d earl of Albemarle,
resigned his employments in disgust; nor could the king's solicitations
prevail upon him to resume any office in the household, though he
promised to serve his majesty in any other shape, and was soon employed
to negotiate the treaty of partition. If this nobleman miscarried in the
purposes of his last embassy at the court of Versailles, the agents of
France were equally unsuccessful in their endeavours to retrieve their
commerce with England which the war had interrupted. Their commissary,
sent over to London with powers to regulate the trade between the two
nations, met with insuperable difficulties. The parliament had burdened
the French commodities with heavy duties which were already appropriated
to different uses; and the channel of trade was in many respects
entirely altered. The English merchants supplied the nation with wines
from Italy, Spain, and Portugal; with linen from Holland and Silesia;
and manufactures of paper, hats, stuffs, and silks, had been set up and
successfully carried on in England by the French refugees.

THE KING DISOWNS THE SCOTTISH TRADING COMPANY.

By this time a ferment had been raised in Scotland by the opposition
and discouragements their new company had sustained. They had employed
agents in England, Holland, and Hamburgh, to receive subscriptions. The
adventurers in England were intimidated by the measures which had been
taken in parliament against the Scottish company. The Dutch East India
company took the alarm, and exerted all their interest to prevent their
countrymen from subscribing; and the king permitted his resident at
Hamburgh to present a memorial against the Scottish company to the
senate of that city. The parliament of Scotland being assembled by the
earl of Marchmont as king's commissioner, the company presented it with
a remonstrance containing a detail of their grievances, arising from the
conduct of the English house of commons, as well as from the memorial
presented by the king's minister at Hamburgh, in which he actually
disowned the act of parliament and letters patent which had passed
in their favour, and threatened the inhabitants of that city with
his majesty's resentment in case they should join the Scots in their
undertaking. They represented that such instances of interposition had
put a stop to the subscriptions in England and Hamburgh, hurt the credit
of the company, discouraged the adventurers, and threatened the entire
ruin of