1740.

66

THE JACOBITE PARTY.

27

from Italy, having become James's private Secretary, also obtained considerable influence over him. As to hopes of foreign succour, the Duke of Ormond and the Earl Marischal had hastened to Madrid upon the rupture with England, but did not find or make any very favourable opening in that quarter. "Nothing," writes the Earl, "has been intended here against the English Government, which they know was forced into the war, and "which they count on as ready to forward peace as soon as they dare." But in France, the Jacobite prospects were of brighter hue. When Cardinal Fleury perceived that France must probably follow Spain in a breach with England, he began to lend a ready ear to the malcontents and exiles, and entered into their designs, with secrecy indeed and caution, but still considerable warmth. In the first place, however, he paused to ascertain what the Jacobites could effect for themselves at home, declaring that if they would fulfil their assurances, he would be no niggard of his aid.

66

66

The Jacobite party in Britain, so long as peace continued, was well described by Bolingbroke as an unor"ganized lump of inert matter, without a principle of life or action in it; capable of mobility, perhaps, but more capable of divisibility, and utterly void of all power of 66 spontaneous motion." But war was the Promethean spark that kindled the sluggish mass. In Scotland an association in favour of the exiled family, undertaking to risk life and fortune, whenever a body of foreign troops should land as auxiliaries, was signed in 1740 by seven principal persons, namely, the Earl of Traquair, a Roman Catholic nobleman; his brother Mr. John Stuart; the titular Duke of Perth; his uncle Lord John Drummond;

* See Atterbury's Correspondence, vol.

p. 206.

† Earl Marischal to James, June 21. 1740. Stuart Papers, Appendix. Among other points in this letter it is interesting to observe the Lord Marischal's love of Plutarch, which afterwards became one of the ties of his intimate friendship with Rousseau. Rousseau himself says of Plutarch, not long before his death, "Dans le petit nombre de "livres que je lis quelquefois encore, Plutarque est celui qui m'attache "et me profite le plus. Ce fut la première lecture de mon enfance, "ce sera la dernière de ma vieillesse." (Quatrième Rêverie, Œuvres, vol. iii. p. 272. ed. 1822.)

To Sir William Wyndham, January 25. 1740.

Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck; Lord, Lovat; and young Lochiel. The name of Lovat may excite some surprise in those who remember his activity against the insurgents of 1715, but this crafty and selfish old man had been offended at some attempts of the Government to introduce law and order in the Highlands: he thought also his former service ill rewarded, and declared that he had not received enough-a word which, with him, always meant a little more than he had! What, then, were his feelings, when in 1736, having excited the suspicions of the Government, he was stripped of the place and pension which he already enjoyed! Incensed, but with caution mastering even his most violent resentments, he plunged, eager, yet still dissembling, into the Jacobite designs.

The mind of Donald Cameron, young Lochiel, was cast in a far different mould: full of courage, hospitality, and honour; a true model of that chivalrous character which poets have feigned, oftener than found, in feudal chiefs. For the cause of the Stuarts had the father fought and bled, and was now living attainted and in exile; for that cause, even when buoyed up by no visions of victory, the son was as ready to devote the last drop of his blood, the last acre of his lands. An erring principle, but surely a most noble fidelity! His energy in war, his courtesy and charity in peace, are recorded even by his political (he could have no private) enemies. One of these, a courtly poet, unable to comprehend either how so excellent a man should be shut out from Paradise, or how any person of Jacobite principles could possibly enter in, ingeniously solves the difficulty by presuming that Lochiel will become a Whig in Heaven."* Nowhere, I think, do our annals display a more striking contrast than this between Lovat and Lochiel. The one, hoary with age, and standing on the very brink of the grave, yet trembling with eagerness for none but worldly and evanescent objects; willing to sacrifice honour, conscience, country, nay, even, as we shall find hereafter, his own son, victims at the shrine of his unprincipled ambition! The other in the prime of manhood, with aims as pernicious for the public, but in him most pure and lofty: swayed not by places or

66

* Scots' Magazine, 1748.

1740.

LOVAT AND LOCHIEL.

29

pensions, by coronets and ribands, but by his own inward and impelling sense of right: faithful to James, only because he believed, however erroneously, that James was his rightful King-only because he felt that his duty and devotion to the King were a part of his duty and devotion to the Almighty King of Kings!

Having formed their plot, the seven leaders next determined to impart it to their Prince, through a confidential agent, and for this purpose they pitched upon Mac Gregor, otherwise called Drummond, of Bohaldie. He was directed, on his return from Rome, to make some stay at Paris, and was entrusted with a memorial to Cardinal Fleury, giving an account of the design, and containing a list of the Highland Chiefs well affected to the Stuart cause, such as Sir Alexander Macdonald and Mac Leod. To Rome accordingly Bohaldie repaired, and afterwards to Paris, where he was favourably received by the Cardinal, and where he urged his negotiation, conjointly with one Sempill, calling himself Lord Sempill, at this time James's principal manager at the Court of Versailles. With respect to England, Colonel Brett was, early in 1740, despatched from Paris to confer with the Jacobite leaders in that country. Amongst the foremost of these appears to have been the Duke of Beaufort; a young man of delicate health and retired habits, who indeed survived only till the spring of 1745 - but his brother, and afterwards his heir, Lord Noel Somerset, directed the powerful influence of that family in the Western counties. Sir Watkin Wynn answered for North Wales; in London, Lord Barrymore and Colonel Cecil, at Oxford, Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary's Hall, were stirring agents. But, perhaps, the most active of the party was Sir John Hinde Cotton, member for the county of Cambridge, a gentleman of old family and large estate: he had sat in Parliament ever since the time of Queen Anne, was not undistinguished as a speaker, and so zealous a Jacobite that he used to make an annual progress throughout England, to maintain the spirit of his friends.* On the 28th of March Lord Sempill writes, that Colonel Brett has returned from England, and reports "Shippen timid;

* See Coxe's Life of Lord Walpole, p. 276.

"Sir John Hinde Cotton doubtful of others, but answers "clearly for himself; Sir Watkin Wynn hearty, and may "certainly be depended on."*

In little more than two months after Colonel Brett's return, Lord Barrymore undertook a Jacobite mission from London to Paris, and was admitted, together with Lord Sempill, to an audience of Cardinal Fleury. The Minister gave them a gracious reception, listened with pleasure to their account of affairs at home, and promised to send a friend of his own to England, in order to obtain still fuller and more authentic information for his Court.† In a few days more we find Lord Barrymore about to return, and the Marquis de Clermont the person selected by the Cardinal for the secret English mission. It also appears that Sir John Hinde Cotton was to remain in London throughout the summer, as the channel of communication with James's friends; and that Shippen, whom the public voice still proclaimed as the great leader of the Jacobites, was thought by them so weak as to be left out of all their consultations. Shippen, at this time, was sixty-eight, and his energy, perhaps, much impaired. But, as it seems to me, even his earlier reputation grew much more from his courage, his incorruptibility, his good humoured frankness of purpose, than from any superior eloquence or talent. Horace Walpole, the younger, describes his speeches as spirited in sentiment, but generally uttered in a low tone of voice, with too great rapidity and with his glove held before his mouth §

certainly not the portrait of a great orator! It is said that he had some skill in poetry, yet it does not seem that he was known or prized by any eminent men without the House of Commons. His father was rector of Stockport, and his paternal inheritance had been small; he ac

* Letter of Lord Sempill, March 28. 1740. Stuart Papers. The Right Hon. C. W. Wynn has kindly communicated to me this, and the following extracts or summaries, which he made at Carlton House from Sempill's Letters of 1740. I could find none of these in their place at Windsor.

† Letter of Lord Sempill, June 6. 1740. Stuart Papers. Letter of Lord Sempill, June 13. 1740. Stuart Papers. § Communicated to Archdeacon Coxe. Memoirs of Walpole, vol. i. p. 672.

1740.

MR. SHIPPEN.

31

His

quired, however, an ample fortune by marriage. wife was extremely penurious, and as a relation gently expressed it, "with a peculiarity in temper," and unwilling to mix in society; she was much noticed by Queen Caroline, but steadily declined all connection with the Court. Shippen, himself, like Pulteney, was not free from the odious taint of avarice: when not attending Parliament, he lived chiefly in a hired house on Richmond Hill; and it is remarkable that neither of these distinguished politicians, though each wealthy, possessed that chief pride and delight of an English gentleman — a country seat.†

In September, this year, it appears that the Marquis de Clermont had returned from his secret mission, and that his reports were favourable to the Jacobite designs ‡; and in December, after the Emperor's death had given new ground and probability of war, Cardinal Fleury was so far wrought upon as to promise positively that if Bohaldie could bring full assurances from those who managed the Clans, the Irish brigade in France should be forthwith transported to Scotland, with the arms and ammunition required. In that case he also undertook to use endeavours with the Government of Spain to send another body of troops from thence, with the Earl Marischal. Such a project was indeed already entertained by the Spanish, or at least apprehended by the British Court.

Even from this outline it will be perceived how unwearied, how extensive, and how formidable was the

* From her grand-nephew, Judge Willes. Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 673. Shippen survived her several years in full possession of her fortune.

This fact, as regards Shippen, is stated in Coxe's Walpole, ut supra. As regards Pulteney, I find it in a letter from Pope to Swift, of May 17. 1739. (Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 291.)

Letter of Lord Sempill, Sept. 5. 1740. Stuart Papers.

§ Letter of Lord Sempill, December 19. 1740. Stuart Papers. ။ "The troops in Gallicia publicly declared they were to be em“ployed under the Duke of Ormond, who was then in Spain, in a "descent upon England." (Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 459.) Sir John Norris was sent out with a squadron to defeat this design, and the Duke of Cumberland sailed with him as a volunteer: however, the Spaniards found ample employment for their force in South America