so prominent a manner, of an occurrence which had passed in a time of war, almost unmarked by the English public, and which had excited in England but very little attention or interest since?
Now let us see how either supposition bears on the "Franciscan theory."
Francis was a very young clerk in Mr. Pitt's department (which answered to the Foreign Office of these days) in 1759. In that year he accompanied Lord Kinnoul on his special mission to Portugal. His lordship returned in November, 1760, with all his staff, and the youthful Francis (in all probability) returned to his desk at the same time.
He was certainly at work in the same office between October, 1761, and August 1768; for he says of himself (Parl. Debates, xxii. 97), that he "possessed Lord Egremont's favour in the Secretary of State's Office." That nobleman came into office in October, 1761, and died in August, 1763. In the latter year Francis was removed to the War Office, where he remained until 1772. Where was he in August, 1761? According to all reasonable presumption, at work in Pitt's department. And yet Lady Francis, in that biographical account of her husband which was published by Lord Campbell—an account evidently incorrect in some details, yet authentic in striking particulars, as might be expected from a lady's reminiscences of what she heard from an older man—says, "He was at the Court of France in Louis XV.'s time, when the Jesuits were driven out by Madame de Pompadour." This, it will be at once allowed, is a strange instance of coincidence between Bifrons and the lady. The more striking, because the particulars of disagreement show that the two stories do not come from the same source. But how can we account for either story? How came Francis to be in Paris—if in Paris he were—in time of war? With a view to solve this question to my own satisfaction, I once consulted the State Paper Office. It happens that during the summer of 1761, Mr. Hans Stanley was in Paris, on a diplomatic mission, to negotiate terms of peace with Choiseul. He failed in that object—some folks thought Mr. Pitt never meant he should succeed—and returned home in September of that year. His correspondence with Pitt, as Secretary of State, is preserved in the office aforesaid. He seems to have had the ordinary staff of assistants from Pitt's department: but I could not find any record of their names. His despatches are entirely confined to the subject of the negotiation on which he was engaged, with one exception. He seems, for some reason or other, to have taken much interest in the affair of the Jesuits. On August 10, he writes at length on the whole of that matter. To his despatch is annexed a careful précis, in Downing Street language, of the history of the Jesuits' quarrel with the parliament: evidently drawn up by one of his subordinates. Enclosed in this précis is the original printed Arrêt de la Cour du Parlement, du 6 Août, 1761, condemning Molina, de Justitiâ et Jure; Suares, Defensio Fidei Catholicæ; Busenbaum, Theologia Moralis; and several other books of the same class, to be lacérés et
