OF WILLIAM III. AND LOUIS XIV. AND OF THEIR MINISTERS; ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLITICS OF ENGLAND FROM THE PEACE OF RYSWICK то THE ACCESSION OF PHILIP V. OF SPAIN. 1697 TO 1700. EDITED BY PAUL GRIMBLOT. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. PREFACE. As their title implies, the collection of original documents here given to the world is intended to throw a new light on a period in the history of England full of interest, and but little known. A century has elapsed since Lord Chesterfield thus wrote to his son: "The interval between the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, and the breaking out of the great war in 1702, though a short, is a most interesting one. Every week of it almost produced some great event:-two Partition treaties, the death of the King of Spain, his unexpected Will, and the acceptance of it by Louis XIV., in violation of the second treaty of Partition, just signed and ratified by him; Philip V., quietly and cheerfully received in Spain, and acknowledged as king of it, by most of those powers who afterwards joined in alliance to dethrone him." Unluckily, I can offer no more than a selection from materials which, to be duly appreciated, would require a surer and more practised hand than my own, and an amount of talent to which I have no pretensions. In publishing them in a foreign language I have been obliged to confine |