Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/378

 370 MACPHERSON AND THE NAIRNE PAPERS July inexplicable unless the fact that he was involved in Jacobite intrigues be accepted. In any case this ' memorial ' cannot be archives of the French foreign office.^ (6) The Melfort Instructions} These seem to be ' mere sketches or designs that never were formed into letters ' by Melfort. But they were not written after Melfort had been ' superseded as secretary of state to James by Middleton ', as Colonel Pamell asserts. Melfort did not resign his secretaryship until May 1694,^ and the date of these instructions is 16 October 1693. (c) The Landen Memorial} Colonel Pamell thus comments : The third Jacobite paper, a very important one, is clearly a project of a report by Nairne himself to an official of the French ministry. ... It is a long document of thirteen pages, of which the last nine or ten are clearly in the handwriting of Nairne ; and a close perusal of the first three or four leads to the belief that he may have written them as well, though they are certainly in a fashion more copperplate than his usual style. Granted that the handwriting is Nairne 's, there is no reason to suppose that he composed the memorial. It begins with an enumeration of leading supporters of James : the earl of Danby, prime minister to the prince of Orange, lord Godolphin, a lord of the treasury and a member of the privy council, the earl of Shrewsbury, who has been his first secretary of state, Russel, -who is of the cabinet council and has been an admiral, Churchill, who is first lieutenant general, the son of the duke of Beaufort and the son of the duke of Bolton. All these have served the prince of Orange with zeal, as long as they believed he could maintain himself in England, and have despised all sort of correspondence with the King.^ It seems incredible that Nairne should have asserted that Shrews- bury and Marlborough had served William III with zeal and despised all correspondence with James II when he had copied the James memorial which asserted the direct opposite.* He merely translated the report of some silly Jacobite in England who knew, as Macaulay says, ' nothing about the situation or character of any of the public men whom he mentioned. . . . The whole composition is a tissue of absurdities.' ' » History of England, ed. C. H. Firth, iv. 1843, n. 3 (ch. xv) ; v. 2124-6, n. 2 (ch. xviii). The ' memorial ' also implicates Mariborough, whose intrigues are con> sidered as a whole under {h). » Carte MS. 209, £f. 91-102 ; Original Papers, i. 452-8 ; ante, xii. 257. Original Papers, ii. 674. » Original Papers, i. 459. • Ibid. i. 435, 440. ' History of England, v. 2376, n. 1 (ch. xx).
 * a later forgery ', since Macaulay found the original of it in the
 * Hist. MSS. Comm., Stuart Papers, i. 87-8; cf. Macaulay, v. 2334 (ch. xx) ;
 * Carte MS. 181, ff. 535-48 ; Original Papers, i. 458-63 ; anU, xii. 257-9.