cy to the petitioner. Our will and pleasure therefore is,
that you prepare a bill for our royal signature, to pass our great
seal, containing our gracious and free pardon unto him, the said
Daniel De Foe, of the offences aforementioned, and of all
indictments, convictions, pains, penalties, and forfeitures
incurred thereby; and you are to insert therein all such apt
beneficial clauses as you shall deem requisite to make this our
intended pardon more full, valid, and effectual; and for so doing,
this shall be your warrant. Given at our castle at Windsor, the
twentieth day of November, 1713, in the twentieth year of our
reign. By her majesty's command.

BOLINGBROKE.

Let any indifferent man judge whether I was not treated with particular
malice in this matter; who was, notwithstanding this, reproached in the
daily public prints with having written treasonable books in behalf of
the pretender; nay, and in some of those books, as before, the queen
herself was reproached with having granted her pardon to an author who
writ for the pretender.

I think I might with much more justice say, I was the first man that
ever was obliged to seek a pardon for writing for the Hanover
succession, and the first man that these people ever sought to ruin for
writing against the pretender. For, if ever a book was sincerely
designed to further and propagate the affection and zeal of the nation
against the pretender, nay, and was made use of, and that with success
too, for that purpose, these books were so; and I ask no more favour of
the world to determine the opinion of honest men for or against me, than
what is drawn constructively from these books. Let one word, either
written or spoken by me, either published or not published, be produced,
that was in the least disrespectful to the protestant succession, or to
any branch of the family of Hanover, or that can be judged to be
favourable to the interest or person of the pretender, and I will be
willing to waive her majesty's pardon, and render myself to public
justice, to be punished for it, as I should well deserve.

I freely and openly challenge the worst of my enemies to charge me with
any discourse, conversation, or behaviour, in my whole life, which had
the least word in it injurious to the protestant succession, unbecoming
or disrespectful to any of the persons of the royal family of Hanove