willing to give help, and be ultimately entangled. He applied to Torcy for help, and warned the Pretender against an Irish friar, who professed to come from Ormonde to request James to start at once for England. The Pretender received the warning graciously, and in return gave Bolingbroke a patent for an earldom. In spite of this, he was only prevented by the interference of the French ministry from acting at once upon the message. Bolingbroke, with Berwick's advice, then applied for help to Charles XII of Sweden, but without success. Meanwhile Ormonde [see under Butler, James, second Duke of Ormonde] had been impeached, and fled to France at the beginning of August. The hopes which had been entertained from his influence in England were crushed. He occupied the same house with Bolingbroke at Paris. The death of Louis XIV on 1 Sept. (N.S.) was still more conclusive. Louis had induced his grandson, the king of Spain, to send money to the Jacobites, and some arms had been provided in French ships at Havre. The Duke of Orleans, now regent, was on good terms with Lord Stair, and resolved not to help the Jacobites. Bolingbroke had carried on some indirect intrigues with him through Mme. de Tencin, who was associated with his favourite, Du Bois. Now, however, Sir George Byng entered the roads at Havre, and upon his request the arms were removed to the French magazines, and the regent promised that they should not be used against the English.
Bolingbroke had protested against a rising without better prospects. The Pretender, however, had, without the knowledge of his ministers (Berwick, p. 245), sent orders to the Earl of Mar for a rising in Scotland. The Pretender resolved to go to Scotland himself, and Bolingbroke was employed to draw up a declaration. Bolingbroke was careful to make promises of security for the church of England, and was intensely irritated when he found that the document had been edited by James's priests and the assurances removed. Ormonde departed and made a futile attempt to land in the west of England. James started in October, but after many delays only reached Scotland in December 1715, after the rising had failed. Bolingbroke meanwhile stayed in Paris, and tried to carry on the plot. A woman named Olive Trant, with some congenial allies, had been in communication with Ormonde, who did not confide in Bolingbroke, and professing to negotiate on his behalf with the regent. On Ormonde's departure she applied to Bolingbroke, who, finding reasons to distrust her, applied directly to the regent, through his minister, Huxelles, and threw over Mrs. Trant and her friends. The Pretender on leaving Scotland went to Paris, and sent Bolingbroke to request an interview with the regent, who, however, declined. The Pretender then said that he would go to Lorraine, and asked Bolingbroke when he could follow. Instead of going to Lorraine, however, the Pretender went to the ‘little house in the Bois de Boulogne’ occupied by Mrs. Trant and her friends, and there listened to complaints against Bolingbroke. Ormonde, at the request of the Earl of Mar, repeated some phrases which Bolingbroke had when drunk applied to the Pretender. Next day Ormonde brought Bolingbroke notes dismissing him from his office and ordering him to give up his papers. He gave up the papers, which would all go in ‘a letter-case of moderate size,’ and was glad to be free from the connection. When Mary of Modena sent a message to him hoping for a reconciliation, he replied, ‘May my arm rot off if I ever use pen or sword in their service again!’ (Coxe, Walpole, i. 200). Bolingbroke was of course accused of treachery, and his secretary wrote some letters in answer (printed in Tindal's Rapin, ii. 477; see full account of these transactions in the ‘Letter to Sir W. Wyndham’). Berwick emphatically declares that Bolingbroke had done all that was possible for the cause (Berwick, p. 282).
Lord Stair sent an account of these proceedings to Horace Walpole on 3 March 1716. On 28 March Stanhope, the secretary of state, wrote to Stair, authorising him to sound Bolingbroke and to make him promises of the king's favour (letter in Macknight, p. 495). He saw Bolingbroke accordingly, who declared that he had abandoned the Jacobite cause, and would do all he could to detach his friends from it. He added that he would never act as an informer or reveal any secrets that had been entrusted to him. Soon afterwards Bolingbroke's father was created Viscount St. John, with remainder to his sons by a second wife. Lady Bolingbroke was interceding for her husband, and ‘found great favour’ from the king (Letters to Swift, 5 May and 4 Aug. 1716). In September Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Sir W. Wyndham exhorting him to abandon the Jacobites, and arranged that it should be submitted to the government before reaching his friend (see letters Coxe's Walpole, ii. 308, &c.). Bolingbroke afterwards declared that he had received promises of restoration from the king, though the precise terms do not appear. Nothing was done for him at present. He amused himself towards the end of 1716 by writing his ‘Reflections upon
