‘You inquire about M. de Guerchy’s affair, and I will give you as succinct an account as I can of so extraordinary and perplexed a transaction; but without giving you my opinion of it by the common post. You know what passed at first between M. de Guerchy and M. D’Eon, in which both our ministers and M. de Guerchy, from utter inexperience in business, puzzled themselves into disagreeable difficulties. About three or four months ago, M. de Vergy published in a _brochure_ a parcel of letters from himself to the Duke de Choiseul, in which he positively asserts that M. de Guerchy prevailed with him (Vergy) to come over into England to assassinate D’Eon. The words are, as well as I remember: ‘Que ce n’était pas pour se servir de sa Plume, mais de son Epée, qu’on le demandait en Angleterre.’[222] Lord Chesterfield was wrong. De Vergy went to London to be secretary to de Guerchy, and was desired, solicited, commanded to assassinate D’Eon, not hired to do so, as the price for the appointment he coveted. [Sidenote: FAIR ADMINISTRATION OF ENGLISH LAWS.] The indictment against de Guerchy was afterwards, in Easter term, at the instance of the Attorney-General, removed from the Old Bailey by writ of _certiorari_ into the Court of King’s Bench. The ambassador applied to the King for a _nolle prosequi_, and an order of reference was made to the Attorney-General, Sir Fletcher Norton, and the Solicitor-General, William de Grey, Esq., who issued summons on April 26, to the prosecutor and his witnesses, to attend at Lincoln’s Inn at eight o’clock in the evening of the following Tuesday, the 30th, to show cause why the _nolle prosequi_ should not be granted; and upon hearing counsel on both sides and witnesses, the proofs appeared so clear against de Guerchy, that the Attorney-General refused to certify to the King in favour of the ambassador or of a _nolle prosequi_, so that the indictment for the intended murder of the Chevalier D’Eon, minister plenipotentiary, undefended, undischarged, and open to further proceedings, remained on record among the archives as a lasting monument of the villainous designs of the French ambassador. A correspondent in a newspaper of the day observed that the verdict ‘was a remarkable instance of the spirit of a grand jury of the city of London, as well as of fair administration of our laws.’[223]