But it was undoubtedly the true interest of the House of Bourbon, [183] About the Scotch and English exiles, and especially about Melfort, Avaux constantly expressed himself with an asperity hardly to have been expected from a man of so much sense and experience.

Melfort was in a singularly unfortunate position.

He was a renegade: he was a mortal enemy of the liberties of his country: he was of a bad and tyrannical nature; and yet he was, in some sense, a patriot.

The consequence was that he was more universally detested than any man of his time.

For, while his apostasy and his arbitrary maxims of government made him the abhorrence of England and Scotland, his anxiety for the dignity and integrity of the empire made him the abhorrence of the Irish and of the French.
The first question to be decided was whether James should remain at Dublin, or should put himself at the head of his army in Ulster.