Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  With Goring’s angry outpourings, it seemed the magma of the English Jacobites’ wrath had finally cracked its casing. In an immensely long letter, dated 18 January 1754, Goring inveighed against the prince across a broad front.97 First, there was a denunciation of his unceasing demands for money. Second, there was a vehement attack on Clementina:

  Sir, your friend’s mistress is loudly and publicly talked of and all his friends look on it as a very dangerous and independent step, and conclude reasonably that no correspondence is to be had in that quarter without risk or discovery, for we have no opinion in England of female politicians or of such women’s secrecy in general.

  Third, Goring denounced the prince for his sacking of Dumont; since Dumont knew so much, this was tantamount to blowing the entire network of underground Jacobitism in England, if the Hanoverians took it into their heads to co-opt Dumont into their service. Fourth, the dismissal of the Catholic servants was a bad error. Any hint of religious intolerance was counter-productive to the Stuart cause.

  Without extensive quotation, it is difficult to do justice to the splenetic power of Goring’s letter, but the personal animus it contains is evident in the closing remarks: ‘To sum up, all these commissions you give me give me such affliction as will certainly end my life. They are surely calculated by you for that very reason.’98

  The prince was stupefied by this verbal bombardment. After being told ad nauseam that the Catholic bugbear was the one thing that had blighted Catholic hopes, it now appeared that taking an overtly pro-Protestant stance was not acceptable either. He was damned if he did and damned if he did not. Charles cast about for an acceptable compromise. He would not budge on Clementina or Dumont, but he was prepared to reinstate his Catholic servants. As for the financial accusations, ‘people should, I think, well know that if it was only money that I had at heart, I would not act as I have done and will do until I compass the prosperity of my country … but you know that without money one can do nothing’.99

  What irritated the prince most about Goring’s massive letter was not the substance of the accusation, but the frequent references to Earl Marischal as the ultimate arbiter and éminence grise of the English Jacobites.100 He asked for a meeting with Marischal, adding (surely ironically), ‘as I take you to be the best of my friends’.101

  Marischal sent a brusque refusal, as well as the remaining money (7,200 livres) entrusted to him by the English Jacobites.102 The prince responded by coming to Paris on his first 1754 visit in search of a meeting.103 When this attempt failed he returned to Liège to bring Clementina to Paris for a longer stay, as we have seen. This time, to tempt Marischal to break cover, he wrote to him to canvass his advice on a possible permanent domicile in Orléans.104

  If the prince was in any doubt about where he stood with Marischal, the Scot’s chilling reply on 15 April soon disabused him. Marischal said he could not advise him where to settle permanently, and did not want to meet him as this would set up a conflict of loyalties between his Jacobite sentiments and the duty he owed to Frederick the Great. That would have been bad enough. But Marischal could not resist a final jibe. Arguing against Orléans, he mentioned the unmentionable (December 1748) by adding: ‘you lie under a certain promise which nothing but absolute necessity can disengage you from.’105

  Smarting under this lecture on duty from a fair-weather Jacobite, Charles rounded on Goring, whom he now saw as poisoning Marischal’s Jacobitism. There is no such thing as an honourable and unilateral severing of contracts, he pointed out. Was Goring prepared to obey him or not, that was the only question.106 Goring replied that he was not: ‘I have twice been turned off like a common footman with most opprobrious language without money or clothes. As I am a bad courtier and can’t help speaking truth, I am very sure it would not be long before I experienced a third time.’107

  At this point the prince directed his anger back at Marischal. The tone of his next letter was sardonic. Since you can’t be bothered to see me when I am in the same city, he writes, and since you consistently put Frederick of Prussia first, can you at least obtain for me a passport for Maria Teresa’s Austrian dominions so that I can seek permanent asylum there?108

  Marischal weighed in with the observation that he would not be prepared to deal with the prince through any intermediary other than Goring.109 The prince replied that he was no longer prepared to tolerate Goring’s impertinence, so Marischal would have to find another channel.110 Marischal’s riposte was that he did not trust anyone except Goring. Bitterly reproaching the prince for his treatment of his agent, he accused Charles of the height of infamy in having threatened to publish the names of all the English Jacobites, thus condemning them to the scaffold. Disingenuously pleading a broken heart (‘my health and my heart are broke by age and crosses’), he declared that any further communication between them was now impossible.111

  Charles Edward angrily denied the charge that he had threatened to publish names. He paid Marischal back in the same emotional coin: ‘My heart is broke enough without that you should finish it.’112 Making one final effort to bridge the yawning chasm between them, the prince sent Antoine Walsh to see Marischal.

  Marischal treated Walsh with contempt. He insisted on writing out a verbatim account of the interview (‘to ease his memory, as he wouldn’t have been able to retain such a long conversation’) and was even more uncompromising than before. After pouring extravagant scorn on the planning behind the Elibank plot, he made it plain that his overwhelming priority was the interest of Frederick the Great. If Frederick gave him carte blanche to pursue Jacobite interests, if there was a cast-iron guarantee of a foreign invasion of Britain, and if he, not the prince, directed the entire operation, then and only then would he reconsider. Marischal knew very well that such a scenario could never come to pass.

  So ended all contacts between the prince and Earl Marischal, the man who could and should have been a father to him. Doubtless it was for precisely this reason that the prince’s animus towards him was so great later on. What conclusion can we come to concerning this wretched episode?

  It is clear enough that on this occasion the prince’s fantasies of betrayal were fed by an objectively true instance. The plain fact is that Marischal let the prince down badly. The accusation that he had threatened to publish the names of the English Jacobites was absurd. It is possible, and even probable, that the prince threatened to do this in one of his rages. But anyone who knew anything at all about Charles Edward knew that he never carried out such insensate threats. The real or imaginary incident was simply used by Marischal as an excuse. This seems all the more pharisaical on the part of the Earl when we realise that he was already secretly preparing the ground for a pardon and restoration of his estates in Scotland (actually achieved in 1759).

  Marischal has always been viewed most uncritically by historians, but there are elements in his personality that do not stand close scrutiny by a devil’s advocate probing the reality of his much-vaunted ‘goodness’. Why did he not try to reason with the prince in a fatherly way? Why was he always cold and aloof, forever singularly unhelpful and defeatist? Why did a man who managed to find good in Frederick the Great (when no one else could), and who achieved the distinction of being the only human being not to quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fail to win round Charles Edward? If the prince’s paranoia is cited as the barrier, what about the far greater paranoid delusions of Rousseau?

  We are confronted at this point with one of those mysteries of the human personality. What is true is that the autocratic Marischal wanted always to command and to play the same leading role as the autocratic prince. Both men were tarred by the ‘all or nothing’ mentality. All the evidence suggests that Marischal intensely disliked the young prince at first meeting and never changed his opinion. If there is such a thing as hate at first sight, that is what Marischal felt for the prince.

  The collapse of communications with Marischal shunted Charles Edward from limbo into the outer circles of hell. The
events of 1754 finished the prince as a credible political force. He had now alienated France, Prussia and the English Jacobites. Apart from a few chimerical hopes entertained for Spanish assistance, he had nowhere to go politically.

  Unconsciously, perhaps, he turned back to the few friends he had left. Chief among these was the faithful Edgar, with whom the prince reopened communication at the beginning of 1754 after a two-and-a-half-year silence.113 In March the prince started to use Edgar as a confidant. That he was severely depressed is clear. On 24 March he wrote: ‘I have nothing to say but imprecations against the fatality of living in such a detestable age.’114 Rejecting all idea of marriage, he went on: ‘Were it possible for me to find a place of abode, I think that our family has had sufferings enough that will always hinder me to marry, as long as in misfortune, for that will only conduce but to increase misery or subject any of the family that would have the spirit of their father to be tied neck and heel.’115 It is not difficult to see this as an anguished cry against James for bringing him into the world.

  The dreadful stress of 1754 did not abate. Unsolved financial worries, rows with Clementina, the rift with Marischal, all contributed to a depression that finally broke over Edgar in August with this chilling cri de coeur: ‘My situation is terrible, the more that in reality I cannot see any method or appearance of its bettering … you can’t imagine how many crosses I meet with, but never any shall hinder me from doing what I think for the best.’116

  That the prince was seriously depressed can be seen from other pointers at the time. There was the Byzantine intricacy and cloak-and-dagger deviousness with which he arranged meetings with Waters and others.117 There was his obsession over a watch. He had ordered this timepiece through Waters from Julien Le Roy, the famous Parisian watchmaker. Delays over its delivery infuriated Charles.118 On one occasion he went to Le Roy’s shop and made such a scene that one of the other customers penetrated the incognito and recognised him.

  By the end of July 1754 the prince had had enough of Paris. He had achieved absolutely nothing on any front. He had been compelled to change his lodgings on at least three occasions. His incognito had been so thoroughly pierced that it was obvious that the French authorities by now connived at his presence in their capital.119 But Charles was forced to wait until Charlotte’s health was better before he could take her on a long journey.120 At last, on 17 September, he told Waters that the air in ‘this accursed country’ did not agree with him and that he was going to live in Basle.121

  Almost his last action in Paris was to summon Cluny MacPherson to Europe from out of the cage on Ben Alder where he had skulked for the past eight years.122 All hope of another rising in the Highlands was over. In his heart Charles Edward knew he was already a beaten man.

  30

  Folly of Princes

  1754–8

  IN BASLE CHARLES and Clementina stayed at L’Auberge des Trois Rois while they looked for more permanent accommodation.1 Getting their effects to Switzerland was troublesome, but not more so than the exorbitant cost of living in the cantons ‘where money melts’.2 But by March 1755 the prince reported the air and country to his liking and found a suitable permanent home.3 He and Clementina settled in, using the alias of Mr and Mrs Thompson.4

  The prince was in a bad mental state. He lived like a recluse, reluctant to see any of the few supporters that still remained to him. He warned Waters (now his principal channel of communication with the outside world) that he was not prepared to discuss Clementina with envoys from England unless they brought incontrovertible proof that she was a spy.5 He reiterated the sentiments that had so angered Marischal, this time substituting ‘cat’ for ‘dog’.6 He honed his sense of being persecuted to a fine point, remarking about himself: ‘it seems to be a wager who can fling the greatest stone at him.’7 He continued to drink heavily, so much so that he even confessed himself worried about his own heavy intake.8

  A good index of the prince’s paranoia at this time can be obtained from his furious reactions over the watch he had purchased from Julien Le Roy. After an unconscionable delay the watchmaker finally sent the completed timepiece on via Strasbourg.9 But the watch simply would not work properly, no matter what tinkering was done. The prince came to see it as a symbol of all his ills, as part of the conspiracy against him. It almost seemed now as though material objects had joined in the persecution.

  The permutations and combinations of malfunction in the watch seemed legion. The timbre of the ringing mechanism was indistinguishable from that of the striking of the hours.10 The watch stopped every quarter of an hour. A local watchmaker diagnosed faulty balancing.11 Charles sent the intractable object back to Waters in Paris.12 When the banker remonstrated with Julien Le Roy, the chronometrical virtuoso dismissed the malfunction as a trivial fault and suggested that the prince was overreacting badly.13 Finally, in September 1755, the egregious Le Roy sent the watch back with the message – calculated to infuriate the prince – that there was nothing wrong with the piece but ill-usage.14

  But, as so often with Charles Edward, his feelings of being persecuted had some slight basis in reality. Would-be assassins were on his trail. A ‘contract’ for £100,000 had been put out on him; the hired killer had already tried to poison his drinking chocolate with verdigris.15 Luckily for the prince, the Hanoverian spymasters were as bewildered by his movements as ever. Whig secret agents consistently placed Charles Edward either where he had been in the past or where he was to be in the future, never where he actually was at any given moment.

  In December 1753, when the prince was at Liège, there was a very strong rumour that he was in Paris under an assumed name.16 In May 1754, when the prince was in Paris and there had been several good sightings of him, Lord Albemarle demanded that the French execute the relevant treaties and expel him.17 But Albemarle was assured that the French knew nothing of his presence in their capital.18 The new minister of state Rouillé denied all knowledge of him.19

  In April 1755 the prince was again falsely reported to be in Paris by English agents.20 By November 1755 he was described as appearing openly in the streets of Paris.21 The correction of this bogus intelligence sowed wholesale confusion in British espionage. One report had the prince taking up the crown of Corsica.22 Another claimed that he had been in England and visited Nottingham.23 Yet another firmly placed him in Liège, where he was not to return until 1756.24

  But if the stress the prince was reacting to in Basle was the blighting of his hopes – symbolised by the permanent malfunction of Le Roy’s watch rather than the imminence of exposure by Hanoverian agents – the stress nevertheless produced very real symptoms. In September 1755 he was very ill with a mysterious malady, ‘vapours mixed with spleen’, which was almost certainly the result of heavy drinking, by now virtually the prince’s conditioned reflex to stress.25 Another permanent worry was money, especially in expensive Switzerland. The number of servants thrown on the scrap-heap multiplied. Daniel O’Brien and Dobson joined Goring and Dumont on the list of cast-offs.26 This is how the prince explained his situation:

  It is better that they should beg their own bread or go into other service than to let Mr. Thompson be obliged to sell drugs to gain his livelihood, which he is absolutely resolved to do if all fails him rather than ever to do the least thing that could anyways be against his real interest and honour.27

  Others did not see it that way and interpreted his actions either as miserliness or eccentricity. Mittie junior sought relief at the feet of Lady Primrose, then visiting Paris. His pitiful tales hammered another nail into the coffin of Charles Edward’s reputation with the English Jacobites.28 The most ludicrous incident involved James in Rome. Five of the servants Charles had dismissed in Avignon made their way south across the Alps to the Palazzo Muti, after the prince told them to seek alternative employment there. James had a morbid fear of further clients attaching themselves to his payroll. After giving the men forty crowns each, he sent them back to France where, he alleged, there were mo
re opportunities for work.29 Subsequent tales of Stuart ruthlessness and ingratitude lost nothing in the telling.

  The one event in the prince’s life of any public significance in 1755 was his meeting with Cluny MacPherson. Unfortunately this relationship too turned sour. When Cluny landed in France after nine years of dodging the redcoats in Badenoch, he experienced a profound shock at many levels. There was culture trauma after a decade in the cage on Ben Alder. There was the shock of finding that events had moved on rapidly, that in Scotland he had been in a kind of time-warp. Most jolting of all was the change for the worse in Charles Edward. Once in Paris, Cluny expected an early conference with the prince as a matter of urgency. But the reclusive prince refused to budge from Basle.30

  Cluny protested that he would feel naked if he made a trip to Switzerland, especially as he knew nothing of its language or culture.31 But the prince insisted on Basle as the venue. He ordered Cluny and Henry Patullo (the messenger he had sent to Scotland the year before to fetch Cluny) to travel via Belfort to the Le Sauvage inn in Basle.32 Then it emerged that Cluny was penniless.33 This was a severe blow to the prince. He had called Cluny over precisely in hopes that the MacPherson chief would meanwhile have recovered the bulk of the Loch Arkaig treasure. Charles grumbled excessively about paying out fifteen louis d’ors for Patullo’s and Cluny’s travelling expenses: