ABSTRACT
A post as British plenipotentiary at Cambrai had seemed attractive to Charles Whitworth in Berlin where he felt frustrated by the failure of British policies in the north and by the limitations of the social and cultural life offered by the city. Whitworth prepared for his departure from Berlin by requesting a Mr Daniel to find him lodgings in Cambrai fit for some thirty people and sixteen or seventeen horses. Polwarth and Whitworth has been instructed from the start to ‘act in concert with France’. Of particular concern to Whitworth and Polwarth was what they regarded as the ‘dilatory’ approach of the French to the thorny question of the future of the Ostend Company and they suspected that the French had no intention of settling this business at the Congress. Tilson briefly informed Whitworth that he had delivered the letter to Townshend and that it was ‘lying before the King’.
