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By this, I was providentially cast back upon my original benefactor, who, according to his wonted goodness, was pleased to lay my case before her majesty; and thereby I preserved my interest in her majesty’s favour, but without any engagement of service.

As for consideration, pension, gratification, or reward, I declare to all the world I have had none, except only that old appointment which her majesty was pleased to make me in the days of the ministry of my lord Godolphin; of which I have spoken already, and which was for services done in a foreign country some years before. Neither have I been employed, directed, or ordered by my lord treasurer aforesaid to do, or not to do, anything in the affairs of the unhappy differences which have so long perplexed us, and for which I have so many, and such unjust reproaches.

I come next to enter into the matters of fact, and what it is I have done, or not done, which may justify the treatment I have met with; and first, for the negative part, what I have not done.

The first thing in the unhappy breaches which have fallen out, is the heaping up scandal upon the persons and conduct of men of honour on one side as well as the other; those unworthy methods of falling upon one another by personal calumny and reproach. This I have often in print complained of as an unchristian, ungenerous, and unjustifiable practice. Not a word can be found in all I have written reflecting on the persons or conduct of any of the former ministry. I served her majesty under their administration; they acted honourably and justly in every transaction in which I had the honour to be concerned with them, and I never published or said anything dishonourable of any of them in my life; nor can the worst enemy I have produce any such thing against me. I always regretted the change, and looked upon it as a great disaster to the nation in general, I am sure it was so to me in particular; and the divisions and feuds among parties which followed that change were doubtless a disaster to us all.

The next thing that followed the change was the peace: no man can say that ever I once said in my life that I approved of the peace. I wrote a public paper at that time, and there it remains upon record against me. I printed it openly, and that so plainly as others durst not do, that I did not like the peace; neither that which was made, nor that which was before making; that I thought the protestant interest was not taken care of in either; and that the peace I was for was such as should neither have given the Spanish monarchy to the house of Bourbon nor to the house of Austria, but that this bone of contention should have been broken to pieces, that it might not be dangerous to Europe; and that the protestant powers, viz., Britain and the States, should have so strengthened and fortified their interest by their sharing the commerce and strength of Spain, as should have made them no more afraid of France or the emperor: so that the protestant interest should have been superior to all the powers of Europe, and been in no more danger of exorbitant powers whether French or Austrian. This was the peace I always argued for, pursuant to the design of king William in the Treaty of Partition, and pursuant to that article of the grand alliance which was directed by the same glorious hand at the beginning of this last war, viz., that all we should conquer in the Spanish West Indies should be our own.

This was the true design, that England and Holland should have turned their naval power, which was eminently superior to that of France, to the conquest of the Spanish West Indies, by which the channel of trade and return of bullion, which now enriches the enemies of both, had been ours; and as the wealth, so the strength of the world had been in protestant hands. Spain, whoever had it, must then have been dependent upon us. The house of Bourbon would have found it so poor without us, as to be scarce worth fighting for: and the people so averse to them, for want of their commerce, as not to make it ever likely that France could keep it.