Series 1 > Diplomatic correspondence of Jean de Montereul and the brothers de Bellièvre, French ambassadors in England and Scotland, 1645-48 > Volume 1

78
MONTEREUL TO MAZARIN
[DEC.
letters, especially the last despatch of your Eminence and the two
parcels of letters of the Queen of Great Britain, which I burned.
The third parcel of letters of this princess, which Sir Robert Moray
would not take charge of, had quite a different fate, as the mail-bag
having fallen into the sea and the envelope of my parcel having been
hurst open by the wet. all the letters were brought here separately ; and
the danger one would have run in asking for this parcel, the address
upon it being in cipher, and the difficulty there would have been in
finding it, from not knowing either the seal or the characters, have
prevented me from getting it out of the post-office. I, however, employed
Father Joseph in the matter, who promised me that he would be able to
have it through a friend he had in the office, which Sir Robert Moray
also tried to do, but neither of them has succeeded.
Sir Robert Moray arrived here on Saturday last. He explained to
Lord Balmerino, certainly in the best manner he could, the obligations
under which all Scotland was placed to your Eminence. I told him it
would be necessary to set to work to reduce as much as possible what
was proposed on the subject of religion, and on that of the dissolution of
the English Parliament in a year; but he found, as I had already
informed your Eminence, that the first could not be granted, however
much it might be insisted upon, and as for the second, that it might be
done without being asked for; and as regards Montrose, he hopes that it
will be possible to settle his affairs in a manner more satisfactory for him
than what I had mentioned to you, and that if peace be concluded with
the King of Great Britain, whatever the Scots might say at present, they
will still seek the friendship of a person whose enmity has till now done
them so much harm.
Since the return of Sir Robert Moray I have found Lord Balmerino to
be very dissatisfied with the procedure of the Queen of Great Britain, so
much so that after having declared to me that that princess sought to ruin
Scotland, and had no wish for peace, he gave way to his temper so far
as to say that he could have wished to give up the negotiation altogether.
I was surprised at this sudden and unexpected change at a time when
everything seemed so well arranged, but he gave me to understand that
two circumstances had led him to judge badly the intentions of their
queen and the success of my negotiation, one her refusal to send William
Moray1 along with me to their king, which he seems to me to have very
much wished; and the other, the little confidence she had shown in
them in not communicating anything of what she had written to the
King of Great Britain. However, Sir Robert Moray, to whom I men¬
tioned Lord Balmerino’s dissatisfaction, soon brought him round again
to his former way of thinking, and made him to agree to all the matters
mentioned in the memorandum joined to this despatch, which we have
signed conjointly.2]
1 Chamberlain to the king, whose page and whipping boy he had been. He
was cousin to Sir Robert Moray. 2 See Appendix, Note H.