Page:Diary of the times of Charles II Vol. I.djvu/52

xl. His first public appointment was that of Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Spain, whither he went in 1671, with instructions if possible to attach that power to the interests of England, or, at all events, to secure her neutrality, in which object he failed. He was next sent Ambassador to Paris, and afterwards as one of the Plenipotentiaries at Cologne, for the establishment of a general peace. He returned to England in 1674, when he was made a Privy Councillor. Five years afterwards he went a second time to Paris as Envoy, and, upon his return home, he was appointed by Charles one of his principal Secretaries of State.

His character, including a sketch of his political life, has been thus ably drawn by Sir James Mackintosh:—

"Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who soon acquired the chief ascendency in the administration, entered upon public life with all the advantages of birth and fortune. His father fell in the royal army, at the battle of Newbury, with those melancholy forebodings of danger from the victory of his own party, which filled the breasts of the more generous royalists, and which on the same occasion saddened the dying moments of Lord Falkland. His mother was Lady Dorothy Sidney, celebrated