1921 THE bORUNNA PACKETS 535 German princes would agree, and the Amsterdam post-offices were to draw their profit from the system as they already did from the service of packets to England. Witsen, for once without distrusting a plan of co-operation with the English, recom- mended the project as likely to be profitable for Amsterdam and damaging to France. 1 The Amsterdammers, however, took no steps, and it was not till the beginning of the next year that British diplomacy began to make serious efforts to further the proposal. A service of packets was started between Falmouth and Corunna. 2 They ran every fortnight, as regularly as the wind permitted, until the end of the war, and what the French thought of them may be inferred from the offer of 10,000 livres to any privateer which should make prize of one of them. 3 Major Wildman, an old Cromwellian and an active whig member of parliament and pamphleteer, who was at that time postmaster- general, took charge of the matter in London, and it was probably he who induced Nottingham to bring it to the notice of Lord Dursley and who persuaded Shrewsbury, the other secretary of state, although it was not in his department, to write Dursley a letter in its support. 4 Nottingham, who sent the official orders, did not write very pressingly, and Dursley, on the advice of the king's best friends in The Hague, amongst others and perhaps principally Portland, postponed for a time the memorial which he was instructed to present to the states -general. In the course of the spring he did present two memorials, and he also brought the question before the diplomatic congress on 3/13 March and 1/11 'April. All the ministers agreed that the plan would deal a great blow to the French, but by this time suspicions and hesitations had appeared among the Dutch. Heinsius himself said they did not want to be hindered in their commerce with Spain, and the passage of the letters through England would be very inconvenient. Dursley replied that the Corunna packet- boats had not been started for the selfish advantage of England, and the king would not object to the use of any route by the Dutch so long as they gave up the overland route through France. It was then moved that every minister should write to his sovereign, urging him as far as possible to stop the com- merce of letters with France. Dursley agreed, but begged the Dutch, without waiting for an answer from these dispatches, to follow the British example. So late as May, when the plan was 1 Letter of 16/26 July 1689 in Scheltema, Amstels oudheid, pt. v. 2 The contemporary English documents usually refer to Corunna as ' The Groyne ', a spelling retained without explanation in the indexes to the Cal. of State Papers, Dom., and other modern works. 3 Ordonnance of 10/20 September 1692 in Code des prises, i. 128.
- Shrewsbury's letter of 8/18 January 1689/90 (Foreign Entry Book, 69).
