Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

Home > Other > Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) > Page 75
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 75

by McLynn, Frank


  80 R A Stuart 192/2; 192/85. ‘As for the Prince, I believe there are few people of his age more strong and healthy, and I think he has grown more than usual of late’ (James to Inverness, 31 October 1736, R A Stuart 191/11).

  81 R A Stuart 191/122,126. At one caccia at Valmontone 19 hares, 21 cocks and 12 partridges were taken in one day by the prince’s party (R A Stuart 191/39). On another four-day shooting expedition Charles Edward bagged 10 of the 45 cocks culled by the party (R A Stuart 192/66). His best feat was 20 quails in one morning (R A Stuart 179/70).

  82 ‘He continues still wonderfully thoughtless for one to his age’ (James to Inverness, 11 January 1736, R A Stuart 185/47). Cf. James to Ormonde, 20 February 1736: ‘He is, I thank God, very hearty and strong and has naturally a great deal of vivacity and penetration but is other ways [sic] a little backward for his age both in mind and body.’

  83 R A Stuart 192/49.

  84 When Cardinal Tencin mentioned Charles Edward’s financial problems in early 1745, Pope Benedict XIV drew attention to the many papal benefices the prince had received from Clement XII (Benedict to Tencin, 28 July 1745, Morelli, I, p.257). For Clement XII’s generosity to the prince cf. also S P Tuscany 37 ff, 180, 202,273, 307,353,384.

  85 R A Stuart 174/52.

  86 R A Stuart 177/63.

  87 R A Stuart 177/137,142.

  88 R A Stuart 178/73,142.

  89 R A Stuart 178/137.

  90 R A Stuart 179/49,56.

  91 R A Stuart 182/108. Jacobite sights had been set on the siege of Mantua and all the prince’s equipment, horses and post-chaises were ready to depart at a moment’s notice (S P Tuscany 37 f.260).

  92 R A Stuart 184/112.

  93 R A Stuart 193/41,60.

  94 R A Stuart 193/133.

  95 R A Stuart 193/155.

  96 James to O’Rourke, 9 February 1737, R A Stuart 194/33.

  97 R A Stuart 194/84.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1 S P Tuscany 41 f.40; R A Stuart 196/2.

  2 S P Tuscany 41 f.38.

  3 R A Stuart 196/19.

  4 R A Stuart 196/12.

  5 R A Stuart 196/23.

  6 ‘If Your Majesty could have seen with what gravity the Prince heard all the compositions, I’m sure it would have diverted you’ (Dunbar to James, 4 May 1737, R A Stuart 196/23).

  7 ‘Nor did any other gentleman sit at supper except the Bishop of Pesaro and Farno, who made a grotesque figure among so many women’ (R A Stuart 196/23).

  8 S P Venice 63 f.346; R A Stuart 196/49.

  9 S P Tuscany 41 f.46.

  10 ‘In conversation the Prince displayed a gravity and attention that would have been proper in someone of thirty’ (Dunbar to James, 7 May 1737, R A Stuart 196/50).

  11 H M C, 10, i, p.268; R A Stuart 196/50,53.

  12 S P Tuscany 41 f.46.

  13 R A Stuart 196/64.

  14 Ibid.

  15 R A Stuart 196/73.

  16 R A Stuart 196/105.

  17 S P Venice 63 f.348.

  18 R A Stuart 196/133.

  19 S P Tuscany 41 ff.53–4.

  20 R A Stuart 197/41.

  21 S P Tuscany 41 ff.57–8.

  22 S P Venice 63 f.350.

  23 R A Stuart 197/41.

  24 S P Venice 63 ff.352–3; ‘The Doge seemed a mighty genteel and yet good-natured old gentleman’ (Dunbar, R A Stuart 197/41).

  25 S P Venice 63 ff.352–3.

  26 H M C, Denbigh, pp.220–1.

  27 ‘All he [the prince] said was in a lively, civil, respectful manner, but at the same time with an air of superiority that was remarked by everybody’ (Dunbar to James, 3 June 1737, R A Stuart 197/92).

  28 S P Venice 63 ff.354–5. But not before the prince had toured the entire arsenal on foot ‘which in this heat is a tour of some fatigue’ (Dunbar, R A Stuart 197/72).

  29 R A Stuart 197/146.

  30 Ibid.

  31 S P Venice 63 f.355. For the eccentric Lady Wortley Montagu’s denial of this obvious fact see Walpole Correspondence, W. S. Lewis, ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 39 vols (New Haven, 1937–74), 17, p.98.

  32 S P Venice 63 f.356.

  33 H M C, 14, ix, p.8.

  34 S P Venice 63 f.355.

  35 R A Stuart 197/146.

  36 R A Stuart 198/29. Cf. also Dunbar to James, 3 June 1737, R A Stuart 197/92 recommending that the prince be kept in the ‘grande [sic] monde’ so that he could become accustomed to proper behaviour ‘which he never will acquire amongst a few of his own people at Rome with whom he has constantly lived and who give him no manner of constraints’ (a palpable hit at Sheridan). Also: ‘I cannot but tell Your Majesty that in private we might make the same complaints as formerly and that he gives us rather more unease when he travels. But this is only a trouble to his own people and particularly to me who go in the chair with him’ (ibid.).

  37 Apart from tiresome homilies (James to Charles Edward, 31 May, 197/62 contains a very good example of the pettifogging James style), James constantly lectured his son on how he ought to respond during the tour: ‘I reckon you will be tired of Venice before you leave it, and I hope you will remember our agreement about games of hazard and what I said to you about your eating’ (James to Charles Edward, 24 May, R A Stuart 196/60).

  38 R A Stuart 198/60.

  39 Ibid.

  40 R A Stuart 198/88. In a pathetic attempt to sugar this pill, Dunbar adds: ‘However, I can assure Your Majesty that he never was in better health than at present and I believe you will find him considerably fatter and taller than he was when he left Rome.’

  41 S P Tuscany 41 f.62.

  42 R A Stuart 198/155.

  43 R A Stuart 198/117,155,160; S P Tuscany 41 f.64.

  44 For Dunbar’s own reluctant testimony as to Charles Edward’s personal magnetism see R A Stuart 196/23, 133. Dunbar agreed with the assessment of Cardinal Davia and the Elector of Bavaria that the prince could already be presented with distinction at any court in Europe (R A Stuart 197/62).

  45 R A Stuart 345/162.

  46 R A Stuart 185/47.

  47 R A Stuart 196/23.

  48 R A Stuart 196/89.

  49 R A Stuart 196/70; 197/110.

  50 R A Stuart 198/39.

  51 R A Stuart 199/43.

  52 For James’s jealousy of Sheridan as father surrogate see below p.313. Since Berwick was (apart from Sheridan) the other obvious rival as father-figure, it is possible that the idea might have been planted unconsciously by Berwick’s informing him in June that he had cut off all hair on medical advice (R A Stuart 197/39).

  53 ‘The Prince’s hair being very troublesome to him was to his great joy cut off the other day and the wig H.R.H. wears becomes him very well’ (R A Stuart 199/181). It will be noted that not even James claimed that his son would be pleased with the haircut.

  54 R A Stuart 207/65.

  55 Sir Bruce Seton, ed., Commentary on the Expedition to Scotland made by Charles Edward Stuart, Prince of Wales, by Padre Giulio Cesare Cordara, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, 3rd series, IX (1926), p.18.

  56 LM, ii, p.102.

  57 Benedict XIV to Tencin, 24 November 1745, Morelli, I, p.291.

  58 Any view expressed by so careful a scholar as Professor L. L. Bongie merits respect, but I cannot accept his thesis that the prince had taken a formal vow of chastity which was not broken until his liaison with Louise de Montbazon in late 1747 (L. L. Bongie, The Love of a Prince. Bonnie Prince Charlie in France 1744–1748 (Vancouver, 1986), pp.176–7). For one thing, the prince took Clementina Walkinshaw as his mistress as early as January 1746. For another, his brother Henry was complaining of ‘orgies’ long before the duchesse de Montbazon appeared on the scene. Finally, the prince’s own account of his liaison as quoted by Bongie does not suggest a sexual innocent (‘he was accustomed in his own country to being extremely cautious in affairs of the heart’, Bongie, op. cit., p.10).

  59 For details see R A Stuart 203/48,110; 206/44,87; 211/65; 212
/129,140; 215/107,118; 218/89,133; 228/162,167; 236/144; 238/82,108; 239/61; 245/193,224; 246/88.

  60 Typical ‘bags’ include: 100 woodcocks and ‘cartloads of stags, roes and wild boars’ in December 1737 (R A Stuart 203/82); ‘100 animals, 199 cocks and a great deal of small game’ in January 1741 (R A Stuart 230/67); ‘250 woodcock killed in a week, of which the Prince shot half’ in December 1741 (R A Stuart 238/143); ‘The Prince killed in one day 70 wild ducks at Fogliano and another day at Cisterna 60 woodcocks’ in January 1742 (R A Stuart 239/183); ‘100 woodcocks killed, most of them by the Prince’ in December 1742 (R A Stuart 246/6). Cf. also Elcho, Short Account, p.26 with details of a shooting party in December 1740. On the first day 250 woodcocks were killed, on the second 25 deer, and on the third 600 wild ducks. Whatever reservations Charles Edward had about life in Rome, he certainly shared the Italian mania for la caccia.

  61 H. Tayler, Jacobite Miscellany (Edinburgh, 1948), p.113.

  62 R A Stuart 216/120; 217/175. The growth, it seems, was not all one way. On 2 January 1740 Edgar reported: ‘HRH is now near as fat as the king’ (R A Stuart 219/104).

  63 Elcho, Short Account, p.23. Elcho, typically, protested that the comparison was unfair since the prince was nearly a year older.

  64 R A Stuart 214/154; 215/169; 216/14. Even on this occasion James could not resist censoriousness: ‘[the prince] has not the strongest stomach. I believe the Carnival did him no good, for as to keeping meagre days, that is regulated by the doctors.’ In other words, James was determined that his beloved Lenten fasts were not going to be blamed!

  65 R A Stuart 223/40; 225/181; 235/139. Although the Elector of Bavaria’s servant is said to have called at the Palazzo Muti to enquire about the prince’s health in June 1742. Walpole Correspondence, op. cit., 17, p.445.

  66 In June 1742, when the entire upper social echelon at the Palazzo Muti succumbed to a cold virus, the prince was unscathed (R A Stuart 242/151).

  67 R A Stuart 210/26.

  68 R A Stuart 210/20, 76; 218/53. Yet even music took second place to hunting: ‘HRH loves and understands music very well, yet notwithstanding he prefers the exercise and diversion of shooting to the fine opera we have at this season’ (Edgar, January 1742, R A Stuart 239/71).

  69 Charles de Brosses, Lettres d’Italie (Dijon, 1927), 2 vols, ii, pp.73–4.

  70 R A Stuart 213/97.

  71 A. De Angelis, Nella Roma Papale. Il Teatro Aliberti o delle dame 1717–1863 (Tivoli, 1973), pp.162–3. Cf. S P Tuscany 41 ff.139,246,262; S P Tuscany 46 f.169.

  72 Vernon Lee, Studies in the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1907), pp.202–3.

  73 S P Tuscany 46 f.171.

  74 R A Stuart 213/103,129.

  75 R A Stuart 213/97.

  76 Walpole Correspondence, op. cit., 13, p.217.

  77 Letters of Thomas Gray, ed. Duncan C. Tovey, 3 vols (1900), i, p.68.

  78 S P Tuscany 43 f.146.

  79 letters of Gray, op. cit., i, p.74.

  80 Pierre de Segur, ‘Madame du Deffand et sa famille’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1917, No. 37, p.837.

  81 R A Stuart 239/183. This was the full Highland dress sent as an admiring gift to the prince by the duke of Perth (later lieutenant-general in his armies) in February 1738 (R A Stuart 205/16).

  82 S P Tuscany 43 f.139.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1 See, for example, Eveline Cruickshanks, Lord Cornbury, Bolingbroke and a Plan to restore the Stuarts 1731–35 (Royal Stuart Society Series No. 27, 1986).

  2 R A Stuart 208/76.

  3 R A Stuart 208/145. This despite great admiration for Charles Edward at the Spanish court. Montemar, Berwick’s co-commander in 1734, told the Jacobite Colonel Brett in May 1740 that Charles was the most promising and amiable prince he had ever seen. R A Stuart 222/147.

  4 F. J. McLynn, ‘Issues and Motives in the Jacobite Rising of 1745’, The Eighteenth Century, 23 (1982), pp.97–133.

  5 F. J. McLynn, ‘Ireland in the Jacobite Rising of 1745’, Irish Sword, 13 (1979), pp.339–52.

  6 John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1870 (1979).

  7 See Eveline Cruickshanks, Political Untouchables. The Tories and the ’45 (1979), esp. pp.4–6.

  8 For a full discussion of England as ‘ancien régime’ and the modifying role of Jacobitism see J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985).

  9 See Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (Edinburgh, 1985), pp.138–55.

  10 W. B. Blaikie, Origins of the Forty-Five (Edinburgh, 1916), p.xxv.

  11 R A Stuart 219/152.

  12 For the dithering over Charles Edward’s rumoured trip to Spain see S P Tuscany 41 ff.334,337,338; S P Tuscany 42 ff.200,206; S P Tuscany 43 ff.25,33.

  13 S P Tuscany 41 f.348.

  14 R A Stuart 221/41,127,148; 222/16,75,146.

  15 D’Argenson, Marquis, Journal et mémoires, ed. E. J. B. Rathery, 9 vols (Paris, 1859–67), ii, p.413; iii, p.59; cf. also Add. MSS 39,476 f.189; H M C, 14, ix, p.48.

  16 S P Tuscany 44 ff.79,168.

  17 S P Tuscany 43 f.35.

  18 R A Stuart 220/153.

  19 S P Tuscany 43, f.62.

  20 Ibid., f.68.

  21 R A Stuart 235/172.

  22 S P Tuscany 44 f.526; cf. also Walpole Correspondence, 17, pp.202–3.

  23 S P Tuscany 43 ff.99, 123.

  24 C. Jean Sareil, Les Tencin (Geneva, 1969).

  25 S P Tuscany 41 f.273.

  26 R A Stuart 225/181.

  27 R A Stuart 226/30.

  28 S P Tuscany 43 ff.134,137–9.

  29 Ibid., ff.141–2,148,160.

  30 Ibid., f.195.

  31 S P Tuscany 46 f.206.

  32 S P Tuscany 41 f.340; S P Tuscany 46 ff.229,237.

  33 S P Tuscany 43 ff.99,123,172,199; S P Tuscany 46 ff.22,26.

  34 R A Stuart 235/186; 236/9.

  35 S P Tuscany 46 ff.37,71,132; cf. Walpole Correspondence, 18, p.201.

  36 H M C 14, ix, p.82.

  37 RA Stuart 243/113.

  38 Benedict XIV to Tencin, 11 March 1744, Morelli, op. cit., i, p.156.

  39 The title given him by his only English biographer. Renée Haynes, Philosopher King, Pope Benedict XIV (1970).

  40 S P Tuscany 43 ff.84,96,144,158–9,168; S P Tuscany 46 ff.41,55,95,135,149, 192.

  41 S P Tuscany 43 f.118.

  42 S P Tuscany 46 ff.63,69.

  43 See Biblioteca Angelica MSS 1613.

  44 S P Tuscany 43 f.213; S P Tuscany 46 ff.20,149,178.

  45 S P Tuscany 46 ff.4,14.

  46 For exhaustive detail see R A Stuart 302/102–5.

  47 Cf. the judgment passed on him in 1749: ‘’Tis true his education has not been in every particular such as a person of his rank is supposed generally to have, yet by a good fund of sense people will see that nature has supplied whatever may have been wanting in care and industry’ (R A Stuart 302/134).

  48 See, for example, the totally banal and uncommunicative letter to the Dillon family in 1736 (H M C II, p.33) or the series of letters from Charles Edward to Cardinal Gualterio during 1735–42 (Add. MSS 20,661 ff.124–36).

  49 J. C. O’Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade (1870), p.340.

  50 Stosch’s report in February 1741 (S P Tuscany 43 ff.141–2) speaks of Charles Edward’s observed fondness for women. But it is perhaps significant that Stosch, who was prepared to invent a string of bogus mistresses for James, giving names and places of assignation, provides no such list for the prince.

  51 Lord Elcho writes in his diary that Charles Edward was interested in nothing but hunting and music, had no conversational power, and was not very intelligent. But Elcho is a notoriously hostile and unreliable witness in everything concerning the prince.

  52 Stowe MSS 158 f.191.

  53 Tayler, Stuart Papers at Windsor, pp.106–9.

  54 R A Stuart 234/12; S P Tuscany 43 f.207; S P Tuscany 46 f.171.

  55 R A Stuart 245/46.

  56 Cf. Bulkeley’s remarks on t
he aftermath of the 1737 tour: ‘When he was driven back to his prison of Rome (for as such he always considered it), his high mind bore with difficulty the depression [italics mine] of his situation’ (R A Stuart 345/162).

  57 This section is heavily based on the work by Heinz Kohut, especially The Search for the Self. Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut 1950–1978, ed. Paul H. Orenstein, 2 vols (New York, 1978); cf. also Arnold Goldberg, ed., The Psychology of the Self. A case book written with the collaboration of Heinz Kohut (New York, 1978).

  58 R A Stuart 298/143. Naturally this secret correspondence was psychologically ‘overdetermined’, for unconscious resentment and contempt for his father must have played a part.

  59 S P Tuscany 46 f.17.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1 Cruickshanks, Political Untouchables, op. cit., p.38.

  2 F. J. McLynn, France and the Jacobite Rising of 1745 (Edinburgh, 1981), p.16.

  3 Walpole Correspondence, 17, p.306. There was even talk of reviving the trip to Spain as one of the options (R A Stuart 252/137).

  4 James to Tencin, 30 May, 27 June 1743, R A Stuart 250/47; 251/40.

  5 R A Stuart 251/179,210,212; 252/49.

  6 R A Stuart 252/82.

  7 R A Stuart 252/77.

  8 R A Stuart 252/39.

  9 R A Stuart 248/115.

  10 After the failure of the invasion, Louis XV told Philip V that the débâcle was due to a number of factors, but principally the precipitate arrival of the Stuart prince (AECP, Espagne 478 f.158). Tencin, too, disingenuously tried to shift the responsibility for the failure from French shoulders on to James and Charles Edward (AECP, Espagne 478 f.101).

  11 For this see McLynn, France and the ’45, op. cit. Cf. also J. Colin, Louis XV et les Jacobites. Le projet de débarquement en 1743–44 (Paris, 1901).

  12 R A Stuart 248/136.

  13 R A Stuart 250/91; 250/190; 252/39; 254/151.

  14 Tayler, Jacobite Miscellany, op. cit., p.14.

  15 R A Stuart Box 1/188A. The journey was also considered dangerous because of the English agents. Louis XV advised Balhaldy to take three or four servants with him on the journey through Switzerland (John Murray, Memorial of John Murray of Broughton, ed. R. F. Bell (Scottish History Society 27, Edinburgh 1898), p.87).

  16 R A Stuart 254/91–9.

 

‹ Prev