A /**. N B?iiilV Scot'and *B000448613* THE STUART DYNASTY: SHORT STUDIES OF ITS RISE, COURSE, AND EARLY EXILE. THE LATTER PRAWN FROM PAPEES IN HER MAJESTY'S POSSESSION AT WINDSOR CASTLE. BY PERCY M. THORNTON, AUTHOR OF ' ' FOREIGN SECRETARIES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ' ; HARROW SCHOOL AND ITS SURROUNDINGS'; 'THE BRUNSWICK ACCESSION*; ETC, ETC. (s < C#A> ^ LONDON: WILLIAM RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY, W. 1891. &0 HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY VICTOKIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, EMPRESS OF INDIA, THESE RESEARCHES AMONG ANCESTRAL RECORDS OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF STUART ARE, BY PERMISSION, INSCRIBED BY HER MAJESTY'S DUTIFUL AND DEVOTED SUBJECT AND SERVANT, PERCY MELVILLE THORNTON. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from National Library of Scotland http://www.archive.org/details/stuartdynastysho1891thor PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. A favourable reception, quite beyond expectation, has induced me to publish an edition of this work at a popular price. In so doing I shall not attempt to cope in detail with the opinions of some sixty too lenient critics, but content myself with a justification of that via media which I claim to have taken in regard to the controversy which continues between the two schools who respectively laud and execrate the Stuart name. That I am not so far from the truth in my estimate as some critics suppose, is, I think, manifest from the strong objection taken to my conclusions by the White Rose organs on one hand, and the Daily News and several journals in sj'mpathy with it on the other; while the fact that a majority of my critics have expressed themselves in favour of a juste milieu being observed in estimating the merits and demerits of the unfortunate Stuart race, leads one to believe that some protest against the ipse dixit school of historians was needed. Study of European history has led me to the conclusion that if the microscope of modern inquiry had been directed against any other dynasty, regnant or extinct, in the same minute and unsparing fashion in which it has been held over the Stuarts, there would have been opportunity for brilliant penmanship to present a picture quite as dark and repulsive as that which writers of the last few decades have painted of Mary Queen of Scots and her descendants. On the other hand, the excellent writers in the Boyalist seem to me to favour an ideal conception of monarchy, anti-popular in its nature, which would, rightly or wrongly, destroy that estimable institution in all quarters of the globe. At the same time they utterly ignore the fact that Henry, Cardinal of — — vi Preface to the Second Edition. York, the last royal Stuart, practically transferred his family rights to his cuusins, the present holders of England's Crown. The Spectator having done me the honour to suggest that certain views expressed in this volume might reflect those of Her Most Gracious Majesty, it is my plain duty to declare most distinctly that all opinions herein set forth have been adopted or formed on my own responsibility, and as a result of my own deliberate judgment. That a contrary idea should have gained credence is perhaps owing to that good-fortune which has brought me my Sovereign's approval, signified by a graceful gift ever to be dearly prized. Of the general popularity of this subject, aroused doubtless by the Exhibition of 1888-9, I was apprised by no less a person than the Eight Honourable W. E. Gladstone, who, on March 8, 1890, wrote to me regarding the Stuarts and the publication of this book, using the following words : " That family, on account of its primacy in calamity, which Voltaire has so strikingly pointed out, will always form a historical subject of profound interest." It is fair, however, to state that Mr. Gladstone further expressed the opinion that the relations of the Stuarts " with this island " had been " prevailingly unhappy "—a phrase which, whether we agree with it or not, does not imply sympathy with the spirit of bitter severity lately prevalent. It seems to have escaped comment that the Stuart Papers in Appendix I. prove that the Chevalier de St. George and his advisers were as ignorant as other onlookers of Lords Oxford's and Bolingbroke's intentions before Queen Anne's death. Anyhow, Mr. John Morley's averment that evidence of their resolution to restore the Stuarts forthwith " was then hidden in the despatch-boxes at St. Germain,"* falls to the ground in the light of sentences such as these of the Duke of Berwick : " I hardly believe Harley will open himself entirely." " They are unwilling of trusting anybody with their secret." " If Harley is a knave at the bottom," &c, &c. * Morley's ' Walpole,' p. 43. Preface to the Second Edition. vii The uncertainty herein, as elsewhere in the Stuart Papers, expressed, is quite in unison with what we learn from Wal- pole's Secret Committee of Inquiry, where nothing definite was ever proved, although every available document had been ransacked, and the report took five hours in reading. Hence it is that Swift's version of the story in his ' Four Last Years of Queen Anne ' has gained credence, and most men now believe that the Tory Government desired to sustain their party, and not to effect a dynastic coup d'etat. Time alone can decide satisfactorily as to the opinion set forth in the Athenseum and the Spectator, that I have gauged the historical value of papers drawn from the Stuart collection too highly. I am, however, certainly at one with the writer in the latter journal in not attaching paramount impor- tance to the great Duke of Marlborough either sending money to St. Germain, or soliciting a pardon in that quarter. Taken by themselves, these actions weigh but little when we know that a like duplicity had from time to time characterised the Captain-General's conduct ever since he helped to bring about the Revolution of 1688. The pages of Macpherson reveal this ; while the uncontra- dicted statements therein made, stand in strange contrast to those contemporaneous effusions breathing devotion to the Elector of Hanover, before he became George I., which are to be found amongst the famous Hanover papers. Moreover, Marlborough was but employing tactics which, alas, were in those days familiar to nearly all the public men, Whig or Tory. The view I have taken—that the danger to the Government and rule of George I. was greater than had been believed before these Stuart documents were carefully sifted— is, I still believe, perfectly sound. For it is after a study of the subsidiary portion of the correspondence that the truth appears, rather in the taking for granted the determining nature of Marlborough's complicity in Jacobite schemes, than from explicit statements. For instance, the Lord North and Grey, a Blenheim veteran who announced his adherence to the Chevalier through Lord Bolingbroke, was either at that moment military governor of Portsmouth, or had just vacated the post, while the Duke of Shrewsbury, to : viii Preface to the Second Edition. whom Queen Anne on her death-bed entrusted the Treasurer's staff, is also found promising to serve the son of James II. Again, in a letter from a Colonel Parker (previously famous as a Jacobite organiser in 1691) to the Chevalier when at Urbino, in 1718, I found an account of how, both at Leeds and Halifax, horse, arms, and money, were in the possession of men preparing to act in concert with those in Scotland, at Preston, Bristol, and the West. Under such circumstances I contend there was supreme cause for disquiet at St. James's in 1715, hitherto unsuspected, even if the Duke of Marlborough did not cherish the design of becoming a second Monk. I can assure a writer in the Scots Observer, that a careful ' search through the Calendars of State Documents ' and the Exchequer Polls* does not disturb the estimate I have arrived at regarding the Stuart Princes reigning in Scotland, the new matter disclosed in those pages bearing reference to events of general history rather than to the conduct of the national dynasty. A review in the Times of September 20th, 1890, has relieved me from again calling more than passing attention to the remarkable letters of Lord Bolingbroke which appear in the Appendix ; while this occasion seems opportune for mention- ing the fact that the House of Lords' unpublished papers, dealing with the reigns of William III. and Anne, contain some curious revelations regarding the secret service money paid to noble waverers who were in sympathy with St. Germain. Amongst these we find the Duke of Orrnond during 1691 (as might then be expected, when exempted from pardon by James II.) receiving 5630Z. a year; while John Earl of Mar, the future Jacobite general of 1715, was also a large pen- sioner. Probably when Mr. F. Skene and Mr. E. F. Taylor have finished this portion of their already fruitful labours, the instability of leading politicians, who flourished between 1691 and 1714, will receive further elucidation. * One fact, derived from the last-named source, has alone escaped notice namely, that after the murder of James the First of Scotland, which took place at Perth, in 1437, his heart was—like that of his great ancestor, Robert Bruce—removed from his body before burial, and conveyed on a pilgrimage to the East, whence it was brought back, in 1443, to the Carthusian monastery at Perth. See the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, pp. 156 and 179. Preface to the Second Edition.