Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/377

 1920 MACPHER80N AND THE NAIRNE PAPERS 369 these he named (as lord Marlborough and lord Shrewsbury) had been tampering with king James during this reign. He named also admiral Kussell and lord Godolphin ; of the latter there was no doubt, and of Russell's treachery too strong proofs have since appeared.^ There can be little doubt that the ' strong proofs ' were the Naime Papers. Another person who saw these papers was Sir John Dalrymple. In the preface to the second edition of his Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (1771) he wrote : Since the first edition of the Memoirs was published in Scotland, I have fortunately fallen upon a collection of papers in London, which vouch almost all the new facts that are to be found in them. The papers I mean are those of the late Mr. Carte, now in the possession of Mr. Jernegan, who married his widow. They consist of very full notes, extracted from the Memoirs of James the Second, now in the Scots College at Paris, written by that Prince's own hand, and of many original state-papers, and copies of others of the court of St. Germains.^ Macpherson published his Original Papers in 1775. Jernegan, Monkhouse, Hardwicke, and Dalrymple were then all living and must have known what the Nairne Papers contained. None of them ever uttered a word to suggest that Macpherson had fabricated any of the documents he printed. Their silence seems decisive proof that Macpherson cannot have been guilty of literary forgery. The questions whether the documents were concoctions of Melfort's to delude Louis XIV and whether they have any historical value are best treated together, and involve a brief notice of each document. I have adopted the order and descrip- tive titles of Colonel Parnell. (a) The James Memorial.^ This is a statement by James of the reasons why it was not expedient for hiin to issue a declaration in November 1692. It explains that Shrewsbury resigned his secretaryship of state to William III in 1690 by James's order. This, in Colonel Parnell's opinion, ' clearly evinces the brazen style in which poor James was deluded by the ministers who designed and drafted his " memorials " to Louis '. On the other hand, Shrewsbury's conduct throughout William's reign is ' Bumet, History of My Own Time, ii. 184, n. c. in the first volume of his Original Papers. It is curious that both Dalrymple and Macpherson make the mistake of thinking that the Life of James II (published in 1816) was a holograph autobiography, instead of a compilation by an unknown writer who used James's own memoirs. » Carte MS. 181, ff. 496-504 ; Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 433-40 ; ante, xii. 256-7. Macpherson's references to the Naime Papers are to the old numbering, by which each document is numbered ; mine are to the new, by which each page is numbered. VOL. XXXV. — NO. CXXXIX. B b
 * p. vi. Macpherson published these extracts, together with some he made himself,