{"id":853,"date":"2020-10-28T11:37:58","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T11:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=853"},"modified":"2020-10-28T11:37:58","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T11:37:58","slug":"the-closer-you-look-the-more-you-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=853","title":{"rendered":"The closer you look, the more you see"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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George Rose by Sir William Beechey (1802). NPG 367<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my last blog post<\/a> I noted the fact that Macintosh had, over the course of twenty years between 1780 and 1800, “sent [anonymous] sketches of plans of finance &c to persons closely connected with Government in England”. I was intrigued enough to see if I could identify any of these letters and think I may have found one in the papers of the politician George Rose (1744\u20131818) at the British Library. The finding aid<\/a> for Add MS 42774 includes a tantalising entry:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

f. 78 Louis XVI of France: Anonymous letter from a Scotsman in Paris conc. Anglo-French relations: 1792.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The subject matter, the location, the date, and the recipient all seem to fit Macintosh’s M.O. very closely. I know from another source that Macintosh wrote to Rose at least one other time (in 1800), but I have, as yet, been unable to track that letter down. Indeed, I only spotted the 1792 letter whilst trying to find the one from 1800.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I have searched the BL Archives and Manuscripts catalogue many, many times, I was encouraged by this discovery to try again and was rewarded by a few hits that had previously escaped my notice. These include a 1781 letter (Add MS 8406 f. 199<\/a>) from Macintosh to Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool<\/a>, then Secretary at War<\/a>, and a batch of correspondence from 1796 (Add MS 38231<\/a>) to and from Charles Flint<\/a> (1777\u20131832), Alexander Fraser, 15th Lord Saltoun (1758\u20131793), and G. Chalmers [most probably George Chalmers<\/a> (1742\u20131825)]. It is likely that these letters concern Macintosh’s counter-revolutionary activities in Bern, but I look forward to confirming that in the new year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The identification of any new correspondence from the 1790s is really helpful, since Macintosh’s own archive fell silent after its seizure by the revolutionary authorities in 1794.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last blog post I noted the fact that Macintosh had, over the course of twenty years between 1780 and 1800, “sent [anonymous] sketches of plans of finance &c to persons closely connected with Government in England”. I was intrigued enough to see if I could identify any of these letters and think I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}