ter with that minister, who said he had no power to treat; only
insisted, that his masters had fully done their part, and that nothing
but exhortations could be used to prevail on the other allies to act
with greater vigour.

On the other side, the Queen refused to concert any plan for the
prosecution of the war, till the States would join with her in agreeing
to open the conferences of peace; which therefore, by Mons. Buys's
application to them, was accordingly done, by a resolution taken in
Holland upon the twenty first of November, one thousand seven hundred
and eleven, NS.

About this time the Count de Gallas[7] was forbid the court, by order
from the Queen, who sent him word, that she looked upon him no longer as
a public minister.

[Footnote 7: The Austrian ambassador [T.S.]]

This gentleman thought fit to act a very dishonourable part here in
England, altogether inconsistent with the character he bore of envoy
from the late and present emperors, two princes under the strictest ties
of gratitude to the Queen, especially the latter, who had then the title
of King of Spain. Count Gallas, about the end of August, one thousand
seven hundred and eleven, with the utmost privacy, dispatched an
Italian, one of his clerks, to Frankfort, where the Earl of Peterborough
was then expected. This man was instructed to pass for a Spaniard, and
insinuate himself into the Earl's service, which he accordingly did, and
gave constant information to the last emperor's secretary at Frankfort
of all he could gather up in his lordship's family, as well as copies of
several letters he had transcribed. It was likewise discovered that
Gallas had, in his dispatches to the present emperor, then in Spain,
represented the Queen and her ministers as not to be confided in, that
when Her Majesty had dismissed the Earl of Sunderland, she promised to
proceed no farther in the change of her servants, yet soon after turned
them all out, and thereby ruined the public credit, as well as abandoned
Spain, that the present ministers wanted the abilities and good
dispositions of the former, were persons of ill designs, and enemies to
the common cause, and he (Gallas) could not trust them. In his letters
to Count Zinzendorf[8] he said, "That Mr. Secretary St John complained
of the house of Austria's backwardness, only to make the King of Spain
odious to England, and the people here desirous of a peace, although it
were ever so bad one," to prevent which,