touch'd and wrong'd to the purpose. As for my part, my Lord, I protest I write to you in cold Blood, I do so much scorn the Injury that Sir W. affects to do me, that I should but laugh at it, if my silence was not able to persuade you, and those persons whose esteem of me doth do me so much honour, that I have but small care of my reputation.
Sir W. hath shined a long time, 'tis true; but yet he hath borrowed all his Splendour first of all from the protection of a Lord, whom he betray'd at last, of whom he speaks too insolently in his Memoirs and with abundance of Ingratitude; and then again he advanced himself by the protection of certain other persons to whom he was devoted, to the prejudice of his bounden Duty: He did so well insinuate himself (that I may make use of the Terms he makes use of in speaking of me) into the Favours and into the Confidence of those, near to whom it was necessary for him to have access, that he might have been in a capacity to render considerable Services to the King his Master, and to his Country, if so be he had made better use of this advantage; but he kept it just after the same manner as he had got it; that is to say, that he often came short of exact Faithfulness and Loyalty, which a Minister of State is obliged to maintain inviolably even in the least Matters, that doth plainly appear in his Memoirs.
The late King of England perceived it, and was so far convinced of it, that he never made use of him in the last Commissions he committed to his charge, to the States-General; but only out of Consideration of the Acquaintance he had there, who made people conjecture that Sir W. might have some Credit amongst the Spaniards, as well as in Holland, as he himself assures us he had.
Neither was he employed, but only upon some Occasions, wherein one would not employ a Man who was a Favourite of the Prince, or for whom he had any value, or in whom he might confide; 'tis a Truth owned and confess'd by Sir W. himself in his Memoirs; and a Man may judge of it by the so opposite false steps, that he complains, they caused him to make, and by all the things that were done contrary to the Measures that he had taken, just as if the Court had had a mind to expose him.
Besides, the King slighted him after the Peace at Nimeguen, and laid him aside, making very little use of him; it was not, what he would make us believe, his love for his own ease, and his Indispositions of body, that made him decline his Employments. Never did Man desire more to have an hand in Affairs; he was removed by reason of the King's secret dissatisfaction at his Services, by that Conduct and Management, which in executing the King's Orders, when they were contrary to his Opinion, and disliking to his Friends, smelt very much like perfidiousness and Treachery, as may principally appear in whatsoever he did for to evade and frustrate the King's Orders, contained in the dispatch I left with him at the Hague, to Nimeguen, for the conclusion of the Peace, by Order of his Majesty.
It is concerning this business that has made so great a noise for which Sir W. takes occasion to reproach me, that I am going to relate you some Particulars in the Reflections, that I am obliged to make upon what he says concerning my self. Do not expect, my Lord, that I should teach you here the true Cause of so extraordinary a Resolution which so much surprized Sir W. with which Pensioner Fagel was so much astonished, and which in Sirs W's opinion did entirely change the Fate of Christendom.
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