MM. H. JESSE'S MEMOIRS OF THE PRETENDERS AND THEIR ADHERENTS.
Mils was not so much needed as some of Mr. H. Jesse's previous col- leefions of historical or biographical gossip under the title of Memoirs. Information respecting the courtiers, small wits, beaux and belles of Eng- land, from the time of the Stuarts to the present day, was useful and .even interesting, because most readers were in the habit of meeting with ;their names and wished to have some particulars of their lives. The out- lines of the life of the Young Pretender, as we lately had occasion to re- mark when noticing the biography of Mr. Klose, are perhaps as well known to the mass of English readers as those of any other histo- rical person whatever ; and if they are not acquainted with the mi- nutest facts, it is from no lack of publications upon the subject. The same observation may be extended to his followers : their characters are -generally, their fates minutely, told in history ; and the prince of penny- a-liners, Walpole, has preserved to us vivid particulars of their persons, presence, garb, and discourse. The Old Pretender is a less hackuied but a less attractive subject : in himself, indeed, there is no attraction at all, beyond his personal appearance and characteristics. The want of con- duct and capacity, if not of noura,,or., in his followers, pretty well brings -them into the same category; and they too have received some attention &ern history, poetry, and romance--especially the unfortunate Earl of Dervventwater. The part devoted to the first Pretender has, however, more novelty than the ten times repeated story of the Forty-five, with its subsequent horrors of martial and civil law.
The campaigns of 1745-6, and the fearful hardships of his escape, form the only epoch of Charles Edward's life ; and so it was with his followers except the well-known Lord Lovat. Their public characters were undistinguished, their course obscure, and little is known of their private story which would give interest in the recital. Perhaps, too, this kind of matter is not so well adapted to the peculiar cast of Mr. Jesse's mind as the gossip of courts and courtiers. He cannot very well apprehend the essential qualities of politicians ; but the large princi- ples both military and moral involved in the Forty-five are quite beyond He does little more than echo the commonplace enthusiasm and romance of the mass of writers, with some little additions of his own. Perhaps the best done thing in the volume is the description of the Pre- tender's occupations and amnsements at Edinburgh; the justest judg- ment, that upon Cope, on whom ridicule and censure have pressed too severely. The work, however, is all readable enough, and it brings into a focus scattered information.
About one-fifth of the book is devoted to the correspondence of Lord 2resident Craigie, who was Lord Advocate during the time of the rebel- lion ; and which is now printed for the first time, by the permission of 'that official's lineal descendant, Mr. William Bell of Edinburgh. Many parts of it are curious, as showing the extraordinary want of information and energy in the Scotch authorities, as well as the careless, slothful, do- itself-mode in which they conducted, or more truly neglected busi- ness. It also exhibits the extraordinary confidence entertained by every one connected with Government, and the fears or treachery of many leading .Scotchmen. None of this, however, can be called new Information. The strangest thing in the collection is the style of some of the persons in authority in the neighbourhood of the High- lands. Besides the evident disposition to make difficulties, they illus- trate the maxim of Talleyrand that speech was given us to conceal our thoughts. What struck us most in the perusal were, the suspicion with which Government regarded the whole of Scotland ; and the promptness with which troops arrived from Flanders, showing that an immediate advance from Edinburgh after the battle of Prestonpans was more riskful than it has been usually represented.
It may perhaps be pretty generally forgotten by this time, that the name of Pretender was given, not to mark a pretender to -the crown, bat a personal pretence. The title of a relationship to the Stuart line was denied to the unfortunate descendants of James the Second. Johnson, in one of his lighter essays, makes it a trait of the genuine Whig party-man that he had "seen the warming-pan" in which the Old Pretender had been conveyed to the bed of the Queen. Mr. IL Jesse thus collects the particulars of the story.
"Neither was the disbelief in the Queen's pregnancy confined to the vulgar and misinformed. Men of the first rank and intelligence either believed, or affected to believe, that an imposture was contemplated; and even the two great historians of the period, the Bishopsof Peterborough and Salisbury, unequivocally give ut- terance to their suspicions on the subject. 'it had been for some months uncer- tain,' says Bishop Kennett, whether Windsor, Hampton Court, or Whitehall, was to be the place where the Queen designed to lie-in. Bat on the sadden, her Ma- jesty had this week given orders for the fitting-up of an apartment for that pur- pose in St. James's House, and sent many repeated commands that it must be tinished by Saturday night. Accordingly, her Majesty, on Saturday June 9th, MOB carried in a chair to St. James's, after she had played at cards at Whitehall till eleven o'clock at night; and the neat morning, between the hears of nine and ten, people were not a little surprised to hear that she was brought to bed of A prince; nay, the news was told with as much confidence before the delivery as after it, as if it were a secret committed to some people who could .uot keep it.' Bishop Burnet, also, among other specious arguments in support of a supposititious birth, observed, The Queen, for six or wren years, had been in such a wretched state of health that her death had been constantly anticipated: she had buried all her children shortly after they had been born, and her affiiirs were managed with a mysterious secrecy to which none had access but a few Papists.' And the Bishop afterwards adds, What truth soever there may be in these reports, this is certain, that the method in which this matter was conducted, from first to last, was very unaccountable. If an imposture had been intended, it could not have been otherwise managed.' "The following may be briefly mentioned as the principal arguments adduced at the period in support of the accusation brought against the Royal Family, of having imposed a surreptitious Prince of Wales on the nation. It was alleged, that in consequence of his early 'Irregularities, and from other private reasons, the King had become incapable of having children; that the Queen was not only in a very delicate state of health, but had been more than six years without beeping a child; that her sudden removal from Whitehall to St. James's on the eve of her delivery was equally mysterious and unaccountable; that the event took place on a Sunday, during divine service, when most of the Protestant ladies ot the Court were at -chapel; that neither the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Princess Of Denmark, nor the Dutch Ambassador, (the latter the representative of the Prin- cess of Orange, the nearest Protestant heir to the throne,) were in attendance at the birth; that previous to her delivery, the Qneen permitted neither the Princess of Denmark nor any of the Protestant ladies of her Court, to satisfy thein.selves of her pregnancy; that during the labour, the curtains of the bed were drawn more closely than was usual on such occasions; and lastly, in order to account for the manner in which the child was imposed on those who were in attendanceat the birth, it was insisted that an apartment had been purposely selected for * Queen's accommodation in which there was a door near the head of the hod which opened on a back-staircase; that though the weather was hot, and the room heated by the crowd of persons who were present, a warming-pan had been introduced into the bed; and finally, that the pan contained a new-born child, which immediately afterwards was presented to the bystanders as the offspring the Queen."
THE LAST OF TILE OLD PRETENDER.
The last notice which we have of the Chevalier ofany interest, is from the pen of Keyslor, in 1756, which presents bats melancholy picture of him in his latter days. "The figure," he says, "made by the Pretender, is in every way mean and unbecoming. The Pope has issued an order that all his subjects should style him King of England; but the Italians make a jest of this, for they term him The local Bing, or King here;' while the realpossessor is styled The King there,' that is, in England. He Las an annual income of 12,000 small, or crowns, from the Pope, and though he may receive as much more from his adherents in England, it is far from enabing him to keep up the state of a sovereign prince. He is very fond of seeing his image struck on medals; and if kingdoms were to be obtained by tears, which he shed plentifully at the mis- carriage of his atempts in Scotland, he would have found the medallists work enough. Ile generally appears abroad with three coaches, and his household consists of about forty persons. He lately assumed some authority at the opera by calling 'Encore!" when a song that pleased him was performed; but it VW not till after a long pause that his order was obeyed. He never before affected the least power. At his coming into an assembly, no English Protestant rises up, and even the Roman Catholics pay him the compliment in a very superficial manner. His pusillanimity, and the licentiousness of his amours, have lessened him in everybody's esteem. Mr. S., who affects to be an antiquary, narrowly watches him and his adherents; being retained for that purpose by the British. Ministry. A few years since, Cardinal Alberoni, to save the Pretender's charges, proposed that the palace Ails Laughara should be assigned for his residence. This house lies in the suburbs, and in a private place, and has a large garden with a passage to the city-walls, so that the Pretender's friends might have visited him with more secrecy, and he himself be absent without its being known irt Rome. This change was objected to on the part of England, by Mr. S., and did. not take place; but a new wing was built to the Pretender's old mansion, be having represented it as too small for him." For several years before his death, the Chevalier De St. George lived in great retirement; and, indeed, during the five last years of his life, his infirmities con- fined him altogether to his bedchamber. It is remarkable, that his existence should have been extended over the reigns of six sovereigns who successively filled the throne of Great Britain, five of whomhe had -been taught to regard as the usurpers of his rights. His death took place at Rome, on the 12th of Januar/ 1766, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. The funeral obsequies in the Chevalier were performed with regal honouns After lying in state for five days, his body was carried to the church of the Apes- ties, dressed in royal robes, with the crown of England upon his head and the sceptre in his hand, and upon his breast the arms of Great Britain, wrought in jewels and gold. The procession was attended by the members of the Popele household, as well as by the members of almost every order and fraternity, re- ligious as well as secular, inRome ; a thousand wax tapers were borne by as man attendants, and twenty Cardinals supported the palL On reaching the ch the body was placed on a magnificent bed of state, the drapery of which consisted of purple silk, with stripes of gold lace. Above him was a throne suspended from the ceiling, on the top of which were the figures of four angels holding a crown and sceptre, and at each corner the figure of Death looking down. Over the bed was the inscription, " Jsconns, MAG7LE BRITANNIA BEE, ARNO
Previous page
