Decorated bannerCHAPTERXIII.(1751 to 1761.)
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THE OLD CHEVALIER AND THE CARDINAL.
duringthis decade, there was great anxiety, on the part of the Jacobites in London, to have news of their Prince. Of their ‘King’s’ whereabout they knew as much as the papers could tell them. These anxious Jacobites who eagerly opened the London journals for news from Rome, of ‘the King’ or ‘Prince of Wales,’ were not often rewarded for their pains. The ‘London Gazette,’ which chronicled the veriest small beer, had not a word to say as to the Chevalier or his sons. The other papers recorded, for the comfort or diversion of readers, such paragraphs as these; namely, that Cardinal York, on his brother’s birthday, had given a grand entertainment to a brilliant company of Cardinals and Ladies; and that Rome was more crowded with English nobility than Hanover, even when King George was in his electoral dominions. Some sympathy was excited in Jacobite company, at the intelligence that the Cardinal was recovering from ‘an attack of Small Pocks,’ which had carried off thousands of victims. As forPrince Edward, as the Cardinal’s brother is often called in the papers, ‘his place ofresidence is not known, there being no other proof of his being alive but the rejoicings of his father on his son’s birthday.’ Next, ‘Read’ announced, no doubt for the pleasure of some of its readers, ‘We hear from Rome, by authentick hand, that Henderson has been formally excommunicated for his “History of the Rebellion.”’ ‘No one can tell in what place Prince Edward resides,’ says another ‘authentick hand,’ ‘it is currently reported that he is actually in Italy;’ and again, ‘Some are ready to believe he is stillincog.in France.’ Then came ‘authentick’ news to London, of ignoble quarrels between the Chevalier and his younger son, squabbles about money, squabbles among their friends in trying to reconcile them;—the Pope himself being mixed up in the turmoil, and getting such grateful return as usually falls to mortal mediators. The father and son were at vulgar loggerheads on the vulgar but important subject of money. Living together, each wished that the other should contribute more towards keeping up the household in as much royal state as could be had for the money. Each also wished the other to send away the confidential servants that other most wished to keep, and neither would yield. Subsequently, the London papers tell how the Cardinal went off in a great huff and princely state, and how he was received in the ‘Italian cities with guns, like a king’s son,’ as he was held to be. The ‘King,’ his father, is described as ‘greatly distressed, having always counted on the affection of his son.’ At another time came one of those scraps of news which always keptalive a feeling of hope in the bosoms of Jacobites. ‘The Grand Pretender’ had been for two hours in conference with the Pope, ‘on receipt of important despatches from his Eldest Son and Heir, Edward. The despatches are at present kept a secret.’ They were supposed to be favourable to something, for the younger son had promised to return. Probably some tears fell from soft Jacobite eyes in London, at reading that, as ‘the son tarried, the father stood patiently waiting for him, in the Hall of his House, and wept over him when he came.’ The good-natured Pope was almost as much touched.
ROMAN NEWS IN LONDON PAPERS.
All the honours conferred on the Cardinal of York in Rome, and all the royal and solemn ceremonies which took place on the occasion, were duly reported in the London papers. The father seems to have been warmly desirous that dignities should be heaped on the younger son’s head. The cardinal affected, perhaps felt, reluctance. On his gracefully yielding, the ‘Grand Pretender’ made him a present of a set of horses.
Reports of the death of Charles Edward had been ripe enough. The suspense was relieved when, in March, 1753, news reached London from Rome that the old Pretender had received letters from his son, with the information that the writer was well; but, says the ‘Weekly Journal,’ ‘the Chevalier de St. George don’t absolutely discover where his son is.’ That he had known of his son’s whereabout, from the first, is most certain; but he didn’t absolutely discover it to every enquirer.
A SON OF ROB ROY.
A personage of some note was in London this year, the eldest son of Rob Roy,—James Drummond Macgregor. He seems to have previously petitioned Charles Edward for pecuniary help, on the ground of suffering from the persecution of the Hanoverian government, and to have been willing to serve that government on his own terms. In the introduction to ‘Rob Roy,’ Sir Walter Scott says that James Drummond Macgregor made use of a license he held to come to London, and had an interview, as he avers, with Lord Holdernesse. ‘His lordship and the Under-Secretary put many puzzling questions to him, and, as he says, offered him a situation, which would bring him bread, in the government’s service. This office was advantageous as to emolument, but in the opinion of James Drummond, his acceptance of it would have been a disgrace to his birth, and have rendered him a scourge to his country. If such a tempting offer and sturdy rejection had any foundation in fact, it probably related to some plan of espionage on the Jacobites, which the government might hope to carry on by means of a man who, in the matter of Allan Breck Stewart, had shown no great nicety of feeling. Drummond Macgregor was so far accommodating as to intimate his willingness to act in any station in which other gentlemen of honour served, but not otherwise; an answer which, compared with some passages of his past life, may remind the reader of Ancient Pistol standing upon his reputation. Having thus proved intractable, as he tells the story, to the proposals ofLord Holdernesse, James Drummond was ordered instantly to quit England.’
JACOBITE PARAGRAPHS.
The son of Rob Roy, hated and suspected by the Jacobites, got over to Dunkirk, but he was hunted thence as a spy. He succeeded in reaching Paris, ‘with only the sum of thirteen livres for immediate subsistence, and with absolute beggary staring him in the face.’
The hopes of the friends of the Stuarts were encouraged by a paragraph in the London sheets of 1754 stating, that though the Chevalier was suffering from sciatica, he was well enough to receive a stranger (in June), ‘who, by the reception he met with, was supposed to be a person of distinction. Two days later, the banker, Belloni, had a long private conference with the Chevalier. What passed was not known, but what followedwas; namely, a large sum of money was advanced by the banker.’ It is easy to imagine how paragraphs like the above stirred the pulses at the Cocoa Tree and at St. Alban’s coffee-house.
The Jacobite interest was kept up in 1755 by paragraphs which showed that the family were well with such a civil potentate as the King of Spain, and with such a religious one as the Pope. The King of Spain, it was said, had conferred a benefice on Cardinal York, worth 6,000 piastres yearly. In the autumn the London papers announced that ‘The Chevalier de St. George, who enjoyed the Grand Priory of England, of the Religion of Malta, which gave him an active and passive voice in the election of Grand Master, hadresigned it, and conferred it on a Commander Altieri. The collation has been confirmed by the Pope.’
HUME’S ‘HISTORY.’
In the same year London was stirred by the publication of Hume’s ‘History of England,’ which was denounced as a Jacobite history by the Whigs, and it was not warmly received by the Jacobites, as it did not sufficiently laud their historical favourites. ‘It is called Jacobite,’ wrote Walpole to Bentley, ‘but in my opinion it is only notGeorge-abite. Where others abuse the Stuarts, he laughs at them. I am sure he does not spare their ministers.’
But it was still to the news sent from Rome that the Jacobites looked most eagerly for indications of what might be doing there, and the significance of it. Under date of January 3, 1756, the paragraph of news from Rome, the Eternal City, in the ‘Weekly Journal,’ informed all who were interested, that an Irish officer had arrived there with letters for the Chevalier de St. George, had received a large sum of money, on a bill of exchange, from Belloni, and had set out again with the answers to those letters. Again, on January 17th, the Chevalier’s friends in London were told that two foreigners had called on him with letters, but that he refused to receive either. ‘He refused to yield to their most earnest entreaties for an interview.’ ‘Read’ communicates a no less remarkable circumstance to the Jacobite coffee-houses. ‘Tho’ people have talked to him very much within the last two months of an expedition on Scotland or Ireland, he has declared that those kind of subjects are no longer agreeable to him,and that he should be better pleased to hear nothing said about them.’ Then came news of the Chevalier being sick, and the Pope, not only sending his own physician, but stopping his coach to enquire after the exile’s health. Occasionally, the paragraph of news is communicated by a ‘Papist,’ as, for instance, in an account of the reception into the Church of Rome of the young son of the Pasha of Scutari, where it is said that Cardinal York performed the ceremony of receiving the dusky convert, who had abandoned a splendid position ‘to come,’ says the writer, at Rome, ‘and embrace our holy religion.’
AT ROME.
For the purpose of reading such intelligence, the Jacobites opened feverishly the sheet which oftenest satisfied their curiosity. This had to be satisfied with little. Throughout ’56 and ’57 they learnt little more than that the Pope had been ill, and that the Chevalier and the Cardinal drove daily from their villas to leave their names at the dwelling of the Pontiff. Next, that the quaint Jacobite, Sir William Stanhope, had actually had an audience of the Pope, to whom he had presented a gold box full of rhubarb; and reasons were assigned why the contents might prove more useful than the casket. Then, clever English lords had established themselves in great magnificence in Roman palaces, or in villas as magnificent as palaces; and, still more encouraging news for the Cocoa Tree and St. Alban’s coffee-house, the King of Spain had increased the income of Cardinal York by 1,200 crowns yearly, drawn from the revenue of the bishopric of Malaga.On the north side of Pall Mall, and on the lower terrace of the west side of St. James’s Street, or beneath the Walnut tree walk in Hyde Park,—places still much affected by Jacobites, imagination may see them wearing congratulatory looks on the English lords collecting near the Chevalier, and the Spanish monarch contributing money to the Cardinal. If these things were without significance, where should they look for incidents that would bear cheerful interpretation?
HOPES AND INTERESTS.
Then ensued long silence, broken only by brief announcements of archiepiscopal (and other) honours heaped upon Cardinal York, and of splendid dinners in the Quirinal, with Pope and all the Cardinals, strong enough to sit up, as the joyous host and guests. Not a word, however, is to be traced with reference to Charles Edward; nor was it looked for, at the time, by the ‘quality,’ who were contented with ‘the happy establishment.’ On Christmas Day of this year, Walpole wrote: ‘Of the Pretenders family one never hears a word. Unless our Protestant brethren, the Dutch, meddle in their affairs, they will be totally forgotten; we have too numerous a breed of our own to need princes from Italy. The old Chevalier ... is likely to precede his rival (GeorgeII.), who, with care, may still last a few years; though I think he will scarce appear again out of his own house.’
But the hopes and the interest of the London Jacobites had to be maintained, and, through the London papers, the hopes and the interest of the adherents of the Stuarts, in the country. The aspirations of suchsympathisers were hardly encouraged by an incident of which Walpole made the following note, to Conway, in January, 1759: ‘I forgot to tell you that the King has granted my Lord Marischal’s pardon, at the request of M. de Knyphausen. I believe the Pretender himself could get his attainder reversed, if he would apply to the King of Prussia.’
ILLNESS OF THE OLD CHEVALIER.
In the Chatham Correspondence, it is stated that the King of Prussia had said he should consider it a personal favour done to himself. The pardoning of such an able military Jacobite as Keith, Earl Marischal, indicated that the ‘Elector of Hanover’ considered Jacobitism as dead, or at least powerless. At the same time, the more mysteriously secluded Charles Edward kept himself, the more curiosity there was among ‘curious’ people in London to learn something about him and his designs, if he had any. The apparently mortal illness of the Chevalier de St. George, in May 1760, caused some of the London papers to publish a sort of exulting paragraph, not over the supposed dying Chevalier, but over the fact, announced in the words: ‘We shall soon know where the young Pretender is!’ Of the father’s impending death no doubt was made. Was he not seventy-two years of age? And had he not for thirty years of the time been worn out with anxieties caused by his sons? One saucy paragraph included the saucier remark:—‘He has left his estates, which may be Nothing, to his eldest son, whom many think is Nobody.’ But all this was premature. The old prince did not die this year. GeorgeII.did.The grandson of the latter began to reign in October. The Jacobites laughed at his new Majesty’s boast of being born a Briton, for ‘JamesIII.’ was more purely British than he; born in London, and son of a father who was also born in this metropolis, he was less of a foreigner than GeorgeIII., whose parents were purely German. The Jacobites made the most of this difference; and when such of them as were in Hyde Park saw the king’s horse nearly break his rider’s neck by suddenly flinging him out of the saddle, those spectators probably thought of the results of King William’s fall from horseback, and hoped that heaven was on their side. The newspapers admiringly recorded the presence of mind of the young king, who, though shaken, went to the play the same night, to calm the supposed anxieties of his faithful people.
ACCESSION OF GEORGEIII.
Much as Jacobites had railed at the late ‘Elector of Hanover and his bloody son,’ and had devoted both of them to eternal perdition in hell, a sort of serio-comic assurance that their malice was ineffective seems to have been insinuated in the first words of the anthem, set to music by Boyce, for the king’s (or the elector’s) funeral; namely, ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall be no torment touch them.’ On the first occasion of GeorgeIII.going to the Chapel Royal (Sunday, November 17th), the Rev. Dr. Wilson took his text from Malachi i. 6, where the prophet speaks of the rebellious spirit and irreligiousness of Israel, a text which Nonjurors, and especially the Nonjuring clergy, might well take to themselves.KING AND PEOPLE.After ‘Chapel’ there was a ‘Court.’ Of the latter, the papers say: ‘By the insolence of the soldiers many persons were not suffered to go into the Gallery. All those that paid for seeing his Majesty were admitted, a practice, it is hoped, will soon be put a stop to.’ The price of admission is not stated; but among those who had gathered about the Park were nearly a thousand tailors, who, rather than stoop to work for five shillings a day, refused to work at all. The newspapers protested that it was a thousand pities a press-gang or two had not been in the Park to sweep these fellows into the ships that lacked men. If they would not work for themselves on liberal wages, they ought to be compelled to serve their country on less. There was no doubt about their bravery, for the London tailors had, not long before, brilliantly distinguished themselves under Elliot, at Gibraltar. The hint of the amiable journalists was acted on, on the Coronation day, in 1761. While the British-born king of a free people, over whom, he said, he was proud to reign, was being crowned (with his young queen) in the Abbey, ruffianly press-gangs were making very free with that people all around the sacred edifice; seizing whom they would; knocking on the head all who resisted; flinging them into vessels on the river, and so despatching them to Gravesend, the Nore, and thence to men-of-war on various stations!
CHARLES EDWARD AT WESTMINSTER.
One visitor is alleged to have been present at this coronation, who certainly was not an invited, nor would he have been a welcome, guest. This visitor is said tohave been Charles Edward himself! As he is also credited with two or three earlier visits to London, the question as to the truth of the reports may be conveniently considered here.
We will only remark that, in the closing years of the reign of GeorgeII., Jacobites, who had neither been harmless nor intended to remain so if opportunity favoured them, were allowed to live undisturbed. As Justice Foxley remarked to Ingoldsby, they attended markets, horse-races, cock-fights, fairs, hunts, and such like, without molestation. While they were good companions in the field and over a bottle, bygones were bygones.
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