condemn and deplore Charles' bitter rancour towards
his brother and his heartless neglect of his father, we
cannot deny that he had a genuine cause of grievance
against both for their total upsetting of his cherished
schemes.
CHAPTER III
CAREER IN THE CHURCH. 1747- 1769.
" Vous, dont le front predestine
A nos yeux doublement eclate,
Vous, dont le Chapeau d'Ecarlate
Des Lauriers de Pinde est orne,
Qui marchant sur les pas d'Horace
Et sur ceux de Saint Augustin,
Suivez le rabouteux chemin
Du Paradis et du Parnasse."
HAVING successfully eluded his brother, Henry
proceeded southward, reaching Ferrara within the
Papal frontier on May 18th, 1747. Leaving Ferrara after
a few days' rest he arrived on the evening of May 25th at
Rome " in a very mean equipage with an ordinary chaise
and two servants on horseback." * Only one or two per-
sonal friends had been let into the secret of Henry's late
movements, so that a complete air of mystery hung over
his sudden reappearance in Rome, especially since the
young Duke declined to receive any visitors except Car-
dinals Riviera and Valenti, who were now closeted daily
for hours with James and his son in the Stuart palace.
" The young Prince seems very quiet at present," writes a
baffled agent to his master, Sir Horace Mann, "but he
has certainly something in his head which will soon flash
1 State Papers, Tuscany.
50
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 51
out ; " but Mann himself on hearing that both James and
Henry continued to speak with deep respect of King
Louis in spite of his late behaviour, concluded from this
circumstance that the matter of a French pension was
being secretly arranged. General curiosity was, however,
quickly satisfied. Within three weeks of Henry's return
James was in a position, as we have seen, to inform
Charles in Paris of his brother's decision to be made a
Cardinal almost immediately, and in the same month
(June 27th, 1747) Sir Horace Mann was able to send this
interesting and strange piece of news to Horace Walpole
in England : —
" The Pretender's second son is to be made a Cardinal !
The ceremony is fixed for the 3rd of next month, but
violent quarrels have happened about the ceremonial on
this occasion. He pretends to wear Ermine on his Cappa
as a sign of Royalty, and consequently to take place of
Cardinal Ruffo and all the other Cardinals, by whom he
insists on being visited. All this and much more has
alarmed their Eminences. Cardinal Ruffo went to Castel
Gandolfo to expostulate with the Pope upon it. . . . The
future young Cardinal's family is settled ; he is to have
a Monsignore Leigh for a Maestro di Camera^ a very
noble Irishman born at Cadiz of a little merchant there;
two Sicilian Marquises for his Major-Domo and Cup-
bearer ; and an Abbe - Falingieri for Segretario dell' Em-
basciata. You know the Cardinals have people about
them with these titles, but as all the above are supposed
to be vastly noble, the other Cardinals grumble at it.
They say he is to be Legate of Avignon for life, and that
he is to have the Archbishoprick of Monte Reale, which
52 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
Aquaviva had, and which they say is worth near 100,000
Ducats a year. — Is not he vastly in the right to become
Cardinal ? " *
This is the first of a long series of criticisms, always
ill-natured and often unfair, which Mann includes both in
his official dispatches and in his private letters concerning
the acts and aims of " the Youngest Pretender." But if
the British Minister's disparagement of James Stuart's
second son can be excused on political grounds, the same
plea cannot be advanced in the case of a brother Church-
man, Cardinal Alessandro Albani, whose enmity against
Henry (though arising from a totally different cause) was
nearly as bitter as that of Charles Stuart. It was this
relentless enemy of the exiled House who now prevailed
upon his fellow Cardinals to petition the Pope against
granting in Henry Stuart's case the special honours
usually accorded to a prince of the blood royal ; and in
spite of Benedict's open recognition of James as a reign-
ing king and of his obvious desire to serve his family in
every way possible, Albani's fierce endeavours were parti-
ally successful. " I had the honour to acquaint Your
Grace," writes Mann to the Duke of Newcastle, " by my
last Letter with the objections which the Cardinals had
made to the Pretentions of the Pretender's youngest Son
on his being made a Cardinal. A Congregation was held
last Thursday on the subject, at which Cardinal Albani
assisted, in which it was resolved that he should have no
superior rank, but take his place as the last of the Car-
dinals Deacons. The only two distinctions which the
Pope himself insisted should be shewn to him are, first,
1 Letters of Sir Horace Mann.
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 53
the title of Altesse Royale et Eminentissime (though in
speaking to him Cardinal Albani says that may easily be
avoided) ; the other, that during the three days from the
promotion to the ceremony of giving him the Red Hat
the Cardinals who would visit him instead of going- in
their common black habits should wear the red Soustanne
or Cassock which is their habit of ceremony." *
These matters, though apparently trifling in themselves,
are in reality of some degree of importance, for the natural
result of this semi-recognition of Henry Stuart's royal
claims was that his precise rank and the proper etiquette
attaching to it in Rome were never clearly defined. In
consequence of Benedict's unwilling compromise with
Albani and certain of the Cardinals on this subject a
number of petty disputes arose later, disputes that were
equally derogatory to Henry and to his opponents in the
Sacred College. At the very date even of his election to
the Cardinalate a heated argument took place as to
whether the ducal coronet or the tasselled hat should be
represented uppermost in " the supposed coat-of-arms of
the Pretender's son " ; a vital question that was eventually
determined in favour of the Hat !
Henry Stuart was by no means the first English
prince to enter the religious life. Odo of Bayeux and
Henry of Winchester in Norman times may perhaps be
considered as statesmen rather than as bishops ; but of
the royal line of Plantagenet, Henry Beaufort, son of
John of Gaunt, and Reginald Pole, grand-nephew of King
Edward IV and last papal Archbishop of Canterbury,
had both been raised to the purple. 2 Nevertheless, if
1 State Papers, Tuscany.
2 A Cardinal is frequently styled Porporato in Italy.
54 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
James in were actually a reigning Sovereign, — and in
Rome he had been fully acknowledged as such for over
a quarter of a century, — then Henry Stuart may be
reckoned as the first and last son of an English king
to be made a Cardinal.
On June 30th, 1747, the Duke of York received the
tonsure — the formal shaving of the scalp that precedes
the reception into the religious state — at the hands of
the Pontiff in the chapel of the Stuart palace and in the
presence of his father and all the members of the
Jacobite Court. Four days later, on July 3rd, he
proceeded in full state to the Vatican, where at the altar
of the Sistine Chapel he accepted the Scarlet Hat of
a Cardinal Deacon from Benedict XIV. The ceremony
ended, the Pope pronounced a set speech, or allocution,
to the many Cardinals present, wherein he alluded
most pointedly to the royal rank and the eminent
virtues of this new member of the Sacred College. In
the course of this address, which Sir Horace tells us — of
course on the sole authority of Albani — was " extremely
ridiculed in Rome," Benedict dwelt at some length upon
the sacrifices made at various times by King James III
for the Catholic faith, and upon the good works and
redoubtable piety of the late Queen Clementina, pre-
dicting from their noble example that the son of such
a pair was destined to become an ornament not only to
the College of Cardinals, but to the whole Church. He
excused the extreme youth of this new candidate by
pointing out to those present that St. Charles Borromeo
had been created a Cardinal when of the same age as
Henry Stuart, and that there were many precedents of
other famous Churchmen having been permitted to enter
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 55
the Sacred College when far younger than the Stuart
prince, " who," in the words of St. Bernard, " belied his
tender years by his ripe understanding, surpassed his age
by his merits and compensated for the lack of a venerable
appearance by his virtues." l No dissentient voice having
been raised at the Pope's formal request for election —
Quid vobis videtur? — Henry Benedict Maria Clement
Stuart was duly enrolled a member of the Roman Sacred
College under the title of the Cardinal of York. As the
newly vested Porporato issued from the Vatican, the
artillery at the Castle of Sant' Angelo thundered forth
in his honour, whilst throughout the remainder of this
memorable day James was occupied in receiving in his
palace the visits and congratulations of the Cardinals,
the Senators, the nobles and the members of the
diplomatic body in Rome. Six days later the Cardinal
Duke of York, as he was henceforth termed officially,
attended in state at the Quirinal in order to undergo
the curious rite, symbolical of his required discretion, of
having his mouth solemnly opened and shut by the Pope,
and to receive the sapphire ring that each Cardinal wears
as emblematic of the Church's celestial foundation. 2 At
the same time, according to immemorial custom, a parish
church, that of Santa Maria in Campitelli, was conferred
upon the new Cardinal Deacon ; and this uninteresting
baroque building, that lies between the Capitol and the
Tiber, still retains in consequence a curious memorial of
the Royal Stuarts. For James, in honour of Henry's
1 Benedicti Paptr Alloattio. — State Papers, Tuscany.
2 Isaiah, chap. liv. v. n : " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not
comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy
foundations with sapphires."
56 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
official connection with this church, now apportioned a
sum of money for the purpose of holding special services
within its walls for the conversion of Britain to the old
faith ; and to this very day, therefore, according to the
terms of the Stuart King's bequest, thirty candles are
lighted on the high altar and certain litanies recited every
Saturday one hour before noon. The establishment of
this ceremony in a Roman parish church may be
described in one sense as typical of the new form which
Jacobitism had lately been assuming in Rome, for it
occurs at a moment when James and Henry, definitely
abandoning all idea of attaining the British Crown by
force of arms or by outside political manoeuvres, openly
showed themselves content to limit their royal pretensions
to the kingdom of England by setting up services for
its speedy reconciliation with the Holy See.
Though he had already received the Hat, Henry
Stuart was still a layman — a prince but not a priest of
the Roman Church — and an opinion prevailed that
neither James nor the Pope was anxious for him to
take Holy Orders for the present. But whether or no
pressure was brought to bear on him to refrain from a
step that seemed but the natural sequel to his acceptance
of a Cardinal's Hat, Henry, who had his full share of
Stuart obstinacy, was evidently determined to become
a priest with as little delay as possible, and he attained
his object during the course of the following year. " The
Cardinal D'Orco," writes Mann in August 1748, "either
out of Devotion or from a desire to get some rich
bishoprick, has determined to take Priest's Orders, which
the Pope has consented to do with reluctance ; fearing, I
suppose, that there may be occasion for his getting heirs
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 57
to the crown of England. He has already begun the
progress of Sub-Deacon's Orders, and is to be a complete
Priest the first of September, and is to say his first Mass,
the 8th, in his own chapel, being the Virgin's Birthday."
And again, in a letter of September 3rd, Mann continues :
" The Cardinal D'Orck advances apace in the Priesthood.
He has received all the inferior Orders, and is to be a
complete Priest in a few days. His brother is furious,
and declares he will never see him. . . . The Cardinal
is all devotion. He fasts and prays as much as his
mother used to do, and, they say, has ruined his
constitution already." *
Mann was, as usual, correctly informed on the main
point, for during the month of August 1748 Henry Stuart
received the four Minor Orders together with the Orders
of Sub-Deacon and Deacon. On September 1st he was
ordained priest, saying his first Mass a few days later in his
father's domestic chapel. In the same month he was
created Cardinal-Priest by the Pope, and on the festival
of the Holy Innocents he celebrated his first Messa
Cantata in the Sistine Chapel, James Stuart and twenty-
two Cardinals being present. Benedict now hastened to
bestow on the new Cardinal-Priest the lucrative and
important office of Arch-Priest of the Vatican Basilica,
a post that carried with it a considerable amount of
patronage amongst the large body of officials attached
to St. Peter's. As a thank-offering for this appointment
the Cardinal Duke at once presented to the treasury of
the Basilica a magnificent gold chalice set with gems,
that is still occasionally used at great ceremonies in St.
Peter's. The Church of the Holy Apostles, which we
1 Letters of Sir Horace Mann,
58 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
have already described, was now transferred to the
Cardinal Duke, who was, however, allowed to retain in
commendam his diaconal Church of Santa Maria in
Campitelli. In the same year, which also witnessed the
signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and the
ignominious treatment of the Young Chevalier in France,
Henry thought fit to accept without demur the bounty
of his brother's betrayer, Louis XV, who now made over
to the Cardinal Duke the wealthy abbeys of Auchin and
St. Amand, the joint annual revenues of these two
sinecure benefices being said to amount to 48,000 crowns,
or about £6000 sterling in English money. Nothing
can better show the extent of the cleavage between
Charles Stuart and his family at this period, than the
devotion that the latter still professed for the French
King, who, after ruining the political chances of the
House of Stuart, was now preparing to banish its luckless
heir.
In addition t6 the many favours already granted,
Benedict next nominated the young Cardinal to the
highly honourable post of Camerle?igo, a Papal official
who wields considerable influence at the Roman Court in
the interval that occurs between the death of a pope and
the election of his successor. The great basilica of Santa
Maria in Trastevere, one of the largest and most venerable
churches in Rome, was now assigned to the Cardinal
Duke, who thereupon waived his claim to the revenues
of Santa Maria in Campitelli. This splendid church in
Trastevere, the quarter of Rome that lies below the
Janiculan Hill on the right bank of the Tiber, still exhibits
many memorials of the Stuart Prince who acted as its
titular for nearly fifty years, for the Cardinal Duke carried
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 59
out various alterations within its walls. The existing
chapel on the right of the choir was wholly restored by
him in 1764, and the royal arms of Britain, surmounted
by the crown, cross and Scarlet Hat appear conspicuous
on all sides in its scheme of decoration ; whilst in the
sacristy is preserved a marble tablet with a long Latin
inscription to commemorate his munificence towards this
church. To this day also the splendid canopy of crimson
damask, that on state occasions is erected in the tribune,
remains embellished with the royal arms and insignia of
the Cardinal Duke, who was its original donor.
In May 1758 Benedict XIV, perhaps the most dis-
tinguished and enlightened Pontiff of the eighteenth
century, expired, whereupon the services of the Cardinal
Duke, as Camerlengo, were for the first time called into
requisition. During the ensuing Conclave — the first of
the four papal elections in which he was destined to take
part — one of those unseemly disputes concerning the
exact nature of the etiquette to be observed with regard
to the Stuart Cardinal took place, and this childish
squabble is of course retailed with gusto by Sir Horace
Mann : —
"There has been a fracas in the Conclave between
the Cardinal de' Lanze of Turin and Cardinal York. The
Latter went to compliment him upon his arrival, but
observed that during the whole visit he never once pro-
nounced the word Altezza, or joyned anything royal to
Eminenza. Cardinal York stifled all his resentment at the
time, but resolved to be even with him, and waited for the
return of the visit, the hour of which having been asked
and granted, Cardinal de' Lanze proceeded with ceremony,
60 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
but found the door of York's Cell shut, and was refused
admittance." x
On this occasion also the Cardinal Duke caused no
small annoyance both to his father and to the French
Cardinals by speaking on behalf of the Austrian candi-
date for the Papacy instead of supporting the Venetian
Cardinal, Carlo Rezzonico, whose election was strongly
desired by the Bourbon Courts ; yet to James' remon-
strance as to his conduct Henry warmly replied that " he
had rather lose his head than do anything against his
conscience." This sentiment, which combined lofty
principles with untimely stubbornness, seems to have
greatly tickled the Roman sense of humour, for on the
following morning the famous statue of Pasquino, where-
on the wits of Rome were in the habit of inscribing
satirical comments of passing events, bore a paper with
the simple words : " Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! Nescio, Domine,
loqui!" 2
After a Conclave lasting four months Cardinal Rez-
zonico was finally elected pope under the name of
Clement XIII, and was crowned in St. Peter's on July 16th
" in the presence of a concourse remarkable for the great
number of English nobility and gentry it contained. 3 The
new Pontiff evidently bore no ill-feeling against the
Cardinal Duke for having previously opposed his election,
since he at once restored to him the Camerlengo's purse
of office (which had been surrendered by its late holder
according to custom) and at the same time expressed to
King James his willingness to nominate his son a bishop,
1 Letters of Sir Horace Mann.
2 Ibid. s Kelly.
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 61
if Henry so desired. Accordingly, in a private consistory
held on October 2nd of the same year, Henry Stuart was
declared Archbishop of Corinth in partibus Infidelium,
and on November 19th the ceremony of episcopal con-
secration was publicly performed in the Church of the
Holy Apostles : —
" This venerable basilica of Constantine saw itself on
this occasion gorgeously draped with hangings of crimson
velvet and cloth-of-gold, whilst a splendid pontifical
throne had been erected in the tribune of the Church with
a raised seat beside it for His Majesty the King of Great
Britain, whose ill-health, however, prevented him to his
infinite concern from being present at the solemn cere-
mony. On the appointed morning the August Pontiff,
escorted by a numerous train of prelates and Roman
nobles on horseback, surrounded by cavalry, by cuirassiers
and by his Swiss Guard, and having with him in his
chariot the Cardinal Dean of the Sacred College and the
Cardinal Duke of York (to whom was given the seat of
honour on that day), made his way in formal procession
from the Apostolic Palace of the Quirinal to the Basilica
of the Holy Apostles. ... At the conclusion of the
sacred rites, which had been performed with every mark
of pomp and solemnity in the presence of twenty-five
Cardinals, of a great number of bishops, princes, ladies
and nobles, and of an immense concourse of the Roman
populace, His Eminence advanced to the throne to return
thanks in public for the new dignity conferred on him by
the August Pontiff. The Pope answered the new Bishop
with gracious words and, to fulfil a generous impulse,
gave orders that the rich vestments of cloth-of-silver
62 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
heavily embroidered with gold thread that he had himself
worn at the late ceremony should be sent as a gift to the
Cardinal Duke to the royal palace of the Stuarts." *
At the stately banquet at the Quirinal which followed,
the Cardinal Duke was given the chief place of honour,
whilst during the progress of the lengthy meal the many
guests " were enlivened by the soft harmonies of various
sacred motets, rendered by the singers of the Pope's choir
to the accompanying strains of an organ and of many
stringed instruments." 2
This same year, 1758, is likewise memorable for the
decision made by Don Giovanni Lando, one of the
Cardinal Duke's chaplains, to keep an official diary of his
royal patron's doings and movements, and from the day
of Henry's consecration as Archbishop of Corinth until
the opening years of the nineteenth century, this task was
faithfully carried out by Lando and by succeeding chap-
lains or secretaries. This Diary, which, in addition to
personal details, records many contemporary events in
Rome and at the European Courts, has happily been
preserved almost intact, with the exception of one im-
portant break in the year 1788, the missing pages extend-
ing from January 8th to October 5th, a space of nearly
nine months. 3 The original manuscript, filling no fewer
than thirty-six stout volumes, was purchased in Rome
1 Diario Ordinario di Roma, 1758. 2 Ibid.
3 Diario del Cardinale Duca : "A Diary of the Sacred Functions and of
the illustrious Acts of His Royal Highness and Eminence the Lord Cardinal
Duke of York."
A portion of the missing MS. for the year 1788 is preserved in the library
of Stonyhurst College, and the contents of this fragment were printed by the
Chiswick Press at the instigation of Lord Orford in 1876.
CAREER IN THE CHURCH 63
some years after its owner's decease, and was finally
presented, together with other valuable papers connected
with the last of the Stuarts, to the British Museum in
1877 by Miss Maria Otway-Cave, the eldest daughter of
Lady Braye. Its contents are somewhat disappointing
to the historian, for though in places the Diary throws
light upon certain actions of the Cardinal Duke, it deals
for the most part with matters of no great concern, being
largely occupied with minute and verbose accounts of
ceremonies and official visits.
In July 1 76 1 the Cardinal Duke was appointed by
Pope Clement to the vacant See of Frascati near Rome,
and on this occasion he resigned his titular archbishropric
of Corinth and also his commendam of the Church of the
Holy Apostles. His acceptance of the diocese of Frascati
opens a totally new phase in Henry Stuart's career, and
we therefore intend to devote the following chapter to a
full description of his life as an Italian bishop. Six years
later he was nominated by the same Pontiff to the Vice-
Chancellorship of the Holy See, a coveted post which
James Stuart had vainly tried to procure for his son some
ten years before, and which was now conferred upon him
by Clement probably as an act of compensation for the
formal refusal of the Roman Court to acknowledge Charles
Stuart's royal title. As Vice-Chancellor the Cardinal
Duke now entered into possession of the splendid official
palace of the Cancellaria, which abuts on the modern
Corso Vittorio-Emanuele. Largely constructed out of
the spoils of the Coliseum and enriched with rare marbles
plundered from the neighbouring church of San Lorenzo
in Damaso, this palace had been originally built for
Cardinal Raffaele Riario, the favourite of Sixtus IV,
64 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
whose shields and badges are still visible on its imposing
facade. A Tuscan architect, perhaps the great Bramante
himself, is credited with the design of this palace, which
from its admirable proportions and its harmonious orna-
mentation is commonly reputed one of the finest specimens
of Italian Renaissance architecture. For nearly forty
years the Cancelleria formed Henry Stuart's principal
residence in Rome, although, as Arch-Priest of St. Peter's,
he possessed in addition another official house near the
Vatican ; whilst outside the city he owned the episcopal
palace at Frascati and the Villa Muti, the latter a large
rambling building that afforded a pleasant retreat during