WHARTON AND ATTERBURY (1727). 423 "peculiarly domineering and quarrelsome temper." Indeed, his health made him scarcely capable of conducting business with tact and coolness. He liked, and was grateful to, the young Duke of Wharton, who had made a brilliant speech in his defence at his trial, and, in 1726, was rushing about the Continent, full of wit, wine, and headlong folly. Vienna, Paris, Rome, and Madrid saw this Jacobite meteor, so rich in promise, so barren in achievement. In April 1726 the British Resident at Madrid, Mr Keene, met Wharton at the house of the Duc de Liria, son of Marshal Berwick. Wharton, for long, "had not been sober, or had a pipe out of his mouth." "It is in my power to make your stocks fall as I think fit," said Wharton. "My master is now in his postchaise, but the place he designs for I shall not tell you. . . Hitherto my master's interest has been managed by the Duchess of Perth, and three or four old women who meet under the portal of Saint Germains: he wanted a Whig, and a brisk one, to put them in train, and I am the man. You may look upon me, Sir Philip Wharton, Knight of the Garter, and Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Bath, running a course, and, by God! he shall be hard pressed." Wharton was drunk: he challenged Keene, then he sent an apology. He was found in the camp of the Spanish army besieging Gibraltar, was proclaimed a traitor and forfeited, and died in poverty in Spain. So the hopes lit by the brilliant Wharton died out, like so many others. In 1727 Walpole used a story of a Spanish, and Imperial plot to restore James as a means of getting large supplies from Parliament.* The Cause was a bugbear, useful to Walpole, useful to the foreign Courts which thought that James might be serviceable in the case of a rupture with England, and he lived in expectation, long deferred, of such an event. In June 1727 Atterbury, always discontented, assured James of his readiness to resign his post at Paris. "Vain airs have been taken up, and lessening things said of me:" it is always the same story. Then came the sudden death of George I., and the Earl of Strafford had to tell James that the event in no way improved his prospects, and that his English friends were devoted to "common prudence" (June 21, 1727). For his part James did enter his chaise, and went to Lorraine, whence (August 9, 1727) * See the reports of a spy, R. R. (Rob Roy ?), on the Highland preparations, in Colonel Allardyce's 'Historical Papers' (New Spalding Club). 424 DEATH OF ATTERBURY (1732). he informed Atterbury that he was to be driven in three days. France had put pressure on the Duke of Lorraine; "he cannot resist superior force, neither can I, so I leave this place on Monday next. . . The world shall see that I have done my part, and have not returned to Italy but by force." 5 "Caution and fear" ruled the English Jacobites, as Atterbury said, quoting Lord Orrery to the effect that they would not move without the aid of a foreign army of 20,000 men. Atterbury thought that Cardinal Fleury would allow James to settle at Avignon,-a vain speculation. At Avignon, Inverness (Hay) was living, a fugitive from the temper of Clementina. On St Andrew's Day 1731 Inverness professed himself a Catholic, and the last public act of Atterbury, who died on February 15, 1732, was to scold him for his change of creed. Atterbury said that he ought to have been consulted: he might have shown Inverness the errors of his new ways. He then added everything disagreeable that he could think of,-for example, that Inverness's convictions were a last despairing effort to regain his place as James's Minister. Obviously his conversion, in fact, made his reinstatement impossible. Others, says Atterbury, regard Inverness as a spy and traitor, like Mar, whom the prelate never forgave. Now, Inverness was turning Catholic for the purpose of raising prejudice against the master whom he had betrayed. They impute to your Lordship views which your heart, I hope, abhors." "No one person whom I have seen or heard allows what you have done to be the effect of conviction." Shortly after making these candid and consistent statements, Atterbury left a world of which he had not made the best. Much trouble arose over his papers. The English representative in Paris wanted "the fingering of his papers"; Father Innes succeeded in having them removed to the Scots College,-a great receptacle of Jacobite archives; and Atterbury's son-in-law, Mr Morice, anxiously desired to possess them. James was certainly the person most interested in the safety of the MSS. so eagerly sought for by the English Government. Finally, the letters especially concerning James, and those of Ormonde and the Earl Marischal, were sealed up and left at the Scots College. Probably they were destroyed, with many other MSS. entrusted to the College, at the French Revolution. The papers as to Atterbury's trial (which could not have cleared his reputation) were informally detained, apparently as damaging to Pulteney, who in 1732, as an opponent THE CHILDHOOD OF PRINCE CHARLES. 425 of Walpole, might be leaning towards Jacobitism, or expected to serve the Cause. The detention of these papers irritated the Rev. Ezekiel Hamilton, a silly meddlesome Jacobite, whose letters reveal his abundant lack of sense. When Atterbury's corpse was landed in England, the coffin was broken open by order of the Government, in the hope of finding documents. Atterbury was at last laid to rest in the vaults of Westminster Abbey, and a foolish vapouring Latin epitaph about "Robertus iste Walpole " was composed for his urn: as it stands, the grammar is as absurd as the sentiments.7 8 In Paris, henceforth, James's affairs were mainly in the hands of Lord Sempill, O'Brien (whom he created Lord Lismore), and General Dillon. These affairs were like Penelope's web, constantly woven and unwoven, and changing with every change in the alliances or quarrels of Europe. The health of Clementina declined, her devotional ardour increased, she corresponded constantly with a priestly confidant, and her temper did not improve. "I will be very dutiful to mamma and not jump too near her," says her little son Charles, in a letter to his father, already quoted, the earliest that has been preserved. His caution indicates the condition of his mother's nerves. A Mr Stafford was placed (1728) under Murray as the Prince's tutor: he long remained in his service. 10 At seven the Prince could read, and was learning to write: his was always a sprawling schoolboy hand, and his spelling never ceased to be purely phonetic, unlike that of his father and brother. He spoke and wrote French and Italian with the same amount of accuracy, and it must be confessed that his conqueror, William, Duke of Cumberland, wrote a better hand, and spelled more like a man of this world. Whether it was the fault of Murray or of Sheridan, of Stafford or of James himself, the little Prince was very ill-educated. He was a strong, lively, careless child, not amenable to authority. In 1727 J. E., probably James Edgar, the king's private secretary, describes Charles as an accomplished rider, a good shot, and alert at tennis and shuttlecock, while nobody was a better dancer at the balls in season of carnival. The Duke of Liria mentions his "great beauty," he had large merry brown eyes and bright hair,-" and altogether he is the most ideal prince I have ever met in the course of my life." 11 The early portraits, now so melancholy to look 426 "THE ORDER OF TOBOSO." back upon, confirm this description. Charles had the spirit and gaiety that were wanting in his father; but his father's virtues, religious and moral, were not conspicuous in him. A more unruly boy never was, and he was never broken in to authority of any kind. In the quarrels of the jealous little Court he would be of his mother's party, as his mother was opposed to his Governor, Murray, and was not likely to support that tutor. Between Charles and his little brother, Henry, there was the liveliest affection, though observers already report their characters as entirely contrasted: "They are of mighty different tempers," writes James to Father Innes. Later he reports that Charles is singularly innocent in certain matters: he had not the amorous complexion of the Stuarts: he was pursued by the sex, to whom, if there were any chance of active occupation, he was very indifferent. He became a mighty golfer, but by 1734, at the age of thirteen, "he has got out of the hand of his governors," writes the Earl Marischal, who never liked the Prince, and preferred his gentle, winning younger brother, the Duke of York. With "a body made for war," as his enemy, Lord Elcho, confesses, and with his high spirits and ardent desire to recover his father's crown, Charles was the sole and lively hope of his party,-all the more as his mixed education had early taught him, so he himself says, to hold very lightly by his father's creed. He had smallpox in 1730, but his complexion, like that of his ancestress Queen Mary, escaped uninjured. At this time the much-enduring James found the temper of Clementina so trying that he desired to find "some prudent means of separation." But in 1731 she began to be more devout than ever, and even conceived it to be her duty to receive Murray. James corresponded with Hay, and confided rather more than was necessary about the difficult temper of Clementina. About 1730-1734 the Earl Marischal, now a respectable veteran of the Cause, was in Rome, and reports the jealousies of the Court. They formed, with the little princes, a mock "Order of Toboso," and excluded Murray because he "failed in respect to their everhonoured protectress," Lady Elizabeth Caryl.12 Charles was accustomed to see his Governor made the butt of the Earl's party, and thus were his chances of education ruined. He never treated Murray with respect or even with courtesy: we read the tutor's complaints in letters to James. The Earl Marischal was not happy in Rome; he thought it no place for an honest man; his plan for removing RECONCILIATION AND DEATH OF CLEMENTINA (1735). 427 the Prince to Corsica was set aside, and James, after Clementina's death, was passing his time in tears and prayers at her tomb. By 1734 they had become entirely reconciled. Ezekiel Hamilton had written to her a letter apt to revive the old quarrel: she showed it to James, doing, he says, "what was like herself, and what I took very kindly of her." Happiness, beyond all hope, was returning to the pair, but Clementina's health was rapidly failing. Their true honeymoon was followed by the queen's death, in January 1735, and by the misery of her husband. The queen had lived just long enough to know the pride and the anxieties of a mother whose son is in the wars. In June 1734 the Duc de Liria invited Prince Charles to join the Spanish army then besieging the Imperialists in Gaeta. The Prince went off in glee, attended by Murray, Sir Thomas Sheridan, and two friars, probably despatched by Clementina. Arrived at Gaeta, the Prince begged to be allowed to go into the trenches, but, as the King of Naples did not choose so to hazard his own Royal person, permission was refused. The boy did manage to get under fire, in a house which was being battered by the artillery of the besieged, remaining after the generals of his party had retired to a less exposed position. The Prince had plenty of courage as regards the perils of war: his departure from his army after Culloden was caused by the anxieties of one who had a price of £30,000 on his head, and was constantly warned of treacherous enterprises against his life. Nobody denies that, at Derby, he alone was anxious to advance though three armies larger than his own were on his front, flank, and rear. His conduct under fire, as a boy, was all that his party could wish; but his Spanish friends petted him, and we learn that he over-ate himself, and, like most boys, hated the trouble of writing letters to his people. His exploits made him not less wilful than he had been, and his tour as Count of Albany through the great cities of northern Italy (May 1737) was too brilliant for his head. He treated Murray no better than usual: "He gives us rather more uneasiness when he travels," Murray wrote to James. Meanwhile he had his great purpose before him: he hardened himself by long marches and by frequent shooting expeditions in the hills, and he acquired, for pacific purposes, considerable skill in music. By the time he was seventeen, when the war between England and Spain broke out,-the "war of Jenkins's ear," the Jacobites knew that, in case of a rising, they had a leader both audacious |