after all he had made a fatal mistake in abetting Henry's
irrevocable step, and that in reality Charles' unfilial
1 State Papers, Tuscany.
94 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
conduct was partly excusable. With his brother, Charles
had of course ceased to communicate, and so scanty and
rare was the news he deigned to send to the palace of
the Santi Apostoli, that James was sometimes placed in
actual doubt as to whether his truant Carluccio were
dead or alive. So great became the anxiety on one
occasion that Henry was requested by his father to make
direct enquiries concerning his brother's fate from that
implacable enemy of the Stuarts, Cardinal Albani, who
at once reported to Sir Horace Mann this unusual applica-
tion for news of Charles' whereabouts. Mann, in a
despatch dated August 28th, 1750, alludes to this incident
concerning the missing Prince, who at this time contrived
to escape the attention of friends and foes alike.
"... I wrote to Cardinal Albani very lately on the
same subject, who by the last post acquainted me that it
was certain that nobody there [in Rome] knew anything
of him, and that in an interview which he himself had a
few days before with the Pretender's second son, the
Cardinal, the latter enquired with great earnestness about
his brother, and desired Cardinal Albani as a particular
favour, to try by the means of his friends and corre-
spondents, to discover where he resides. He owned to
him that the Pretender his father now and then received
a letter from him, sometimes by one and sometimes by
another, with news of his health only, but that those
letters were never dated nor any mention made of the place
whence they came ; adding that the Father was quite in
despair. Cardinal Albani assures me that he was fully
persuaded there was no mystery or deceit in the young
Cardinal's discourse, and concludes by saying that if his
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 95
Father and the Pope (who is equally curious to be
informed of him) cannot succeed, it is no wonder that
other people cannot discover where he is. . . ." 1
Wounded by a son's ingratitude, bitterly conscious of
his complete political extinction, and tortured by a terrible
internal malady, James Stuart appears truly a melancholy
and pitiable figure towards the close of his long reign in
the Roman palace. In compensation for his constant
ill-health and all-pervading sense of failure, he had only
the young Cardinal and his prosperous career in the
Church to occupy his attention and to prevent him from
brooding incessantly over past wrongs and mistakes ;
and the reflection that one of his sons was safe, contented
and near at hand, must have afforded the unhappy sufferer
a certain degree of mental relief. Nevertheless, even at
the Papal Court — the only Court in Europe that now
took the slightest interest in his welfare — the Chevalier
was occasionally reminded of his altered fortunes and of
his recent loss of political weight. In the summer of 1756,
for example, the de jure King, who had never yet asked
any favour of a pope in vain, was deeply mortified at
finding his formal request to Benedict XIV for the bestowal
of the Vice-Chancellorship of the Holy See upon his
younger son left unanswered " either out of forgetfulness
or design." So offended by this unusual treatment was
James that he suddenly left Rome for his villa at
Albano, without giving the customary notice to the Papal
authorities or taking an escort of Papal Guards with him,
whilst at the same time he wrote to Cardinal Spinelli,
informing him of the reason of his late action and
1 Earl Stanhope, Decline of the Last Stuarts.
96 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
threatening that " if a proper reparation were not made
for the affront in not answering his letter, he should be
obliged to carry his Person and Misfortunes into another
Country." 1 A belated excuse, which James thought
prudent to accept, was ultimately offered by the Pope ;
yet it is a significant fact that Henry Stuart did not
obtain the post in question until some years after his
father's death.
Not long after this unpleasant rebuff James was
destined to obtain another experience of unkind treat-
ment, this time from a still less expected quarter. The
quarrel between the Cardinal Duke and his father over
the dismissal of Monsignore Lercari forms an obscure
episode that is of no great interest, except in so far as it
proves the dutiful Henry to have been fully capable under
certain conditions of disobeying his father's wishes and of
defying his authority. It appears that James, having
for some unknown reason conceived a strong dislike to a
certain Monsignore Lercari (afterwards Bishop of Genoa),
who happened to be at that time the Cardinal Duke's
Maestro di Camera, or Chamberlain, requested Lercari's
removal. With this demand his son refused to comply,
whereupon James appealed direct to the Pope, who in
spite of Henry's vehement protests at once requested the
obnoxious chamberlain to leave Rome. Greatly irritated
by his parent's intervention in so private a matter, the
Cardinal Duke now withdrew to Bologna, where he
persisted in remaining until the Pope was at last con-
strained to send him a letter bidding him lay aside his
annoyance and return forthwith to Rome. " I beg you,"
wrote Benedict to the young Cardinal, " to reflect upon
1 Letters of Sir Horace Mann.
JAMES STUART
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 97
the triumph that heretics would feel in seeing a great
prince of the Cardinal Senate ready to quarrel with the
Head of his Church, although keeping himself sound
in the faith of his ancestors and thereby renouncing a
splendid Crown ; and also to consider what lamentable
effects would be produced in the minds of the followers
of his royal House by such regrettable dissensions." l
Thus admonished, Henry had no choice except to comply
with Benedict's formal demand ; he therefore returned to
Rome and allowed himself to be reconciled with his
father through the Pope's mediation.
During these years James' health had been steadily
growing worse, and as far back as 1756 Benedict had
granted a special dispensation to the illustrious patient : —
"The Pope has lately granted a privilege to the
Pretender of an uncommon nature in the Roman Church,
though very trifling in itself, — to drink either broth or
chocolate before he communicates on account of his
habitual indisposition of stomach, which prevents him
from fasting so long as the Church prescribes before
that ceremony. The Pope has wrote what is called a
Decretal Letter on this subject, in which among other
examples he quotes that of Pope Julius in, who
granted the same privilege to Charles the Fifth after his
abdication." 2
For some time past a recluse by choice, James was
now of necessity kept a close prisoner to his own rooms,
where only certain intimate friends were admitted ;
" only Cardinal Corsini, in whom he always had the
1 Atli. - State Papers, Tuscany.
7
98 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
greatest confidence, and some few others, whom he
used to admit most familiarly, go there seldom and
stay a very little time with him, as he cannot bear the
fatigue of talking." * A total indifference to the con-
duct of affairs of state, the pursuit of which had
formerly engrossed all his time and attention, now
began to manifest itself, so that the task of carrying on
the all-but-useless correspondence of the Jacobite Court
devolved on John Graham, titular Earl of Alford. Such
shreds of political power as James actually retained
were henceforward exercised by the Cardinal Duke,
who for the last five years of his father's life practic-
ally controlled the National Colleges in Rome and
enjoyed the privilege — the only genuine prerogative
owned by the Stuart King — of nominating bishops to
vacant Irish sees, his last appointment being that of a
certain Philip MacDavett to the see of Derry a few days
before James' death.
In 1760 the Chevalier was confidently believed to
be on the verge of expiring, when after a long fainting
fit, caused by the intense pain endured by the aged
invalid, the Viaticum was administered by the Cardinal
Duke, who in the double capacity of son and priest
affectionately tended his father during these last sad
years, and " would have been inconsolable," remarks the
unfeeling Mann, " if the satisfaction which he has in all
holy functions did not take off his attention from his
father." But James had yet enough vitality left to
implore Clement XIII, who came in person to sympathise
at his bedside, to extend the Papal protection to his
two sons; "on which occasion si fece un bel piangere —
1 Letters of Sir Horace Mann.
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 99
(there was a fine bout of weeping)." Two years later
the patient was seized with a paralytic stroke, and again
an immediate demise was prophesied by Albani and
Mann's agents in Rome : —
"The Pretender seems to be at the last period of
his life. He has lately had two apoplectic fits ; by
which his mouth is much drawn aside, and his speech
is hardly intelligible. His devout son contents himself
with praying for him. The other will probably get
drunk to drown his sorrow. . . . His eldest son, more
the object of contempt, or perhaps of compassion, than
of alarm, is hidden in a corner of France; and the
other, by putting on the Cowle has done more to
extinguish his party than could have been effected by
putting to death many thousands of their deluded
followers." *
Yet he was still living two years later, and was
apparently quite clear in his mind, for the Cardinal
Duke made a point of concealing from him the circum-
stance of the Hanoverian Duke of York's visit to Rome
in 1764, and the many civilities accorded to that Prince
by Cardinal Albani and other prominent Roman Church-
men, for fear of vexing his father. The presence of
George Ill's brother in Italy once more brought the
question of the Stuart titles to the front, and in the
autumn of the following year (1765) Albani wrote to
Sir Horace Mann, under the seal of secrecy, assuring
him that the Pope was not inclined to accord the dying
father's rank to his absent heir, but was prepared to
1 Ibid.
ioo HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
follow the lead of the other European sovereigns in this
respect. About this time Henry, who had already
begun to correspond with his brother in France, gener-
ously surrendered in Charles' favour the reversion of
the annuity of 12,000 crowns, allotted by the Papal
Treasury to James Stuart, and recently settled on his
younger son. Of this arrangement on Henry's part
James was purposely kept in ignorance, for the end
was very near and " the faculties of his mind were now
too weak to comprehend anything."
The Cardinal Duke's Diary, to which we have already
referred, contains a minute description of the last days
of the old Stuart King. On Christmas Day His Majesty,
who had evidently been delirious for some time past,
" insisted on making his devotions, and this desire
was complied with, since he now showed himself sane
in his mind " ; but early on the morning of St. John's
Day blood had again to be let from the patient so as
to repel a fresh attack of fever. Later in the day "he
suffered terrible paroxysms of pain, by reason of which
the Cardinal Duke and those around the bedside judged
him to be in danger of death, and Extreme Unction
was therefore administered."
James, however, rallied from this attack, and a fatal
termination to his sufferings was again postponed.
But on the first day of the New Year 1766 "about
22 o'clock, although he had previously partaken of
food with relish, His Majesty was seized suddenly with
fresh spasms of pain, that caused him great distress. At
this moment His Royal Highness came to see his father
but soon departed, after which the gasping for breath
increased with terrible and even mortal symptoms, so
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 101
much so that his attendants deemed it expedient to
recite the Recommendation of the Soul and to send
(as was duly done) for the Pope's blessing, which was
given by Father Paoletti of the Church of the Santi
Apostoli. There were present in the sick-room His
Eminence G. F. Albani [the Younger], Monsignore
Lascaris, the Grand Prior of England, Don Gian-
Battista Altieri, Monsieur Canziani, his private con-
fessor, and many other persons of quality. His Royal
Highness now returning was terribly shocked at this
unexpected collapse, but remained for some time watch-
ing His Majesty's life drawing to its close ; he was,
however, finally persuaded to leave the apartment, so
as not to render his distress more acute by continuing
a spectator of so tragic a scene. Accordingly he went
to the house of Marchese Angelelli (his chamberlain),
where he stayed till four o'clock in the morning. At
quarter past 4 o'clock His Majesty King James III
passed to the Other Life, at the age of nearly 78
years, having been born in the Royal Palace of London
on the 10th of June 1688 according to the Old Style
Calendar. . . . His Eminence G. F. Albani and others
went immediately to bring the news to His Royal
Highness in the palace of the Cancelleria, but as he had
retired to rest, they thought it prudent to keep their
sad message till the morning . . . (January 2nd, 1766).
With the deepest grief His Royal Highness received at
12! o'clock the account of His Majesty's decease,
but he bore the blow with marvellous calmness, and
at once began to make arrangements for the holding
of funeral services for his dead father's soul in the
Palace chapel and in the Church of the Holy Apostles,
102 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
as also in the churches of San Lorenzo in Damaso, San
Clemente, Sant' Isidoro and in the chapels of the National
Colleges." 1
Thus expired in the Roman palace of the Santi
Apostoli during the night of New Year's Day 1766
James Francis Edward Stuart in the 78th year of his
age and in the 65th of his de jure reign, which had
lasted 64 years, 3 months and 15 days. 2 Born in a
royal palace, the son and heir of a reigning monarch,
James was Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay
by right of his birth, and Prince of Wales by virtue of
creation from his father, King James II, at whose death
he became in the eyes of all British Legitimists James III
of England and Ireland and James VIII of Scotland,
whilst the greatest sovereign in Europe had hastened
to recognise his title. Unfortunate in the hour and
from the hour of his birth, James Stuart was now made
the object of a savage attack, prompted doubtless by
abject terror, on the part of his near kinsman and
brother - in - law, William of Orange, by whose advice
there was passed through the two Houses of Parliament
a Bill of Attainder against his young cousin, a boy of
thirteen, wholly guiltless of any crime save that of being
Prince of Wales by every natural right of birth, law
and custom. The actual legality of William's Act of
Attainder of an innocent lad, which reflects the deepest
discredit on its author and is comparable only with some
of those legal abominations practised by Henry VIII,
is open to serious question, since its terms were
1 Diario del Cardinale Duca.
2 Queen Victoria's reign, the longest recorded in British history, lasted 63
years, 7 months and 2 days : from June 20th, 1837, to January 22nd, 1901.
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 103
directed against a "pretended" Prince of Wales, which
James Stuart most decidedly was not; the Act took, in
short, for granted that which had never been proved
and none had dared openly to assert, namely, the
theory of the Prince's spurious birth. Setting aside
therefore this inhuman and perhaps illegal Act of
Attainder, it must in fairness be admitted that James
Stuart, whether or no he were accounted king, was
assuredly in every true moral sense Prince of Wales,
and also that any persons assuming that royal title
during his lifetime were necessarily impostors ; in fact,
George II, his son Frederick — the " poor Fred " of the
Jacobites — George III, and even George IV in his
infancy, were never properly entitled to the appellation
of Prince of Wales, seeing that its original and properly
created holder was still living, no matter how discredited,
impoverished, or forgotten. Yet the old unscrupulous
slanders concerning his birth, so carefully spread and
fostered by Bishop Burnet and other agents, though
admittedly false, have never wholly lost their influence,
so that many persons even to - day vaguely associate
" the Old Pretender " with a palace conspiracy engineered
by the Jesuits, who, with the aid of an historic warming-
pan, foisted a supposititious infant upon a long-suffering
Protestant nation ; whilst the very word " pretender,"
though it has no further significance than claimant,
is somehow suggestive of fraud to ordinary minds.
Throughout James' lifetime English historians continued
to hint at the truth of this political fable, yet it is
remarkable that when the Jacobite danger was once
past, all reference to the alleged scandal of June 10th,
1688, was promptly dropped, and in course of time we
104 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
find the reigning British monarch only too glad openly
to admit his distant cousinship with the last surviving
son of the " pretended " Prince of Wales, who had been
attainted by William of Orange.
As to James' personal character it is perhaps too
much to expect justice in his contemporaries, who only
saw " bigotry " in his unwavering devotion to the Roman
Church and were fed with highly-coloured reports from
prejudiced agents abroad. Failings, of course, James had
in plenty, yet he appears to have been more enlightened
and liberal in his religious views than his father before
him. For years, in spite of strong domestic opposition,
he had placed implicit confidence in the Anglican Lord
Dunbar, whilst at one time he had insisted, not a little
to the chagrin of the Papal authorities, in maintaining
in his household Protestant chaplains, who were even
permitted to invite English visitors in Rome to attend
their services in the Stuart palace ; such a policy on
James' part may have been neither prudent nor sincere,
but it certainly cannot be described as bigoted. In his
latter years, as we have shown, he fell under the direct
influence of the Cardinal Duke, who as a Roman
ecclesiastic was naturally inclined to lay more stress
upon the religious aspect of the Stuart cause ; yet all
James' admirably written letters breathe a spirit of
common -sense and of toleration that are strongly at
variance with the opinion commonly held of the Old
Pretender as " a poor Mean Cowardly Bigot and nothing
more." 1 Though stubborn and obtuse, James was
eminently pious, generous and honourable, and he
seems to have carried out with tact and dignity the
1 Letters of Samuel Crisp, chap. i.
LAST YEARS OF JAMES THE THIRD 105
difficult position of an exiled king. And if he often
showed himself incapable of grasping an opportunity
offered, Fortune in her turn still more often showed
herself unkind ; ill - luck and ill - health haunted him
throughout his long unprosperous career, so that it was
not without strong reason that his enemies nicknamed
the helpless King across the water " Mr. James Mis-
fortunate."
The funeral rites of James III, which may be con-
sidered not only those of a de jure king but also the
obsequies of the lost Legitimist cause that for over
sixty years he had represented in his own person,
constituted the last occasion on which royal honours
to the Stuarts were publicly displayed in Rome. For
five days the Chevalier's body lay in state in the
chapel of the Stuart palace, whence it was removed
with much ceremony to the Church of the Santi
Apostoli, that had been heavily draped with black for
the occasion. The corpse, vested in royal robes and
ornaments, and with the crosses of St. George and of
St. Andrew affixed to the breast, was exposed upon a
bed of purple silk fringed with gold, above which was
suspended an immense canopy supporting four angels
with crowns and sceptres. On all sides were to be
seen the emblems of royalty, together with laudatory
inscriptions in honour of "Jacobus Tertius, Magnae
Britannia? Rex," whilst ghastly figures of skeletons
holding tapers and boughs of yew were fixed at regular
intervals round the catafalque. All these details had
been carried out under the immediate superintendence
of the Cardinal Duke, who spared neither trouble nor
expense to make his father's funeral a truly magnificent
106 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
and impressive event. On Tuesday, January 7th, the
body still wearing its royal robes was removed to its
last resting-place in St. Peter's, the bier being escorted
through the streets by a Papal guard of honour and by
no fewer than five hundred English, Scotch and Irish
students bearing torches. 1 According to Sir Horace
Mann, "the Romans were vastly impatient to bury him
that the theatres might be reopened " ; and in any case
it is evident that no particular interest in James' funeral
was shown by a populace that was thoroughly accustomed
to grandiose spectacles of this nature.
Thus, after having survived her for nearly thirty-one
years, was the Stuart King reunited in death to his
Queen-Consort, whose ascetic piety he had long striven
to emulate, and their joint praises began to resound
from many a Roman pulpit. — "Are not their devotion
to the Catholic Faith, their courage in the deepest
Misfortunes, their Magnanimity, their Patience, their
most liberal Chanty towards the Poor, their perfect
Resignation to the Divine Will, such sublime Virtues
as to induce in us a certain hope of the Eternal Salvation
of these illustrious Twin-Souls ? " 2 — Requiescant ambo in
pace.
1 J. H. Jesse, The Pretenders and their Adherents.
2 Relazione delta Morte etc. di Giacomo III, Roma, 1766.
CHAPTER VI
"CHARLES THE THIRD." 1766-1774
" O decus eximium ! Spes o fidissima Nostri ! Henrice."
FOR nearly a whole year before James Ill's death, the
Cardinal Duke had been in regular correspondence
with Prince Charles, then living at Bouillon, who had now
come to recognise in his once despised younger brother a
valuable ally on behalf of his claims at the only European
Court which still officially acknowledged the Stuart
dynasty. A reconciliation was thus quickly effected
between the two brothers after a lapse of nearly nineteen
years, throughout which time no letter, nor even so much
as a message, had passed between them. During the
past autumn, Henry, who had with some difficulty
persuaded the Pope to send an invitation to the wander-
ing Prince to return home, had been urging his brother to
hasten to Rome in order to safeguard his own interests
there before the old King's death, which was then
imminent.
" I am persuaded," writes Andrew Lumisden, James
Stuart's Under Secretary of State, to the Jacobite Earl
of Alford, on Christmas Eve, 1765, "it will give you
107
108 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
much satisfaction to know that the prejudices which the
Prince so long entertained against the Duke are happily
removed. May friendship and confidence always subsist
between the Royal Brothers ! It is above a year that
they have carried on a private correspondence. The
Duke's disinterested conduct to and love for the Prince
has been very conspicuous on this occasion. It was
evidently against the interest of the former to have
promoted the return of the latter, especially whilst the
King lives. But, notwithstanding of this, he has done it
with the utmost zeal. He has induced the Pope to invite
him here, and to declare that he will receive him with the
same honours, and give him the same treatment the King
has always had . . ." 1
To the Cardinal Duke's letter giving him the Pope's
invitation to return, Charles had sent from Bouillon on
November 28th a reply thanking him for his services
in the past, and promising to come to Rome with all
speed : —
" My dear Brother, — Your letter of October 30th
last and its enclosure [i.e., the Pope's invitation] have been
forwarded to me. I have received with the greatest
pleasure all these proofs of your goodness of heart and of
your attention to my interests. In return, you may
reckon fully on my gratitude and friendship. I cannot
express myself too warmly with regard to His Holiness'
sentiments, and his obliging acquiescence in the arrange-
ments you have requested him to make on my behalf.
Act as the interpreter of my own feelings of veneration
and devotion towards him, until I can prove them to him