In his Memoirs (1692) Sir William Temple criticized du Cros as a rogue. His resentment sprang from du Cros’ interference with a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands in 1678, at the end of the Franco-Dutch War. Charles II had sent Temple to bolster the position of William of Orange, who did not want peace with France and Sweden. Temple succeeded in making a defensive treaty with the Dutch, only to find his approach countermanded as a result of the diplomacy/machinations of du Cros who had persuaded the Swedes and Charles II to support French moves which brought about the Peace of Nijmegen. (The diplomacy is complex and my grasp of it frail.) Du Cros resented Temple’s account and published both his Lettre De Monsieur Du Cros , A Mylord **** (1693) and his Letter from Monsieur de Cros (1693). There is disagreement about whether this response, Reflections upon Two Pamphlet s (1693), came from the Temple household and about whether, even if it did, it was written by Swift. George Mayhew, in unpublished papers discussed by Alan Downie, thinks it was, but Downie and David Woolley think it is not. It wouldn’t enhance his reputation. (See also An Answer to a Scurrilous Pamphlet.)

References: Swift, Temple, and the Du Cros Affair, Part II, introd. J. A. Downie, Augustan Reprint Society Nos. 241-2 (1986-7); J. A. Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 45-6.