upon him was indignantly rejected (Macaulay). He seems to have borne himself coolly in the matter, deeming it disagreeable, however, ‘to be exposed to such an accusation here, where corruption is too general’ (Lexington Papers, 81). To legitimate gains he showed no aversion, and he had been liberally endowed with estates by the grateful friendship of the king. Dissatisfaction had already been felt at the alienation for the purpose of hereditary domains of the crown; and when, in 1695, the king sought to make over to Portland, at a nominal rent, the lordships of Denbigh, Bromfield, and Yales, which were valued at more than 100,000l., and formed part of the domains of the principality of Wales, protests arrived thence, and a unanimous address was, in January 1696, passed in the House of Commons against the grant. Portland hereupon begged the king to withdraw it, which he did in a dignified message (Macaulay; cf. Collins as to the estates included in the grant, and Luttrell, iii. 553, as to the protests, who has a notice six months earlier (iii. 472) of the grant to Portland by the king of the manor of Swaden, worth 2,000l. per annum, part of the Marquis of Powis's estate). Many and substantial as were the favours accumulated upon Portland by the king, it cannot be said that the tie between them was mainly one of interest. The warmth of Portland's attachment showed itself in his sympathy with the king on the occasion of the death of Queen Mary (see his letter in Lexington Papers, 48); and he again proved it on the discovery, in February 1696, of the assassination plot. After the plot had been revealed to him, he carried the news to the king, with much difficulty prevailed upon him to take the necessary precautions, and was present when, on 21 Feb., Pendergrass disclosed the names of the chief conspirators to their intended victim (Macaulay).
During all these years Portland had continued to take part in the king's campaigns, and to be of service to him as a confidential diplomatist. In the uneventful campaign of 1694 Portland with the Dutch military delegate, Dykvelt, was accused of having influenced William against giving battle; and in the same year this advice (if given) was justified by his receiving indirect information that Louis XIV was not disinclined to peace (Klopp, vi. 335-7, 359). He was privy to the negotiations on the subject with Vienna, of which the English ministers were, according to his wont, left uninformed by King William (ib. vii. 29 seqq.). The war, however, continued; in June 1695 Portland with Essex commanded in an action against a party of French who endeavoured to intercept an English convoy of provisions (Luttrell, iii. 502); and it was he who, in the August following, after Villeroy had abandoned the attempt to raise the siege of Namur, summoned Boufflers to surrender the fortress; and when the marshal marched out at the head of his troops, arrested him, with Dykvelt, by the king's orders—a strange prelude to their later more amicable intercourse (Macaulay; Luttrell; Auersperg's report ap. Klopp, vii. 105-7; Lexington Papers, 119-25). In July 1696 Portland was sent to England from Flanders to raise money for the war; and though the financial pressure was great (it was the time of the collapse of the Land Bank), the public spirit of the Bank of England supplied what was absolutely necessary. But there was much distress in the country, and Louis XIV, after having detached the Duke of Savoy from the grand alliance, was inclined for peace, and in a not unfavourable position for negotiating it. Peace was desired at Amsterdam as well as at Versailles, and if terms otherwise satisfactory could be obtained, including the recognition of King William by France, the secret article of the grand alliance as to the Austrian claims on the Spanish succession must, for the present at least, be allowed to go to the wall.
Such were roughly speaking, the instructions with which, in July 1697, Portland entered upon the informal negotiations with Marshal Boufflers: the terms of the peace were ceremoniously discussed at Ryswick. In the earlier part of the year new favours had descended upon Portland at home: in February he was appointed, and in March installed, a K.G.; in the latter month he took possession of the lodge and place of range of Windsor Park, worth 1,500l. a year; in April the Earl of Clancarty's forfeited estate was granted to him; and in June, when he was at Brussels indisposed, he was appointed one of the generals of the English horse (Lutrell, iv. 185, 193, 201, 215, 233). Through the enjoyment of some of these favours was not heightened by the knowledge that gifts and honours were at the same tie being bestowed upon one who he was soon to regard as a rival, yet Portland, when addressing himself to the most important diplomatic task of his life, was justly regarded as possessing the full confidence of his aster. To William III and not Portland belongs the responsibility for the peace of Ryswyk, which accomplished so small a part of the king's political programme, and, following the example set by the emperer himself in 1696, left him and the Austrian claims on the Spanish succes-
