Henry had lost the support of Cardinal Rezzonico through his treatment of Francesco Albani. But even Rezzonico was unhappy with this cavalier survey of the state of affairs. What about the fact that Clement had recognised James as king of England and his son as Prince of Wales?72 If the Jacobite doctrine of divine right and passive obedience was jettisoned, what was the basis for papal recognition of the kingdom of Naples, or the duchies of Parma and Piacenza? In particular, if continuity was being stressed, how was it possible that Charles Edward had been recognised since 1720 as heir apparent to the English throne but now suddenly no longer was?73 Moreover, if the Vatican recognised the House of Hanover as legitimate, it would also have to accept that any future actions, however draconian, that that regime took against English Catholics were justifiable; you could not logically recognise a regime as legitimate while repudiating its actions as illegitimate.74
Alessandro Albani tried to shift the argument back to practicalities. If the Pope recognised Charles Edward, the English would bombard Ancona and Civitavecchia.75 Admiral Matthews had come close to this in 1745.76 It was even conceivable that a military force would be landed on the territory of the papal states.77
At this point Charles Edward’s one and only clear supporter in the conclave came forward to answer these and other points. Cardinal Stoppani scouted the idea that the English would take military action in retaliation for recognition of the prince.78 This had not happened when the Vatican recognised James III, even though there were more compelling reasons then, as Jacobite rebellion was endemic in Britain. Was it really conceivable that the English would spend a vast sum of money sending warships against the papal states? Landing troops was a childish fantasy, since ‘scorched earth’ tactics could be used against the invader. Even a naval attack on the papal states was politically perilous, since it would look like an assault on the entire Catholic religion. In any case, Alessandro Albani’s arguments could be turned on their head. If England was as stable as he claimed, the authorities there could afford to treat the recognition of ‘Charles III’ with contempt.
Stoppani then launched a strong attack on the other arguments so far marshalled.79 It was absurd to argue that Catholics would be expelled from Canada if Charles Edward was recognised as king. Quite apart from the poor propaganda image presented to the world, the English had other factors to ponder. Many of England’s most important trading partners were Catholic nations. Would England really jeopardise such commerce just because the Pope recognised Charles Edward? It was absurd, too, to argue that missionaries would be driven from north America. The civil authorities knew very well that the Indians there were held in check by the moderating influence of the missionaries. To expel them would be to remove an important element in the social cement of the American colonies.
Stoppani’s arguments had a powerful effect on his audience. A consensus seemed to be emerging that the Pope should postpone any definite decision until he saw the line France and Spain were going to take.80 Some of the anti-Stuart cardinals even advocated expelling Charles Edward when he came to Rome, simply to test the proposition that Spain and France would welcome him with open arms.81
But Clement XIII dug in his heels. It was for him to lead, not follow.82 Again he brought his audience back to the question of political legitimacy: since England had a settled regime, it was absurd to pretend that some wandering prince was its rightful ruler. Besides, whereas there had been an equation between the interests of James and of Catholicism, this did not apply to his son. Both James and his father James II had actually sacrificed good chances of restoration to the English throne rather than abandon their Catholic faith.83 Charles Edward, on the other hand, seemed to be a religious turncoat, an apostate twice over. Could he really be relied on to be a good Catholic monarch and, if not, did not the very foundation of Stoppani’s argument collapse – that Vatican credibility depended on recognition of Charles Edward?84
Finally, the Pope pointed out that Stoppani’s argument about the bombardment was too clever by half. It was precisely the domestic turmoil he had referred to that had stayed the British military hand in that epoch and created the context in which it was meaningful to speak of James III as a legitimate monarch.
It was time for a final decision. Aubeterre was known to be exerting tremendous pressure on the Pope for recognition, but was this Choiseul’s own policy or merely Aubeterre’s personal predilection?85 It was common knowledge that Aubeterre had instructions to press the Pope hard to suppress the Jesuit orders but logically that should run counter to support for the supposedly pro-Jesuit Stuarts. Besides, Clement had good intelligence from Paris on British diplomatic pressure there.86 He also knew that the Imperial court opposed recognition. Prince Kaunitz was actually lobbying other European courts not to support the Stuarts.87 Clement felt that this was an occasion for boldness. He asked for a vote to be taken. With Stoppani alone opposing, it was decided not to grant the prince recognition as Charles III of England, Scotland and Ireland.88
It fell to Torregiani to convey the bad news to Henry.89 The consequence was that when Charles Edward arrived in Rome, instead of being welcomed as Charles III, he found himself a virtual pariah.
The prince had a hard journey to the Eternal City, via Strasbourg, Innsbruck, Bologna and Florence. He was still suffering from a cold and a sore head when he set out from Paris to brave the rigours of winter.90 In Italy the bad news came north to meet him. As a way out of his embarrassment, Henry suggested that the prince stay at the palace at Caprarola belonging to the kingdom of Naples. This would place the prince in a royal palace, outside the Pope’s jurisdiction, yet no more than half a day’s journey from Rome.91
But the prince insisted on pressing on to Rome. He argued that Cardinal Albani’s famous letter of October 1765 guaranteed him papal recognition. Andrew Lumisden met him two posts beyond Florence, only to find that his royal master had just narrowly escaped death.92 On the road one post out from Bologna his coach had overturned. Several passengers were hurt, but not the prince. The coach itself came very close to crashing over a precipice. Although Lumisden testified that the prince had lost none of his charm, he was in a bad way physically, with excessively swollen legs and feet.
Charles was pleased to learn that the queen’s apartment in the Palazzo Muti had been prepared for him. He asked Lumisden to see to it that his baggage passed the Ponte Molle unexamined. Then he continued his journey, halting at San Quirico and Montefiascone. The trip was a terrible one. All the roads to Rome were sheeted in snow and ice.93 Charles Edward had a cold coming of it in every sense.
On the evening of Thursday 23 January 1766 the prince entered Rome, a city he had last seen twenty-two years before.94 Henry had organised a claque to call out ‘Viva Il Re!’ when he entered the Piazza S. Apostoli.95 This was scarcely enough to assuage his brother’s wounded feelings. Charles Edward felt that he had been lured to Rome under false pretences. He was bitter at what he considered Henry’s incompetent lobbying of the Pope.96
The prince’s supporters tried to encourage him, in three main ways. There had always been those in the Jacobite movement who considered that it was a mistake for the prince to go to Rome in any circumstances whatever.97 These people now advanced the consoling argument that the estrangement of prince and Pope would work in his favour with English Jacobites worried about the bugbear of ‘popery’, and would appeal to the same constituency that had applauded his defiance of Louis XV in 1748.98
Another familiar comforting tenet was that Clement XIII could not live long and that the issue would have to be considered anew by his successor. As Lumisden put it: ‘The government here is different from that of any other country. It is a continual flux that depends on the precarious life of an old man. As soon as this Pope dies, there is a total change of government. A new Pope produces a new Ministry, who lie under no obligation to pursue the measures of the former.’99
The third argument was that France and Spain could yet be mobilised to force Clement XIII
to reverse his decision. Still in hopes, Charles Edward sent off letters to Louis XV, Charles III of Spain and Ferdinand, king of the Three Sicilies.100 These hopes proved the most groundless of all. France took its cue on this matter from the Vatican; Spain in turn followed the French lead. As soon as Clement’s decision was known, Choiseul and Praslin reprimanded Aubeterre for his pro-Stuart stance and ordered him to toe the line.101 Similar orders to their ministers were issued at Naples and Madrid. Aubeterre became the laughing-stock of Europe.102 Serrant’s mission in Spain turned into an abysmal farce.103
Horace Mann was jubilant. France, Spain, the Vatican, all quaked at the might of the British.104 This triumph, said Mann, was ‘the most glaring proof of the submission to George III of the Court which excommunicated Elizabeth and all her descendants … if it is not sufficient, I will send the Pope to St. James’s with his triple crown, that the king may tip it off with his foot’.105
Not surprisingly, the prince spent his first month in Rome in a state of even more acute depression than normal. For the first few days he got out of bed only for dinner and supper, under the excuse that he was recovering from the effects of the overturning of the coach.106 So as to avoid meeting the Pope, he adopted the title of Baron Douglas, while actually arrogating to himself royal privileges. The day after his arrival, Henry went back to see the Pope to renew his brother’s claims. An acrimonious discussion took place. Henry was so angry at the Pope’s unyielding posture that he decided to take matters into his own hands.107
Openly defying the Pope, he took to carrying Charles around the streets of Rome in his coach, with his brother on the right-hand side, evincing a deference which cardinals were supposed to show to a crowned head.108 Similarly thumbing his nose at his own court, Cardinal Orsini, the Neapolitan minister, visited Charles Edward and treated him like a king.109 Cardinal Guglielmi also caused scandal by addressing Charles as ‘Your Majesty’.110 Finally, the Jesuits, then locked in a life-and-death struggle with the Papacy, saw a chance to use the prince as a wedge. The rectors of the Scots and Irish Jesuit colleges both recognised him as ‘Charles III’.111
But Clement XIII was not the sort of man to be trifled with. He struck back vigorously. Another congregation of cardinals was held. It was decided that Secretary of State Torregiani should command the Cardinal Dean of the Sacred College, in charge of protocol, to require all cardinals to follow the line towards the Stuarts laid down by the Pope.112 Recognition of the prince as Charles III became almost as much a treasonable matter in Rome as in England. The rectors of the Scots and Irish colleges were expelled from Rome together with the superiors of two Irish convents.113 To cap all, while Charles Edward was away with Henry at Albano, the coat of arms of England was taken down from the door of the Palazzo Muti.114 All signs of the Stuarts as a royal house were expunged from Rome.
It seemed that the prince had reached the nadir of his fortunes. He had now suffered the ultimate humiliation. He had returned to the city he swore never to see again only to find himself worse off than at Bouillon.
34
‘King Charles III’
(1766–70)
THERE WAS JUST one small consolation for the prince as he settled in at the Palazzo Muti. His days of living from hand to mouth, one jump ahead of his creditors, seemed to be over, for in James’s will considerable monies had been left to Charles.1 In France James had income from town houses, investments in the Hôtel de Ville, and certain other real estate revenues which Dunbar and the dowager countess Inverness were enjoying in usufruct, but which would revert to the prince on their death. As a result of a series of trade-offs with Henry, the prince was the beneficiary of all Stuart income in France (apart from ecclesiastical benefices). In addition he owned the 100,000 Roman crowns (about £25,000) deposited in the Monte di Pietà, plus all the jewels and precious pieces held there.
On the other hand, James required his elder son to keep up all the pensions and payments to his vast army of dependants and clients.2 And, now that the prince had inherited the so-called wealth of the Stuarts, Jacobite hangers-on who had not been heard of for a decade or more came forward with hard-luck stories, asking for money.3 Mann waxed lyrically incredulous at the wealth of the Stuarts but, as Lumisden soon found out, the account books in the Palazzo Muti told a story not nearly so rosy.4
The prince set about regularising his household. Andrew Lumisden, who had been royal secretary since Edgar’s death in 1762, intended to quit the service after the transfer of power, but Charles persuaded him to stay on.5 Chief among the prince’s other ‘gentlemen’ was John Hay of Restalrig, principally known for his disastrous failure over the commissariat just before Culloden. The prince appointed him major-domo and created him a baronet of Scotland on 31 December 1766.6 There was the faithful John Stewart, who had accompanied the prince from Scotland, was imprisoned with him, sacked, restored to favour, and then led the private search for Clementina Walkinshaw in 1760. Stewart had sailed close to the wind with Charles Edward before, but had always remained just inside his master’s favour. Two other veterans of the ’45 completed the ‘court’ at the Palazzo Muti: Captain Adam Urquhart and Lachlan Mackintosh, who had actually commanded a clan regiment.7
There was one other of James’s old retainers that Charles Edward thought worth keeping on. The Welsh clergyman, Rev. Mr Wagstaffe, formerly the Protestant chaplain, was retained by the prince as a wink and a nod to the English Jacobites that the Stuart heart was still really Anglican. The prince was always a trimmer when it came to organised religion. He did not oppose it with Voltairean intensity, merely despised it utterly.
Rather than bow the knee to the Pope, the prince preferred to remain incognito. This meant that he could not be received by polite society.8 On the other hand, despite the attitude of their governments, he was frequently visited by the ambassadors of Spain, France and Malta.9 At first Charles was content to be quietly defiant. He treated the Pope’s absurd offer to recognise him as the Prince of Wales with the contempt its logic deserved.10
Once his legs were free of their dropsical swelling, he was out and about in Rome, now masked in the Corso, now at the opera in the French ambassador’s box.11 But he chafed at not being able to go hunting.12 His attitude, as expressed to his brother at the end of March, was surely tongue-in-cheek: ‘My health is, thank God, good, though my heart is not content, but my trust in the Being of Beings is my consolation.’13
The question remained: how long would he remain in Rome with such an uncertain and unsatisfactory status? Bologna was raised as a possible permanent residence. Aubeterre advised him to stay in the papal states until he had exhausted all possible diplomatic pressure on the European courts.14 This meant keeping on in the Palazzo Muti pending further developments. Caprasola and San Marino remained as last-ditch sanctuaries. In the meantime Louis XV and Charles III of Spain would have to be pressurised to find him somewhere to live that afforded the same dignity James had enjoyed.
The chief problem here was that there was no hope for the prince as long as Choiseul remained at the helm in Versailles. Choiseul’s anti-prince attitudes had, if anything, hardened since 1759.15 Charles Edward’s heavy drinking was well known to provide Choiseul with all the ammunition he needed to shoot down any overtures on behalf of the prince. Pointing out that massive consumption of wine was a slow but sure poison, Choiseul argued that it was senseless for France to lobby the Vatican for the Stuart cause, since the prince would soon die from drink anyway.16 Choiseul added caustically that it was James’s abstention from hard liquor that had contributed to his high reputation throughout Europe.
Frustrated at every turn, Charles took to spending as much time as possible outside Rome. After hunting at Palidoro in April, he paid a fleeting visit to the Palazzo Muti before departing for a long spell at Frascati.17 In May he was at Albano for the villegiatura. There were many dinners with Henry, when Charles would try to broach his schemes for nominating cardinals off his own bat ‘pour épater le Vaticane’.18 He complai
ned to Thibault that the Italian hunting was not a patch on the shoots he had enjoyed in the Ardennes.19 Most of all, there was the ever-increasing fondness for Cyprus wine.20
As 1766 entered its last months, Charles Edward’s bitterness about the Pope remained unabated. The last straw was when Clement confiscated his carriage and horses for displaying royal colours. The prince acidly remarked that he thought he would go to Venice, where there were no horses but only boats.21
From the beginning of September until the end of November, Charles brooded at Albano.22 He still sent no definite orders for the dispatch of the residue of his effects from Avignon and Bouillon.23 He toyed with the idea of making a home in various localities, but as quickly discarded the notions. Valmonte, Cisterna, Venice, Avignon, Paris: the prince had only to think of them to find some compelling reason why he could not bear a permanent domicile in any of them.24 In the end he admitted that the problem was insoluble and ordered Stafford to remove from Avignon, lock, stock and barrel.25
The prince remained at Albano, taking what consolation he could from playing the cello. But music and the chase did not compensate for the lack of good conversation and cultivated society, especially since the scarcity of game at Albano diminished the returns from hunting.26 And always there was the constant throb of pain from his humiliation by Choiseul and the Madrid court.27
Rome, when he returned there in the New Year, was no better. There were visits to the Argentina and Aliberti theatres, but Clement XIII had cut back on Roman spectacles and the 1767 carnival was cancelled.28 Charles Edward’s depression and inebriation became acute. There exists a rambling, sprawling letter the prince wrote to Henry in February 1767, obviously written in a drunken state, in which Charles pours out his woes and frustrations while muttering darkly about his duty before God and men.29 The prince’s declining mental condition is also evinced by a maniacal insistence on secrecy in the matter of conveying his effects from Avignon to Rome, as if he were still the hero of the ’45 and not a paper tiger and plaything of Mann.30
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 63
