These
Letters, Joined To Those In Which My Lord Preston Continued His Urgencies
Against Me To The Very Christian King,
Decided me to determine, by the
counsel of one of my friends, to yield myself at last to all their
Solicitations of passing over to England for good, & of engaging myself so
strongly to the service of His Majesty, & to the interests of the Nation,
that any other consideration was never able to detach me from it. There was
only my Lord Preston, some of his household, & the friend who had
counselled me to come into England, who knew of my design. I took care to
save appearances from suspicion by the danger in which I exposed myself, &
up to the evening of my departure I had some conferences with the ministers
of the Court of France, & the persons who there have the departments of the
marine & commerce, upon some propositions of armament, & the Equipment of
the Ships destined for my 2nd voyage. They wished to bind me to make them
upon the same footing as the proceeding, which has made since then the talk
of the two nations.
The day of my departure was fixed for the 24th of April, 1684; but at last,
that those with whom I was obliged to confer daily by order of the
Ministers of France never doubted in the least of my discontinuing to see
them, I told them that I was obliged to make a little journey into the
country for some family business, & I could be useful to them during that
time by going to London, where I arrived the 10th of May.
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