render tolerable, and resolved to be no longer amused by the
pretences which were daily repeated to me, that the Regent had
entertained personal prejudices against me, and that he was
insensibly and by degrees to be dipped in our measures; that both
these things required time, but that they would certainly be brought
about, and that we should then be able to answer all the
expectations of the English and the Scotch. The first of these
pretences contained a fact which I could hardly persuade myself to
be true, because I knew very certainly that I had never given His
Royal Highness the least occasion for such prejudices; the second
was a work which might spin out into a great and uncertain length.
I took my resolution to drive what related to myself to an immediate
explanation, and what related to others to an immediate decision;
not to suffer any excuse for doing nothing to be founded on my
conduct, nor the salvation, if I could hinder it, of so many gallant
men as were in arms in Scotland, to rest on the success of such
womanish projects. I shall tell you what I did on the first head
now, and what I did on the second, hereafter, in its proper place.

The fact which it was said the Regent laid to my charge was a
correspondence with Lord Stair, and having been one night at his
house from whence I did not retire till three in the morning. As
soon as I got hold of this I desired the Marshal of Berwick to go to
him. The Marshal told him, from me, that I had been extremely
concerned to hear in general that I lay under his displeasure; that
a story, which it was said he believed, had been related to me; that
I expected the justice, which he could deny to no man, of having the
accusation proved, in which case I was contented to pass for the
last of humankind, or of being justified if it could not be proved.
He answered that such a story had been related to him by such