The commons having perused a copy of the treaty with Portugal, voted forty thousand men, including five thousand marines, for the sea service of the ensuing year; and a like number of land forces, to act in conjunction with the allies, besides the additional ten thousand: they likewise resolved, that the proportion to be employed in Portugal should amount to eight thousand.

Sums were granted for the maintenance of these great armaments, as well as for the subsidies payable to her majesty's allies; and funds appointed equal to the occasion.

Then they assured the queen, in an address, that they would provide for the support of such alliances as she had made, or should make with the duke of Savoy.
CONSPIRACY OF SIMON FRASER, LORD LOVAT.
At this period the nation was alarmed by the detection of a conspiracy said to be hatched by the Jacobites of Scotland.

Simon Fraser, lord Lovat, a man of desperate enterprise, profound dissimulation, abandoned morals, and ruined fortune, who had been outlawed for having ravished a sister of the marquis of Athol, was the person to whom the plot seems to have owed its origin.

He repaired to the court of St.Germain's, where he undertook to assemble a body of twelve thousand highlanders to act in favour of the pretender, if the court of France would assist them with a small reinforcement of troops, together with officers, arms, ammunition, and money.