CHAPTERXVI.

Decorated bannerCHAPTERXVI.(1776-1826.)

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A PLEBISCITE FOR THE STUARTS.

averyfair instance of Jacobite sentiment in London, in the year 1777, presents itself in a record by Boswell, in his ‘Life of Dr. Johnson.’ The doctor, in argument with the Whig Dr. Taylor, insisted that the popular inclination was still for the Stuart family, against that of Brunswick, and that if England were fairly polled, the present king would be sent away to-night, and his adherents hanged to-morrow!’ Taylor demurred, and Johnson gave this as the ‘state of the country.’—‘The people, knowing it to be agreed on all hands, that this king has not the hereditary right to the crown, and there being no hope that he who has it can be restored, have grown cold and indifferent upon the subject of loyalty and have no warm attachment to any king. They would not, therefore, risk anything to restore the exiled family. They would not give twenty shillings a piece to bring it about; but if a mere vote could do it, there would be twenty to one; at least, there would bea very great majority of voices for it. But, Sir, you are to consider that all those who consider that a king has a right to his crown, as a man has to his estate, which is the just opinion, would be for restoring the king who certainly has the hereditary right, could he be trusted with it; in which there would be no danger now, when laws and everything else are so much advanced, and every king will govern by the laws.’ It was in the same year, 1777, that Johnson called the design of the young Chevalier to gain a crown for his father ‘a noble attempt;’ and Boswell expressed his wish that ‘we could have an authentic history of it.’ More than a generation had passed away since the attempt had failed, but Johnson thought the history might be written: ‘If you were not an idle dog, you might write it by collecting from everybody what they can tell, and putting down your authorities.’ It was shortly after that, hearing of a Mr. Eld, as being a Whig, in Staffordshire, Johnson remarked, ‘There are rascals in all counties.’ It was then he made his celebrated assertion that ‘the first Whig was the Devil;’ but this Jacobite definition was provoked by Eld’s coarse description of a Tory as ‘a creature generated between a nonjuring parson and one’s grandmother.’ Lord Marchmont thought Johnson had distinguished himself by being the first man who had brought ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ into a dictionary.

‘Nonjuring parsons’ still existed; but the hierarchy was all but extinguished.

THE LAST OF THE NONJURING BISHOPS.

In the last week of November 1779, reverentialgroups were assembled in Theobald’s Road, to witness the passing to the grave of the last nonjuring bishop of theregularsuccession—Bishop Gordon. There was no demonstration but of respect. Yet there must have been some Jacobites of the old leaven among the spectators; though many Nonjurors were not Jacobites at all. To this record may be added here the fact that in St. Giles’s churchyard, Shrewsbury, lie the remains of another nonjuring bishop, William Cartwright, who is commonly called ‘the Apothecary,’ because, like other bishops of the sturdy little community, he practised medicine. Cartwright (who came of the ‘Separatists,’ a division which started about 1734, with one bishop) always dressed in prelatic violet cloth. Hoadley once surprised a party at Shrewsbury by saying, ‘William Cartwright is as good a bishop as I am.’ Cartwright hardly thought so himself, for in 1799, in which year he died, he was reconciled to the established church, at the Abbey in Shrewsbury, by a clergyman who in his old age revealed the fact to a writer who made it public in 1874, in the ‘Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, and Schools of Thought,’ edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt. No reason is given why the alleged fact was made a mystery of for so long a period.

The very last ofallthe nonjuring bishops, one of the irregular succession, died in Ireland in 1805, namely, Boothe. He was irregularly consecrated by Garnet, who had been consecrated by Cartwright, who had been consecrated by Deacon. Nonjuring congregations, in London and elsewhere,—they generally met inprivate houses,—diminished and dissolved. Here and there, a family or an individual might be met with who would use no Prayer Books but those published before the Revolution of 1688. Probably, the last Nonjuror (if not the last Jacobite) in England died in the Charter House, London, in 1875—the late Mr. James Yeowell, for many years the worthy and well-known sub-editor of ‘Notes and Queries.’ To him, the true church was that of Ken, and his true sovereign was to be looked for in the line of Stuart; but Mr. Yeowell acknowledged the force of circumstances, and was as honest a subject of Queen Victoria as that royal lady could desire to possess.

THE JACOBITE MUSE.

The Jacobite and Nonjuring pulpits were unoccupied and silent, but the Muses manifested vitality. The tenacity, and one might almost say, the audacity of Jacobite loyalty was well illustrated in 1779 by the publication of a collection of songs, under the title of ‘The True Loyalist, or Chevalier’s Favourite.’ In one of the ballads both Flora Macdonald and Charles Edward are alludedto:—

Over yon hills and yon lofty mountain,Where the trees are clad with snow;And down by yon murm’ring crystal fountain,Where the silver streams do flow;There fair Flora sat, complainingFor the absence of our King,Crying, ‘Charlie, lovely Charlie!When shall we two meet again?’

Over yon hills and yon lofty mountain,

Where the trees are clad with snow;

And down by yon murm’ring crystal fountain,

Where the silver streams do flow;

There fair Flora sat, complaining

For the absence of our King,

Crying, ‘Charlie, lovely Charlie!

When shall we two meet again?’

At this period, the unhappy Charles Edward was neither lovely nor loveable. His ballad poet, above, has paraphrased,or parodied, a popular song, ‘Over Hills and high Mountains,’—but so ill, with excess or lack of feet, indifferently, as to serve the measure with the arbitrary despotism with which the Stuarts themselves would have visited Church and Constitution.

JACOBITE JOHNSON.

It will be remembered that when Jacobite Johnson was pensioned, the English language did not suffice to give expression to his feelings. He was obliged to borrow a word from France: he waspénétréwith his Majesty’s goodness. In 1783,—weighing Stuart against Brunswick, Johnson borrowed a word from the same foreign source, to disparage the House of Hanover. It must be confessed that Dr. Johnson’s Jacobitism had become a ‘sentiment,’ in 1783. He could then indignantly denounce the factious opposition to Government, and yet account for it on Jacobite principles. He imputed it to the Revolution. One night, at Mrs. Thrale’s house in Argyle Street, where the conversation turned on this subject, ‘Sir,’ said he, in a low voice, having come nearer to me, while his old prejudices seemed to be fermenting in his mind, ‘the Hanoverian family isisoléehere. They have no friends. Now, the Stuarts had friends who stuck by them so late as 1745. When the right of the king is not reverenced, there will not be reverence for those appointed by the king.’

BOSWELL, ON ALLEGIANCE.

In June of the following year, 1784, Johnson made a remark which very reasonably struck Boswell ‘a good deal.’—‘I never,’ said Johnson, ‘knew a Nonjuror who could reason.’ On which observation andon the position of the Nonjurors and their Jacobite allegiance, generally, Boswell makes this comment:—‘Surely, he did not mean to deny that faculty to many of their writers,—to Hickes, Brett, and other eminent divines of that persuasion, and did not recollect that the seven Bishops, so justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were yet Nonjurors to the new Government. The nonjuring clergy of Scotland, indeed, who, excepting a few, have lately, by a sudden stroke, cut off all ties of allegiance to the House of Stuart, and resolved to pray for our present lawful Sovereign by name, may be thought to have confirmed this remark; as it may be said that the divine, indefeasible, hereditary right which they professed to believe, if ever true, must be equally true still. Many of my readers will be surprised when I mention that Johnson assured me he had never in his life been in a nonjuring meeting-house.’—Johnson’s disrespect for the reasoning powers of the Nonjurors was still less intense than his detestation of the Whigs. Of some eminent man of the party, he allowed the ability, but he added, ‘Sir, he is a cursed Whig, abottomlessWhig, as they all are now.’

Walpole was satisfied that the Stuart race was effete, and that the family was incapable of exciting the smallest sensation in England. He could not, however, pass over an incident in ‘the other family.’

In allusion to the Prince of Wales and the Roman Catholic widow (of two husbands) whom he married,—Mrs. Fitzherbert, he says: 1786, ‘We have other guessmatter to talk of in a higher and more flourishing race; and yet were rumour;—aye, much more than rumour, every voice in England—to be credited, the matter, somehow or other, reaches from London to Rome.’ Happily, no new ‘Pretender’ arose from this extraordinary union.

A JACOBITE ACTRESS.

In this year, in the month of July, the comedy of ‘The Provoked Husband’ was played at the Haymarket, ‘Lady Townley, by a Lady, her 1st appearance in London.’ The lady and the incident had some interest for those who held Jacobite principles. They knew she was the daughter of an old Scotch Jacobite, Watson, whose participation in the ’45 had perilled his life, ruined his fortune, and caused him to fly his country. He died in Jamaica. His widow returned to Europe, and brought up the family, creditably. In course of time; Miss Watson married a paper-manufacturer, or vendor, named Brooks. His early death compelled her to go on the stage; her success, fair in the metropolis, was more brilliant in Dublin, Edinburgh, and other important cities, especially where Jacobite sympathy was alive. It is curious that in Boswell’s account of the tour to the Hebrides with Johnson, under the date, September 7th, 1773, when they were at Sir Alexander Macdonald’s, at the farm of Corrichattachin, in Skye, among the things which he found in the house was ‘a mezzotinto of Mrs. Brooks, the actress, by some strange chance in Skye.’ The portrait, in 1773, was not that of an actress; nor was the lady then Mrs. Brooks; but that was her name, andsuch was her profession when Boswell published his Life of Dr. Johnson, in 1791; at which time, however, he was not aware of her Jacobite descent. Some persons, unpleasantly advanced in years, recollect old Mrs. Brooks’s powerful delineation of Meg Murdockson, in T. Dibdin’s ‘Heart of Mid Lothian,’ about the year 1820, at the Surrey Theatre, and they suggest that she was the old Jacobite’s daughter.

BURNS’S ‘DREAM.’

In the year in which the Jacobite’s daughter made her first appearance in London, as ‘Lady Townley,’ Burns wrote the verses which he called ‘A Dream,’ with thisepigraph:—

Thoughts, words, and deeds the Statute blames with reason,But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason.

Thoughts, words, and deeds the Statute blames with reason,

But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason.

The poet then dreams of being at St. James’s on the king’s birthday, and addressing GeorgeIII.in place of the Laureate. The feeling expressed was no doubt one that had come to be universal,—namely, of respect for a monarch and his family, about whom, however, the poet could see nothing of that divinity which was supposed of old to hedge such supreme folk. But Burns recognised a constitutional king, from whom he turned, to attack his responsibleministers:—

Far be’t frae me that I aspireTo blame your legislation,Or say ye wisdom want, or fire,To rule this mighty nation.But, faith! I muckle doubt, my Sire,Ye’ve trusted ’MinistrationTo chaps who, in a barn or byre,Wad better fill’d their stationThan courts, yon day.

Far be’t frae me that I aspire

To blame your legislation,

Or say ye wisdom want, or fire,

To rule this mighty nation.

But, faith! I muckle doubt, my Sire,

Ye’ve trusted ’Ministration

To chaps who, in a barn or byre,

Wad better fill’d their station

Than courts, yon day.

BURNS ON THE STUARTS.

In the following year, Burns still more satisfactorily illustrated the general feeling as being one of loyalty to the accomplished fact in the person of the king at St. James’s, but with no diminution of respect for the royal race that had lost the inheritance of majesty. This the Scottish bard expressed in the ‘Poetical Address’ to Mr. W. Tytler. He lamented indeed that the name of Stuart was now ‘despised and neglected,’ but, headds:—

My fathers that name have revered on a throne;My fathers have fallen to right it.Those fathers would spurn their degenerate son,That name should he scoffingly slight it.Still, in pray’rs for King George, I must heartily joinThe Queen and the rest of the gentry:Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of mine;Their title’s avow’d by my country.But why of that epocha make such a fuss,That gave us the Hanover stem?If bringing them over was lucky for us,I’m sure ’twas as lucky for them.But loyalty truce! we’re on dangerous ground,Who knows how the fashions may alter?The doctrine to-day, that is loyalty sound,To-morrow may bring us a halter.

My fathers that name have revered on a throne;

My fathers have fallen to right it.

Those fathers would spurn their degenerate son,

That name should he scoffingly slight it.

Still, in pray’rs for King George, I must heartily joinThe Queen and the rest of the gentry:Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of mine;Their title’s avow’d by my country.

Still, in pray’rs for King George, I must heartily join

The Queen and the rest of the gentry:

Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of mine;

Their title’s avow’d by my country.

But why of that epocha make such a fuss,That gave us the Hanover stem?If bringing them over was lucky for us,I’m sure ’twas as lucky for them.

But why of that epocha make such a fuss,

That gave us the Hanover stem?

If bringing them over was lucky for us,

I’m sure ’twas as lucky for them.

But loyalty truce! we’re on dangerous ground,Who knows how the fashions may alter?The doctrine to-day, that is loyalty sound,To-morrow may bring us a halter.

But loyalty truce! we’re on dangerous ground,

Who knows how the fashions may alter?

The doctrine to-day, that is loyalty sound,

To-morrow may bring us a halter.

This sort of reserve was practised by many Jacobites, in London, as well as in Scotland. There was no knowing what might happen. In 1770, the French minister, De Choiseul, was strongly disposed to help Charles Edward to be crowned at Westminster, but that prince was so helplessly drunk when he arrived at the minister’s house in Paris that he was at once sentback. But the hapless adventurer never lost all hope of finding himself in the Hall or the Abbey. In 1779, Wraxall says that Charles Edward exhibited to the world a very humiliating spectacle. Mrs. Piozzi, on the margin of her copy, wrote—‘Still more so at Florence, in 1786. Count Alfieri had taken away his consort, and he was under the dominion and care of a natural daughter who wore the Garter and was called Duchess of Albany. She checked him when he drank too much or when he talked too much. Though one evening, he called Mr. Greathead up to him, and said in good English, and in a loud though cracked voice: “I will speak to my own subjects in my own way, Sir; aye! and I will soon speak to you, Sir, in Westminster Hall!”’

THE COUNT OF ALBANY.

While the Count of Albany was thus dreamily looking towards London, and the Scottish poet was playfully hesitating in his allegiance, there was a Jacobite whose neck was once very near the noose of the halter, but who now was a man whom the Hanoverian king delighted to honour.

There is no more perfect illustration of the now utter nothingness of Jacobitism than may be found in an incident which took place at St. James’s this year, namely, the knighting of a man who had fought at Culloden and forged notes in the service of Charles Edward, whom he looked upon as his king, and which king was still existing in Italy. That man was the celebrated engraver, Robert Strange.

ROBERT STRANGE.

Strange was an Orcadean lad, who was early destinedto study law, but who, hating the study, entered on board a man-of-war, out of intense love of the sea, and grew sick of it in half a year. He turned to what he hated, and seated himself on a high stool in the law office of his brother David, in Edinburgh. But there the real natural bent of his genius declared itself, and he was discovered, after drawing drafts of deeds, leases and covenants, drawing portraits, buildings, and landscapes, on the back of them. David was a sensible man: he straightway articled his brother Robin to Cooper, the celebrated engraver, for six years. Robin served his time with credit to himself. The world of art still profits by Robin’s assiduity. He was out of his time, and twenty-three years of age when, in 1744, bonnie Isabella Lumisden’s beauty made prisoner of his soul. ‘No man may be lover of mine,’ said Isabella, ‘who is not ready to fight for my prince.’ Strange, forthwith, became Isabella’s slave and Charles Edward’s soldier. Isabella’s father, also her better known brother, Andrew Lumisden, and herself, were uncompromising Jacobites. Robin became asultraas any of them. His first contribution to the cause was an engraved likeness of Charles Edward. His second was his plate of a promissory note, for the paper currency by which the Jacobite army was to pay its way, the note to be duly cashed after the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty! Robin became the prince’s ‘moneyer,’ and a gentleman of his Life Guards. Strange went through it all, from the first fray to the overthrow at Culloden. He escapedfrom the field, played a terrible game of hide-and-seek for his life, and at last reached Edinburgh. His old master Cooper is quoted by Robin’s biographer, Dennistoun, as his authority for saying that, ‘when hotly pressed, Strange dashed into the room where his lady (Isabella Lumisden), whose zeal had enlisted him in the fatal cause, sat singing at her needlework, and, failing other means of concealment, was indebted for safety to her prompt invention. As she quietly raised her hooped gown, the affianced lover quickly disappeared beneath its ample contour; where, thanks to her cool demeanour and unfaltering notes, he lay undetected while the rude and baffled soldiery vainly ransacked the house.’ Strange escaped, but he returned to Edinburgh, where he privately engraved portraits of the chiefs in both factions, and drew designs for fans, which were sold in London as well as in Edinburgh.

STRANGE’S ADVENTURES.

There is a mystery as to how such a double offender as Strange—rebel soldier and fabricator of fictitious bank-notes—was allowed to live unmolested in Edinburgh. He himself, though now never ‘wanted,’ in a police sense, grew uneasy. He married Isabella Lumisden in 1747, and for some years he was better known to the Jacobite colony at Rouen,—and in other cities—than he was at home. Mrs. Strange devoted her children to the Jacobite cause. In the cap of her first-born, a daughter, she fastened a couple of white roses; and she wrote of her second, Mary Bruce:—‘I have taken great care of her education. For instance: whenever shehears the wordwhigmentioned, she grins and makes faces that would frighten a bear; but when I name the Prince, she kisses me and looks at her picture; and greets you well for sending the pretty gumflower. I intend she shall wear itat the coronation.’ The Jacobite lady hoped to seethat, and to let her windows at great profit when JamesIII.should pass by there to Holyrood.

STRANGE IN LONDON.

Strange led a somewhat wandering life, but always for great purposes of art, while his family remained in Scotland. He was even in London, all Jacobite and unpardoned as he was, in the year of the accession of GeorgeIII.; in which year Walpole wrote to Mann, at Florence:—‘I am going to give a letter for you to Strange, the engraver, who is going to visit Italy. He is a first-rate artist, and by far our best. Pray countenance him, though you may not approve his politics. I believe Albano’ (the residence of the Chevalier de St. George) ‘is his Loretto.’

In Italy, Jacobite Strange not only triumphantly pursued his career as an engraver, but proved himself a far more profitable agent in purchasing foreign pictures for English connoisseurs at home, than Hanoverian Dalton. In 1765, he was applying to Lord Bute, as a loyal subject, to be allowed to live without fear of molestation in London. After the death of the old Chevalier, this liberty was granted to whomsoever cared to apply for it. Strange and his family then settled in fashionable Castle Street, Leicester Square. The Whigs in the Society of Artists raised obstaclesto his being elected a member; but ultimately the Jacobite disappeared in the glory of the artist. The somewhat ignoble scattering of the old Chevalier’s servants caused Andrew Lumisden, his under-secretary of state, to look anxiously towards the English metropolis. His sister was anxious he should take leave with all becomingness. She wrote to him from, now dingy, Castle Street:—‘I entreat the person whom I never saw’ (Cardinal York) ‘but, even for his father and family’s sake, I ever loved, to, if possible, patch up things so as, in the eyes of the world, you may bid a respectful farewell. I could walk barefoot to kneel for this favour.’

NEW HOPES.

Andrew Lumisden, however, was not among the Jacobites who would venture to London on mere word of mouth permission. His sister encouraged him in this hesitation. In a letter from Castle Street, 1773, she alludes to the subject, and also to the new hopes that fluttered the bosoms of her Jacobite friends, and which were raised on the marriage, in the preceding year, of Charles Edward with the Princess Louise of Stolberg:—‘I have not yet heard of your letter of liberty. Col. Masterton says it is lying in Lord North’s office, and he is sure you will be safe to come here. But I say we must have better security than that. Whatever I learn, you shall know without loss of time.... When will you write me of a pregnancy? On that I depend. It is my last stake.... As my good Lady Clackmannan says: “O, my dear, send me something to raise my spirits in these bad times!” Remember meto the good Principle Gordon, and all our honest’ (that is, Jacobite) ‘friends.’

STRANGE AT ST. JAMES’S.

Five years more elapsed before the ultra-Jacobite Andrew Lumisden was seen traversing Leicester Fields, a free man, in safety. He owed his freedom, it is said, to the zeal and judgment shown by him in executing a commission (entrusted to him by Lord Hillsborough) to purchase for GeorgeIII.some rare books at a great sale in Paris. Strange himself had become a great master of his art, the glory of the English school of engravers. There was still some distance kept between Robin and the Court of St, James’s. He had declined to engrave a portrait of GeorgeII., and also one of GeorgeIII., by Ramsay. His reason was not ill-founded, namely, that no engraving could be creditably executed where the original painting was very defective. Be this as it may, the old Jacobite effected a reconciliation by engraving West’s picture of the apotheosis of the young princes—Octavius and Alfred. Strange’s untameable Jacobite wife, who had never spoken of GeorgeIII.but as ‘Elector of Hanover’ or ‘Duke of Brunswick,’ now awarded him and his queen their full title, in a letter addressed to her son Robert, in January, 1787, written in Strange’s new London residence, ‘the Golden Head, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden,’ and containing an account of the honours heaped on her husband, in recognition of his last labours. ‘Your dear father has been employed in engraving a most beautiful picture painted by Mr. West, which he liked so much that he was desirous tomake a print from it.THE JACOBITE KNIGHTED.The picture was painted for his Majesty; it represented two of the royal children who died. The composition is an angel in the clouds, the first child sitting by the angel; and the other, a most sweet youth, looking up. There are two cherubs in the top, and a view of Windsor at the bottom. This piece was lately finished, and Friday, the 5th currt., was appointed for your father’s presenting some proofs of it to his Majesty. He went with them to the Queen’s house and had a most gracious reception. His Majesty was very much pleased. After saying many most flattering things, he said, “Mr. Strange, I have another favour to ask of you.” Your father was attentive, and his Majesty—“It is that you attend the levee on Wednesday or Friday, that I may confer on you the honour of knighthood.” His Majesty left the room, but, coming quickly back, said, “I am going immediately to St. James’s; if you’ll follow me I’ll do it now; the sooner the better.” So, calling one of the pages, gave him orders to conduct Mr. Strange to St. James’s, where, kneeling down, he rose upSir Robert Strange! This honour to our family is, I hope, a very good omen. I hope it will be a spur to our children, and show them to what virtue and industry may bring them. My dear Bob, I hope you will equally share in our virtues as you do in our honours: honours and virtue ought never to part. Few families have ever had a more sure or creditable foundation than ours. May laurels flourish on all your brows!’

SIR ROBERT AND LADY STRANGE.

It is a custom to speak in the present day of lawand justice being a mere farce, and of a rogue having a better chance than his victim, before a full bench of judges splitting hairs and disagreeing in the interpretation and application of the law. But the ‘handy dandy’ of law and justice was as confusing in the London of the Jacobite times. Cameron, young Matthews the printer, the thoughtless youths who were ‘captains’ in the Manchester regiment, were harmless in what they did, compared with Strange, the young Chevalier’s life-guardsman, and forger of flash notes; but they were hanged and Robin was knighted! Of course, Strange was not knighted for his Jacobite doings, but for his distinction as an artist. One may at least be sorry that the other Jacobites were strangled at Tyburn and on Kennington Common.

Sir Robert was grateful. In future royal dedications the ex-Jacobite spoke of the king’s mother as ‘that august princess.’ George, the king, was ‘the auspicious patron of art.’ Sir Robert ‘presumed to flatter himself’ that he might ‘humbly lay his work at his Majesty’s feet;’ that ‘millions prayed for him,’—the ‘Arbiter of Taste and the beloved Father of his people.’ And ‘the king over the Water’ was still (though scarcely) alive. Robin survived Charles Edward, and died in 1791. His widow lived till 1806. With full recognition of the ‘happy establishment,’ Lady Strange never doubted the superior rights of the Stuarts, and was angry and outspoken when such rights were, in any sense, questioned. At one of her gatherings in Henrietta Street, one of her guests happened to referto Charles Edward as the ‘Pretender.’ This stirred the old lady’s Jacobite blood, and with a license not uncommon to aged Scottish ladies of the time, in moments of excitement, she thundered out, ‘Pretender!and be damned to you!Pretender, indeed!’—Flora Macdonald did not swear at such provocation, but it once brought her fist in ringing acquaintance with the offender’s ears.

DEATH OF CHARLES EDWARD.

In the year 1788 the poor prince, to designate whom as a ‘Pretender’ was so offensive to all Jacobites, died in Rome, on the night of a terrible anniversary for the Stuart family, the 30th of January. In all the London periodicals he was treated with courtesy, but his death moved London society much less than that of ‘Athenian Stuart,’ whose decease left a void in scientific and social companies. The funeral ceremony is detailed in brief common-places. A very mild defender of the prince, ‘Anglicanus,’ in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (Anno 1788, p. 509), adds to the confusion touching Charles Edward’s religion, by asserting that he was converted to Protestantism in Gray’s Inn Lane; and proving the assertion by asking, ‘Did he not read the Church of England prayers to his domestics when no clergyman was present?’

THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY, AT COURT.

Soon after, London became an asylum to a fugitive ‘Queen.’ In 1791, the French revolution drove the widow of Charles Edward to leave Paris and seek a refuge in London. The Countess of Albany must have felt some surprise at finding herself well received in St. James’s Palace by the king and queen. She was thereby force ‘of that tupsy-turvy-hood which characterises the present age,’ as some wit remarked, at a supper at Lady Mount-Edgcumbe’s. She was presented by the young Countess of Aylesbury (of that Jacobite family) as Princess of Stolberg. Walpole’s record is:—‘She was well-dressed and not at all embarrassed. The King talked to her a good deal, but about her passage, the sea, and general topics. The Queen in the same way, but less. Then she stood between the Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, and had a good deal of conversation with the former, who perhaps may have met her in Italy. Not a word between her and the Princesses, nor did I hear of the Prince; but he was there, and probably spoke to her. The Queen looked at her earnestly. To add to the singularity of the day, it is the Queen’s birthday. Another odd accident, at the Opera, at the Pantheon, Mme. d’Albany was carried into the King’s box, and sat there. It is not of a piece with her going to Court, that she seals with the royal arms.’ Walpole thought that ‘curiosity’ partly brought her to London; and that it was not very well bred to her late husband’s family, ‘nor very sensible, but a new way of passing eldest.’ He had not then seen her, and when he did, at the end of May, his report was: ‘She has not a ray of royalty about her. She has good eyes and teeth, but, I think, can have had no more beauty than remains, except youth. She is civil and easy, but German and ordinary. Lady Aylesbury made a small assembly for her on Monday, and my curiosity is satisfied.’

IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

On the old Chevalier’s birthday, the 10th of June, Dr. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, escorted Hannah More to the House of Lords, to hear the king deliver the speech by which he prorogued Parliament. On that once famous day for defiantly wearing a white rose and risking mortal combat in consequence, the Countess of Albany ‘chose to go to see the King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head, proroguing the Parliament.’ ‘What an odd rencontre!’ says Walpole, ‘was it philosophy or insensibility?’ and he adds his belief, without stating the grounds for it, ‘that her husband was in Westminster Hall at the Coronation.’ Hannah More was being ‘very well entertained’ with the speech; but the thing that was most amusing, as she prettily described it, ‘was to see, among the ladies, the Princess of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife of the Pretender, sitting just at the foot of that throne which she might once have expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party when I put them in mind of it, was that it happened to be the 10th of June,the Pretender’s birthday! I have the honour to be very much like her, and this opinion was confirmed yesterday when we met again.’

It has been seen what Walpole and others thought of the Jacobites’ queen when she came to London. The lady kept a diary during her sojourn here, from which may be collected her opinions of the English and England of her day.

THE COUNTESS, ON ENGLISH SOCIETY.

The widow of Charles Edward found England generally, and London in particular, much duller thaneven she had expected. She saw crowds but no society. People lived nine months in the country, and during the three months in town they were never at home, but were running after one another. They who were not confined half or all the year with gout, went to bed at four, got up at midday, and began the morning at two in the afternoon. There was no sun, but much smoke, heavy meals, and hard drinking. The husbands were fond and ill-tempered; the wives good from a sense of risk rather than disinclination for their being otherwise, and they loved gaming and dissipation. There was a family life, but no intimate social life; no taste nor capacity for art. The most striking part of the judgment of the Countess of Albany refers to English laws and constitution. ‘The only good,’ she says in her Diary, ‘which England enjoys, and which is inappreciable, is political liberty.... If England had an oppressive government, this country together with its people would be the last in the universe: bad climate, bad soil, and consequently tasteless productions. It is only the excellence of its government that makes it habitable.’ This judgment of England by a Jacobite princess or queen, whose husband would have changed all but the climate, is at least interesting. In England the Duchess of Devonshire and many other ladies treated her as ‘queen.’ ‘The flattery’ (says the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ July, 1861, p. 170), ‘which the writers probably regarded as politebadinage, was accepted as rightful homage by the countess.’

HANOVERIAN JACOBITES.

Her sojourn in England was from April to August.Her design to visit the scenes in Scotland which her late husband had rendered historical, was obliged to be given up for lack of means; and she became, but not till the death of the Cardinal of York, the recipient of an annuity from GeorgeIII.This king, like many of his family before him, and like all after him, had a strong feeling of sympathy with the Stuarts. Indeed, the recognised Jacobitism of the king, and of the royal family in general, was the apology made by friends of the Stuart for holding office under what they had once called ‘the usurping family.’ Hogg (‘Jacobite Relics’) has recorded that a gentleman in a large company once gibed Captain Stuart of Invernahoyle, for holding the king’s commission while he was, at the same time, a professed Jacobite. ‘So I well may,’ answered he, ‘in imitation of my master; the king himself is a Jacobite.’ The gentleman shook his head, and remarked that the king was impossible. ‘By G—!’ said Stuart, ‘but I tell you he is, and every son that he has. There is not one of them who, if he had lived in my brave father’s days, would not to a certainty have been hanged.’

The public learned, in 1793, how different the ‘family feeling’ had been in the past generation. The ‘Monthly Review’ (in August of that year), in a notice of the Memoirs of the Marshal Duke de Richelieu, states that the temporary refuge offered to Charles Edward in Friburg, after his expulsion from France, highly displeased the Court at St. James’s. The British minister wrote in a very haughty style to the magistratesof that State, complaining that it afforded an asylum to an odious race proscribed by the laws of Great Britain. This was answered by L’Avoyer with proper spirit. ‘This odious race,’ said he, ‘is not proscribed by our laws. Your letter is highly improper. You forget that you are writing to a sovereign State; and I do not conceive myself obliged to give you any further answer.’

JACOBITE BALLADS.

In corroboration of the better feeling of the reigning family for that of the Stuarts, Hogg chronicles an act of graceful homage to loyalty to the Stuarts (on the part of the Prince Regent), which is graceful if it be true. He was heard to express himself one day, before a dozen gentlemen of both nations, with the greatest warmth, as follows: ‘I have always regarded the attachment of the Scots to the Pretender—I beg your pardon, gentlemen, to Prince Charles Stuart I mean—as a lesson to me whom to trust in the hour of need!’

The feeling of regard for those who had been true to the Stuarts was, no doubt, genuine. It was certainly shared by the regent’s brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex. At a meeting of the ‘Highland Society of London,’ when the Duke of Sussex was in the chair, a suggestion was made to Colonel Stuart of Garth, that it was desirable to rescue from oblivion the songs and ballads of the Jacobite period, by collecting and printing them. Colonel Stuart readily adopted the suggestion, which may be said to have been made by the royal family, in the person of one of its members; and ultimately the task of collecting devolved on ‘theEttrick Shepherd.’ Hogg published a first volume in 1819, the second in 1822. Some of the songs were his own, after the old tunes and fashions. The genuine Jacobite ballads excited much attention; old Jacobites were amused rather than gratified by viewing Cumberland in Hell, and younger people whose sympathies had first been awakened (in 1805) by ‘Waverley,’ were subdued to a sentiment of love and pity for the Stuart whose sufferings are detailed in song, and the loyalty of whose adherents is so touchingly illustrated in ardent, sometimes ferociously attuned, minstrelsy. The republication of these ‘Jacobite Relics,’ by Mr. Gardner, of Paisley, in 1874, is a proof that the old interest has not died out either in London or the kingdoms generally.

‘HENRY THE NINTH.’

Meanwhile, the French revolutionary wave reached Rome, and it ruined ‘Henry the Ninth, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,’ as it did his sister-in-law, the Countess of Albany. Cardinal York did not seek refuge in London: he found one in Venice. In London, however, Sir John Cave Hippisley, having been informed of the venerable Cardinal’s destitute condition, submitted the lamentable case of this Prince of the Church to the Ministry (February, 1800). Almost immediately, in the king’s name, an offer by letter was made to him of a pension of 4,000l.a year. ‘The letter,’ wrote the Cardinal to Sir John, in Grosvenor Street, ‘is written in so extremely genteel and obliging a manner, and with expressions of singular regard andconsideration for me, that, I assure you, excited in me most particular and lively sentiments, not only of satisfaction for the delicacy with which the affair has been managed, but also of gratitude for the generosity which has provided for my necessity.’ The Cardinal adds a touching statement of his utter destitution. Sir John was right in informing the still illustrious prince that the king’s action had the sympathy of the whole British nation, irrespective of creeds and parties. ‘Your gracious Sovereign’s noble and spontaneous generosity,’ rejoins the Cardinal, ‘filled me with the most lively sensations of tenderness and heartfelt gratitude.’

HOME’S HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.

In 1802, Cadell and Davies, in the Strand, published the first regular history of the rebellion of 1745, and the London critics expressed their surprise that more than half a century had elapsed before a trustworthy account of so serious an outbreak had been given to the public. The key-note of Home’s book is in a paragraph which was very distasteful to the Jacobites. There it was laid down that the Revolution of 1688, which transferred the Crown ‘to the nearest protestant heir, but more remote than several Roman Catholic families, gave such an ascendant to popular principles as puts the nature of the constitution beyond all controversy.’ The critics with Jacobite tendencies were disappointed that Home cast no censure on the Duke of Cumberland. They supposed this was owing to the book being dedicated to the king. Jacobite disappointment found ample compensation in 1805, when romance flung all its splendour round the youngChevalier, in the novel by an anonymous author, ‘Waverley, or ’tis 60 years since.’

A JACOBITE DRAMA.

The last male heir of the royal Stuart line was then living. The good Cardinal York died in 1807 at Rome, when he was eighty-two years of age. The announcement of his death in the London journals shows sympathy and respect, without stint. It was well deserved, for he was a blameless prince of a not irreproachable line.

After this last male heir of the line of Stuart had died, with a dignity that characterised no other of his race, and with the respectful sympathy of his adversaries, if he had any, it might be supposed that all danger springing from such a line had ceased. The last of the race had abandoned the empty title of king, and had gracefully and without humiliation accepted a pension, gracefully and delicately offered, from GeorgeIII.The peril, however, was not supposed to be over. While the last of the Stuarts was dying, Mr. Charles Kemble was translating a French drama (originally German, by Kotzebue), entitled ‘Edouard en Ecosse.’ On presenting it in 1808 to the Lord Chamberlain and the Licenser, they did not see treason in it, but much offence. The piece, in fact, represented the chances, mischances, adventures, and escapes of Charles Edward after the battle of Culloden. A licence to play a three-act drama, tending to keep up interest in ‘the Pretender,’ was refused point blank. Ultimately, it was granted under absurd conditions.THE DRAMA REVISED.Charles Kemble removed the scene to Sweden, andcalled his drama ‘The Wanderer, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles Edward (played by Kemble) became Sigismond, Culloden figured as the battle of Strangebro, and everything suffered silly change, except one character, which was overlooked—Ramsay (Fawcett)—who throughout the play talked in the broadest Scotch. When Sigismond’s perils culminated, he melodramatically escaped them all, and those who had helped him were proud of their aid, and not in much fear for having given it. More than twenty years elapsed before the great official at St. James’s thought that the original version might be acted without danger to the throne of GeorgeIV.In November, 1829, it was produced at Covent Garden as the ‘Royal Fugitive, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles was played by the ex-artillery officer, Prescott, whose stage name was Warde. Diddear and Miss Tree acted the Duke and Duchess of Athol; Miss Cawse represented Flora Macdonald; and the terrible Duke William was roared through like a sucking dove by the milk-and-watery Horrebow. The drama did not shake the ‘happy establishment.’ Of the performers in 1829, one alone survives, the representative of the Duchess of Athol, Mrs. Charles Kean.

SATIRICAL BALLAD.

But, five years previous to abandoning the timidity which saw danger in the stage dealing with a Stuart drama, a total change came over the governing powers in London. GeorgeIV.and Alderman Curtis had appeared in Edinburgh, in Highland garb, in 1822, and this led to an act of grace in 1824. The king’s visitto Scotland, however, did arouse a slumbering Jacobite bard, who gave vent to his rough humour in a satire, copies of which reached London in the king’s absence, and the flavour of which may be gathered from the followingextracts:—

Sawney, naw the King’s come,Sawney, naw the King’s come,Down an’ kiss his gracious—hand,Sawney, naw the King’s come.In Holyrood House lodge him snug,An’ blarnyfy his royal lug (ear)Wi’ stuff wud gar a Frenchman ugg (make sick),Sawney, &c.Tell him he is great an’ gude,An’ come o’ royal Scottish blude,Down, like Paddy, lick his fud (foot)!Sawney, &c.Tell him he can do nae wrang,That he’s mighty high an’ strang,That you an’ yours to him belang,Sawney, &c.Swear he’s great, an’ chaste, an’ wise,Praise his portly shape an’ size,Rouse his whiskers to the skies,Sawney, &c.Make pious folk in gude black claith,Extol, till they run short o’ breath,The great Defender of the Faith,Sawney, &c.Make your peers o’ high degree,Crouching low on bended knee,Greet him wi’ aWha wants me?Sawney, &c.Let his glorious kingship dine,On gude sheepheads an’ haggis fine,Gi’e him whiskey ’stead o’ wine,Sawney, &c.Show him a’ your buildings braw,Your castle, college, brigs, an’ a’Your jail an’ royal Forty-Twa (an old institution),Sawney, &c.An’ when he rides Auld Reckie through,To bless you wi’ a kingly view,Let him smell your ‘Gardy Loo’ (peculiar to the Old Town),Sawney, &c.

Sawney, naw the King’s come,

Down an’ kiss his gracious—hand,

Sawney, naw the King’s come.

In Holyrood House lodge him snug,An’ blarnyfy his royal lug (ear)Wi’ stuff wud gar a Frenchman ugg (make sick),Sawney, &c.

In Holyrood House lodge him snug,

An’ blarnyfy his royal lug (ear)

Wi’ stuff wud gar a Frenchman ugg (make sick),

Sawney, &c.

Tell him he is great an’ gude,An’ come o’ royal Scottish blude,Down, like Paddy, lick his fud (foot)!Sawney, &c.

Tell him he is great an’ gude,

An’ come o’ royal Scottish blude,

Down, like Paddy, lick his fud (foot)!

Sawney, &c.

Tell him he can do nae wrang,That he’s mighty high an’ strang,That you an’ yours to him belang,Sawney, &c.

Tell him he can do nae wrang,

That he’s mighty high an’ strang,

That you an’ yours to him belang,

Sawney, &c.

Swear he’s great, an’ chaste, an’ wise,Praise his portly shape an’ size,Rouse his whiskers to the skies,Sawney, &c.

Swear he’s great, an’ chaste, an’ wise,

Praise his portly shape an’ size,

Rouse his whiskers to the skies,

Sawney, &c.

Make pious folk in gude black claith,Extol, till they run short o’ breath,The great Defender of the Faith,Sawney, &c.

Make pious folk in gude black claith,

Extol, till they run short o’ breath,

The great Defender of the Faith,

Sawney, &c.

Make your peers o’ high degree,Crouching low on bended knee,Greet him wi’ aWha wants me?Sawney, &c.

Make your peers o’ high degree,

Crouching low on bended knee,

Greet him wi’ aWha wants me?

Sawney, &c.

Let his glorious kingship dine,On gude sheepheads an’ haggis fine,Gi’e him whiskey ’stead o’ wine,Sawney, &c.

Let his glorious kingship dine,

On gude sheepheads an’ haggis fine,

Gi’e him whiskey ’stead o’ wine,

Sawney, &c.

Show him a’ your buildings braw,Your castle, college, brigs, an’ a’Your jail an’ royal Forty-Twa (an old institution),Sawney, &c.

Show him a’ your buildings braw,

Your castle, college, brigs, an’ a’

Your jail an’ royal Forty-Twa (an old institution),

Sawney, &c.

An’ when he rides Auld Reckie through,To bless you wi’ a kingly view,Let him smell your ‘Gardy Loo’ (peculiar to the Old Town),Sawney, &c.

An’ when he rides Auld Reckie through,

To bless you wi’ a kingly view,

Let him smell your ‘Gardy Loo’ (peculiar to the Old Town),

Sawney, &c.

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