FOOTNOTES:
For this success the volatile and unscrupulous Earl of Peterborough claimed all the credit. But his account of his doings in Spain is a mere romance, and he was in truth a hindrance rather than an aid to the allies.
A Scottish Colonial Company had been formed to seize and colonize the pestilential region about the Isthmus of Panama—then known as Darien—so as to obtain access to the Pacific (1698). The Scottish Parliament gave it great privileges, but William III. refused to confirm them, and would not commit England to the scheme. The colonists all perished of disease and tropical heat; but the Scots ascribed the failure to English jealousy.