Lives of the Poets | Page 4

was in some degree clandestine,
the design of treaty not being yet openly declared and when the Whigs
returned to power was aggravated to a charge of high treason; though,
as Prior remarks in his imperfect answer to the Report of the
Committee of Secrecy, no treaty ever was made without private
interviews and preliminary discussions.
My business is not the history of the peace, but the life of Prior. The
conferences began at Utrecht on the 1st of January (1711-12), and the
English plenipotentiaries arrived on the 15th. The ministers of the
different potentates conferred and conferred; but the peace advanced so
slowly that speedier methods were found necessary, and Bolingbroke
was sent to Paris to adjust differences with less formality. Prior either
accompanied him or followed him, and after his departure had the
appointments and authority of an ambassador, though no public
character. By some mistake of the queen's orders the court of France
had been disgusted, and
Bolingbroke says in his letter, "Dear
Mat,--Hide the nakedness of thy country, and give the best turn thy
fertile brain will furnish thee with to the blunders of thy countrymen,
who are not much better politicians than the French are poets."
Soon after, the Duke of Shrewsbury went on a formal embassy to Paris.
It is related by Boyer that the intention was to have joined Prior in the
commission, but that Shrewsbury refused to be
associated with a man
so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the
duke returned next year to England, and then he assumed the style and
dignity of ambassador. But while he continued in appearance a private
man, he was treated with
confidence by Louis, who sent him with a
letter to the queen, written in favour of the Elector of Bavaria. "I shall

expect," says he, "with impatience, the return of Mr. Prior, whose
conduct is very agreeable to me." And while the Duke of Shrewsbury
was still at Paris, Bolingbroke wrote to Prior thus:- "Monsieur de Torcy
has a confidence in you; make use of it, once for all, upon this occasion,
and convince him thoroughly that we must give a different turn to our
Parliament and our people according to their resolution at this crisis."
Prior's public dignity and splendour commenced in August, 1713, and
continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to
the usual fate of greatness, it was attended with some
perplexities and
mortifications. He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors:
he hints to the queen in an imperfect poem that he had no service of
plate; and it appeared by the debts which he contracted that his
remittances were not punctually made.
On the 1st of August, 1714, ensued the downfall of the Tories and the
degradation of Prior. He was recalled, but was not able to return, being
detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and
which were not discharged before March, though his old friend
Montague was now at the head of the Treasury. He returned, then, as
soon as he could, and was welcomed on the 25th of March by a warrant,
but was, however, suffered to live in his own house, under the custody
of the messenger, till he was examined before a committee of the Privy
Council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and Lord Coningsby, Mr.
Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere were the principal interrogators, who, in
this examination, of which there is printed an account not
unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by
recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes
vague, sometimes
insidious, and writing answers different from those
which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered
by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever
come before a legal judicature, he should have contradicted or
explained away. The oath was administered by Boscawen, a Middlesex
justice, who at last was going to write his attestation on the wrong side
of the paper. They were very industrious to find some charge against
Oxford, and asked Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when
the preliminary articles were talked of or signed at his house? He told

them that either the Earl of Oxford or the Duke of Shrewsbury was
absent, but he could not remember which, an answer which perplexed
them, because it supplied no accusation against either. "Could anything
be more absurd," says he, "or more inhuman, than to propose to me a
question, by the answering of which I might, according to them, prove
myself a traitor? And notwithstanding their solemn promise that
nothing which I should say should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust
them, for they violated that promise about five hours after. However, I
owned