French Court, and intrigued with Dubois. Dubois and Mr. Stanhope were great friends and companions, and was introduced by his reverend and gallant friend to the Duke of Orleans, who afterwards received him familiarly and invited him to some of his parties. Stanhope and Dubois often corresponded, through Lady Sandwich, after the return of the former to England. THE Earl of Stanhope had also been in Paris, during the tour he made in France and Italy, and had also become acquainted with Dubois and his coterie; and when he became Secretary of State to the King of England, the Abbé whose ambition and love of intrigue, allowed him no repose, built all manner of imaginary plans on his former intimacy with the English minister. He therefore directed the views of his former pupil, the Regent of France, towards the King of England. Dubois renewed his acquaintance with Stair, and used all his influence to get him to speak on the business to the Regent, and reminded him of their former intimacy with Lord Stanhope. The English Ambassador wished for this opportunity, no less than the Abbé, and communicated through the subtle priest, that he had affairs, which could not be delivered but in person. Every thing proceeded to their wishes, but being mutually unacquainted with the union which Rémond had concerted between Stair, Canillac and Dubois, and that which Canillac had accomplished between the English Ambassador and M. de Noailles; but a triumvirate * Supplément aux Mémoires de M. le duc de St. Simon, Tom. I. p. 211. A. D. 1716] ENGLISH AND FRENCH DIPLOMACY. 391 had been formed between de Noailles, Canillac and Dubois, which formed a plot, underplot and counterplot enough for a Spanish comedy. By these means, the Jacobites were expelled from every part of France; Dubois obtained the purple, put away the wife, whom he had clandestinely married, became Archbishop of Cambray, the richest in France, a member of the Council of Regency, was consecrated with extraordinary pomp in the Cathedral of Val-deGrace, by Cardinal de Rohan, and a pensioner* of England. To show his gratitude for the latter favour, he procured the aid of Monseigneur le Duc, son of the Prince de Condé, through the influence of Madame de Prie, a woman endowed with the beauty, the air and the form of a nymph; witty and well read, for her time, but possessed of the direst passions, as ambition, avarice, hatred, revenge, and unbounded domination, for whom the all-powerful Cardinal procured a pension * Supplément aux Mémoires de M. le Duc de St. Simon, Tom. I. p. 333. M. de St. Simon (Mémoires, Tom. III. p. 23) gives the following abstract of the Revenues enjoyed by this eminent son of the Romish Church Cambray 120,000 324,000 livres EL Nogent sous Corny Pension d'Angleterre Totale 80,000 100,000 1,230,000 livres 1,554,000 livres Four months after of equal amount* with his own. the death of Dubois, M. de Fleury, preceptor to the young King, accused (bombarded, says M. de St. Simon) M. le Duc, in his place, of this profligate act; yet made him a phantom Prime Minister to his pupil, Louis XV. who had then attained his majority, and be, himself, "Viceroy over him." SUCH were the secret causes which effected the expulsion of the wretched Stuarts and the unfortunate Jacobites, from the kingdom of France. BRIBERY and corruption, which led to these results abroad, were employed so openly at home, that no one considered Sir Robert Walpole's assertion, that " every man had his price" to be untrue. Wren, one of the most disinterested of men, and who knew and studied every thing better than the art of enriching himself, fell a victim to the arts of intrigue and bribery. THE King preferred his own country and his former friends, both to England and new acquaintances, for whatever faults he may have possessed, desertion of his friends was not among them. But as money had worked such wonders in Paris, and the aid of the Regent of France and his pious ministry, had been bought at a very high price, the conscientious ministers of the King of England, found it necessary to become sellers, and therefore every place at their disposal became a marketable commodity; and Wren's office of Surveyor-General of His Majesty's works and buildings, which he had held with unequalled ability and *980,000 livres. A. D 1718] WREN SUPERSEDED AS SURVEYOR-GENERAL. 393 honour to himself and advantage to his country, for a period of more than half a century, being appointed deputy to Sir John Denham, *one of the Fathers of English poetry," in 1666, and succeeded as principal, by warrant under the Privy Seal, March 6, 1668, after the death of the poet, (who held it more as a means for supplying his necessities than to exhibit his qualifications,) till he was superseded in favour of Mr. Benson in April 1718. IT is not a little singular, that Wren succeeded a poet and was superseded by a poetaster. William Benson was a critic of some repute in his day and a very minor poet. He published, among other forgotten thingst, "Virgil's Husbandry, with notes critical and rustical;" "Letters on Poetical Translations," and an edition of Arthur Johnson's Latin version of the Psalms. In a scarce work, the author, a man of good repute, asserts that "it is very well known that Mr. Benson was a favourite with the Germans; and I believe nobody had more occasion to be convinced of the power of its influence than myself; so great indeed was it, that Sir Christopher Wren, the famous Architect, who contrived the stately edifice of St. Paul's Cathedral, and finished it in his own time, was turned out of his employment of Master of the King's Works, which he had possessed ever since the Restoration, to make room *Dr. Johnson. + Nichols's Literary Anecdotes. Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland in North Britain by himself, and dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, 8vo. London, 1726. for this favourite of Foreigners." In another part of the same work, Mr. Ker says of the corruption of King George's court", "Robert Walpole, Esq. had obtained a patent for the reversion of a place in the Customs for his son, which Mr. Benson, before-mentioned, being informed of, he told Mr. Walpole, he was in terms of disposing of it to another for £1500, but would let Mr. Walpole have it for the same sum, if he pleased; and upon that gentleman contemptuously rejecting it, he so resented it, that Mr. Walpole was turned out of his posts, and of all favour at court, even at a time when he was about to execute a great public good, that of reducing the National Debt.” THUS was removed the man, of whom Sir Robert Walpolet said, "the length of whose life enriched the reigns of several Princes, and disgraced the last of them." Another close examiner into the facts of this reign, remarks on this transaction, that "none could credit it, but those who know how the demon of politics, like that of fate, confounds all distinctions; how it elevates blockheads, how it depresses men of talents, how it tears from the mouth of genius, exhausted with toil for the public good and bending under a load of helpless age, for which it has made no provision, that bread which it bestows upon the idle and the selfish ; upon those whose life and death, as the acute Roman historian, Sallust, says, are nearly the same." Ker's Memoirs, p. 109. + Ibid, p. 110. SEWARD'S Anecdotes. |