Scotland by the Darien collapse turned against him next to the king himself; it certainly seems that his interest in Scotch affairs had for some time been considerable (see the letters to him of Lord Polwarth, afterwards Earl of Marchmont, in Marchmont Papers, iii. 401-7).
Before the return from Holland of the king and Portland in October 1699 the Second Partition Treaty was in readiness, and after many difficulties it was at last signed in London and at the Hague in March 1700. Portland's brother-in-law, the Earl of Jersey, had been associated with him in the signature as being an Englishman and secretary of state. Even those who had concluded the compact knew that it was not a diplomatic masterpiece; for while it was repudiated by Austria, it even failed thoroughly to satisfy France; and yet it had been signed during the session of parliament without being communicated to that assembly. When it became known in England about June, voices were already heard charging Portland with the responsibility for its conclusion, and suggesting to him the expediency of keeping out of the way (Klopp, viii. 483, from a despatch by Auersperg). He had in May married his third wife, with whom he had soon afterwards embarked for Holland (Luttrell, iv. 641, 655); and he returned to England in a royal yacht in October, about the very time when the news must have arrived of the event which was to frustrate all his diplomatic efforts (ib. 686, 690)—the death of Charles II of Spain, who had left the whole of his monarchy to Philip of Anjou. France had accepted the will when, in February 1701, the new parliament met in England, and the debates about the Partition treaties commenced. After the first debate in the House of Lords, in which ‘their disapprobation of the treaty was wholly laid at the Earl of Portland's door,’ he obtained the king's leave to communicate the actual state of the case, and on 14 March mentioned several other peers who had been cognisant of the negotiations. They however, while acknowledging that they had seen the rough draft of the (second) treaty, stated that they had neither given nor refused their consent to it, because it had been drawn up by Portland in French, and never communicated to the Privy Council (ib. 1239). His impeachment was actually voted by the commons 1 April, and he was formally impeached on that day at the bar of the House of Lords by Sir John Leveson Gower. Other impeachments followed, and on 5 April the commons presented an address to the king, requesting him to remove the impeached lords from his council and presence for ever; but an address deprecating such a course was immediately presented by the lords (Parliamentary History, v. 1239-50). The king made no answer to either address; and when at last, at the instance of the lords themselves, the impeachments were proceeded with, no articles were framed against Portland, which, as Burnet informs us, was represented to the king as an expression of the respect towards him. While, therefore, Somers and Oxford were acquitted, the impeachment of Portland was dismissed by the lords on the last day of the session, 24 June (Parliamentary History, v. 1238, 1239-50, 1322; Burnet wrongly says that Portland and Halifax were ‘acquitted’). The truth was, that the commons by this time knew that the people were not at their back.
Whether or not these events had drawn the king and his faithful servant closer together once more—they were both in Holland in the autumn of 1701, at the critical time of the death of James II and the recognition of his son by Louis XIV they were not to be separated at the last. Burnet relates how William, ‘both before and after’ the accident which was to prove fatal to him, spoke confidentially about his hopeless condition to Portland; and how on the king's deathbed his last articulate words were an inquiry for Portland, who came, but too late to be able to do more than give his hand to his dying master and friend, who ‘carried it to his heart with great tenderness.’ In the king's will there were found devised "several lands and jewels to the earls of Portland and Albemarle" (Luttrell, v. 150).
It was unlikely that, even had he been desirous of continuing a servant of the state, Portland would have gained the personal confidence of the new sovereign. His office of ranger of Windsor Park went the way of many other lucrative posts—into the hands of the Marlboroughs. He seems, however, to have been on friendly terms with the great man of the new era himself: on 30 Sept. 1703 he is noted as arriving from Holland with Marlborough, and with the (premature) information that the new king of Spain was on his way across; and in the year of his death he is found embarking for Holland in Marlborough's company (Luttrell, v. 355, vi. 436). His visits to his native land seem to have recurred with their usual regularity, and occasionally to have been combined with confidential business of a public nature. In July 1704 he was believed to have departed with a mission ‘to confer with the states-general about the affairs of Portugal and the likeliest method for sending succours to the Camisards;’ in October 1708 he was
