town of Geneva, or he
had permission to go to the waters of Bourbon. I should be glad to know
what pension you would allow him till he be restored?"

Lady Mar was now in Rome, whither she had followed her husband soon
after his leaving Scotland. Her jointure, it appears, was stopped by
the Commissioners, and she was unable, without that supply, to travel
from Rome to Geneva. She was, probably, aware of Lord Mar's intention to
leave the Chevalier's service, for the Earl had written a long letter,
explanatory of his situation and intentions, to her father the Duke of
Kingston. "I have offered him for Lady Mar's journey," says Lord Stair,
"credit upon me for a thousand pounds." Yet notwithstanding this
liberality, Lord Mar now began to be extremely uneasy at Geneva, and to
fear that the Government meant "merely to expose him." In vain, for some
time, did Stair plead for him, with Secretary Craggs and Lord Stanhope.
They were evidently, from Lord Stair's replies to their objections,
afraid to have any dealings with him. "As to Lord Mar," writes Stair,
"the things that shock you, shock me; but our business is to break the
Pretender's party by detaching him from it, which we shall effectually
do by letting him live in quiet at Geneva or elsewhere, and by giving
him a pension. Whatever his Lordship's intentions may be, it is very
certain, in a few months, that the Jacobites will pull his throat
out,--you know them well enough not to doubt of it. The Pretender," he
adds, "looks upon Mar as lost, and has had no manner of confidence in
him ever since Lady Mar came into Italy. They looked upon her as a spy,
and that she had corrupted her husband. This, you may depend on it, is
true." Little more than a week afterwards, Lord Stair informed his
friends that "Lord Mar was _outre_ at the usage he had met with. He says
our Ministers may be great and able men, but that they are not skilful
at making proselytes, or keeping friends when they have them. I am
pretty much of his mind."

It was, doubtless, as Lord Stair declared, the full determination of
Lord Mar at that time to leave the Chevalier's interests. "The
Pretender, I know," said Stair, "wrote him the kindest letter imaginable
since his [the Pretender's] return into Italy from Spain, with the
warmest invitations to return to his post."

The letters which Lord Stair had received, in the course of this
negotiation, from Lord Mar, were instantly sent to Hanover. They were in
some