaultier his "Mercury," and De Torcy styled him "the Angel of Peace" (Torcy's "Memoires," vol. ii., p. 148, edition of 1828). [T.S.]]