The Tories, who were now in power, were in haste to end the war; and Prior, being recalled (1710) to his former employment of making treaties, was sent (July 1711) privately to Paris with propositions of peace. He was /remembered at the French court; and returning in about a month, brought with him the Abbé Gaultier, and M. Mesnager, a minister from France, invested with full powers. 1 This transaction not being avowed, Mackay, the master of the Dover packet-boat, either zealously or officiously, seized Prior and his associates at Canterbury. It is easily supposed that they were soon released. The negotiation was begun at Prior's house, where the Queen's ministers met Mesnager (September 20, 1711) and entered privately upon the great business. The importance of Prior appears from the mention made of him by St. John in his Letter to the Queen. My Lord Treasurer moved, and all my Lords were of the same opi"nion, that Mr. Prior should be added to those who are empowered to sign; the reason for which is, because he, having personally treated with Mon"sieur de Torcy, is the best witness we can produce of the sense in which "the general preliminary engagements are entered into: besides which, as "he is the best versed in matters of trade of all your Majesty's servants "who have been trusted in this secret, if you shall think fit to employ him "in the future treaty of commerce, it will be of consequence that he has "been a party concerned in concluding that convention, which must be the "rule of this treaty." The assembly of this important night was in some degree clandestine, the design of treating not been yet openly declared, and, when the Whigs returned to power, was aggravated to a charge of high treason: though, as Paior 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 first of January (1711-12), and the English plenipotentiaries arrived on the fifteenth. 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. Ey 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 countrynien, who are not much better politicians than the French are poets." Soon 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 Lewis, 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 werenot punctually made. On the first 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 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. X x 2 were 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 any thing be more absurd," says he, "or more in“human, 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 could say should hurt myself, "I had no reason to trust them: for they violated that promise about five "hours after. However, I owned I was there present. Whether this was wisely done or no, I leave to my friends to determine." When he had signed the paper, he was told by Walpole, that the committee were not satisfied with his behaviour, nor could give such an account of it to the Commons as might merit favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house." Here," says he, "Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the christian, but both very "aukwardly." The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed, was then called, and very decently asked by Coningsby, if his house was secured by bars and bolts?" The messenger answered, "No," with astonishment. At which Coningsby very angrily said, "Sir, you must secure this prisoners; it is for the safety of the nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it." ઃઃ They had already printed their report; and in this examination were endeavouring to find proofs. He continued thus confined for some time, and Mr. Walpole (June 10, 1715) moved for an impeachment against him. What made him so acrimonious does not appear he was by nature no thirster for blood. Prior was a week after committed to close custody, with orders that " "be admitted to see him without leave from the Speaker." no person should When, two years after, an Act of Grace was passed, he was excepted, and continued still in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing his Alma. He was, however, soon after discharged. He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of his employments might have been, he had always spent it, and at the age of fifty-three was with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said, he could live upon at last. Being however generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some, who, it it said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it. The price of the volume was. *Swift obtained many Subscriptions for him in Ireland. E. two two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which lord Harley, the son of the earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Down-hall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined. He complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care "of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own." Of any occurrences in his remaining life I have found no account. In a letter to Swift, "I have," says he, "treated lady Harriot at Cambridge, "(a Fellow of a College treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap! "What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at "Utrecht! the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that "makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est homo sum." He died at Wimpole, a seat of the earl of Oxford, on the eighteenth of September 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument, for which, as the "last piece of human vanity," he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph: Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti, Paulatim obrepens Febris Operi simul & Vitæ filum abrupit, H. S. E. Vir Eximius Regi GULIELMO Reginæque MARIÆ Qui anno 1697 Pacem RYSWICKI confecerunt, Tum iis, Qui apud Gallos annis proximis Legationem obierunt ; Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu Eorum, Qui anno 1700 ordinandis Commercii negotiis Ab ANNA Felicissimæ memoriæ Regina Ad H Ad LUDOVICUM XIV. Galliæ Regem De Pace stabilienda, (Pace etiamnum durante Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duratura) Hos omnes, quibus cumulatus est, Titules Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Musæ A Vatum Choro avelli numquam potuit, Tum in Fabellis concinne lepideque texendis Neminem habuit parem. Hæc liberális animi oblectamenta : Sed omnia ultro effluere, Et quasi jugi e fonte affatim exuberare, Of Prior, eminent as he was, both by his abilities and station, very few memorials have been left by his contemporaries; the account therefore must now be destitute of his private character and familiar practices. He lived at a time when the rage of party detected all which it was any man's interest to hide; and as little ill is heard of Prior, it is certain that not much was known. He was not afraid of provoking censure; for when he forsook the |