Alexander Stuart

“ Once in Rome, we hear little good of the Emperor’s life, conduct, administration, or abilities. Unfortunately, we have to deal in the main with Constantine’s friend, Aelius Lampridius, a man whose biography is a cheap glorification of Alexander, combined with ignorant and perpetual abuse of Antonine’s religion and psychology. All his statements in the way of fact could be compressed into half a page of any ordinary book of reference, and even these he manages to arrange so badly, or to draw from such conflicting sources, that they comprise simply a mass of futile contradictions. ”

“ All of this, we are told, Antonine did, under the generic terms of corrupting his morals, which is after all the sum total of Antonine’s enormities.
But here Mamaea stepped in. She had spoilt her son’s youth, as many another parent has done both before and since, and was not going to stand by and see her work dissipated, blown to the winds. Not that she need have feared. The Bassiani developed young; Alexander’s character was moulded, and he had no desire to change, to live his life as a man, instead of as a vegetable, or enjoy the gifts which the gods had given to men. ”

“ They refuse to pray for the present King of England and profess to think that the Princess Mary of Bavaria is the true ruler of Great Britain. All this represents that trace of sentiment which lingers among the English to-day. They feel that the Stuarts were the last kings of England to rule by the grace of God rather than by the grace of Parliament. As a matter of fact, the present reigning family in England is glad to derive its ancient strain of royal blood through a Stuart—descended on the distaff side from James I., and winding its way through Hanover. ”

“ This attitude is most clearly seen in the scandalous literary productions which alone disgrace the name of Elagabalus, all issued from [19] the pens of Cassius Dio, Herodian, and Maximus,—or Lollius Urbicus,—all three servants and bedesmen of Alexander and his female relatives.
Surely if it had been possible to give proof of cruelty, tyranny, bloodthirstiness, deceit, or guile, the record of these deeds would have filled the pages of the paid traducers; but contemporaries, who loved Elagabalus too well for his generosity, charm, and beauty, would know better. ”

“ A man less staunch and loyal might have thrown over so profitless a service. He had talents that would have commanded a price in the Roundhead market. Yet staunchly adhering to the Stuart fortunes, labouring ceaselessly and shrewdly in the Stuart interest, employing his great ability and statecraft, he achieved at long length the restoration of the Stuarts to the Throne of England. And for all those loyal, self-denying labours in exile on the Stuart behalf, all the reward he had at the time was that James Stuart, Duke of York, debauched his daughter. ”

“ A well-known wit told him one day while he was dining "that matters were in a bad state, but there was a way to mend all." The king looked at him inquiringly, and he continued: "There is an honest, able man I could name, that if your majesty would employ and command to see things well-executed, all things would soon be mended, and that is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time as if he had no employment; but if you would give him employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it." ”

“ Of course, to-day this cult of the Stuarts is nothing but a fad. No one ever expects to see a Stuart on the English throne. But it is significant of the deep strain of romance which the six Stuarts who reigned in England have implanted in the English heart. The old Jacobite ballads still have power to thrill. Queen Victoria herself used to have the pipers file out before her at Balmoral to the "skirling" of "Bonnie Dundee," "Over the Water to Charlie," and "Wha'll Be King but Charlie!" It is a sentiment that has never died. ”

“ There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall of the last members of the Long Parliament, and an end of the Long Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that were made too soon; and most men being tired out, and there being no one to head the country now great Oliver was dead, it was readily agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members said—what was most true—that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real promise to govern well, and that it would be best to make him pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom. ”

“ This Charles Edward Stuart is a perpetual worry to England. His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland has been accused of unnecessary cruelty because he has been forced to take severe measures for the suppression of that spirit of rebellion, which is only being fostered in Scotland because of that young Pretender's perpetual presence there. He fans smouldering revolt into flame, he incites passions, and creates misguided enthusiasms which lead to endless trouble to all! ”

“ I know I have the body of a weak woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England, too; and I think foul scorn that Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm!' This was Elizabeth's honest temper, and if Charles Stuart in throwing himself upon his nobles and his country had been true to them, he would never have gone to the scaffold. ”

“ Blair and other Commissioners of the Scottish Kirk, had been going to and fro in London, reasoning, threatening, and imploring. Charles Stuart was King of Scotland; the whole Scottish nation was loyal to Monarchy in him and in his race; from all the pulpits in Scotland there were prayers for him, and forgiveness of his past errors in pity of his present state; would the English nation dare, in defiance of all this, and in outrage of the League and Covenant, to put him to death? ”

“ He lies on his deathbed while a great storm rages over England. In the morning calm succeeds tempest, and on the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester he breathes his last. They bury him in Westminster Abbey, amidst the kings; but his bones are not long to rest in that hallowed fane. The Stuart king, to his everlasting shame, will tear the unoffending body from its coffin and gibbet it in unavailing contempt. But ages to come will do him tardy justice, and men will come to honour his memory even while they lift their hats and pray, “God save the king!” ”

“ It is only by recalling the early history of James Stuart that we can realize the attitude and temper of the Scottish Sovereign at the moment when the death of Elizabeth called him to the English throne. He came flushed with a triumph over Calvinism and democracy, but embittered by the humiliations he had endured from them, and dreading them as the deadly enemies of his crown. Raised at last to a greatness of which he had hardly dreamed, he was little likely to yield to a pressure, whether religious or political, against which in his hour of weakness he had fought so hard. ”

“ THE death of Mary Stuart did something to simplify parties in Scotland; and, if her son had possessed the qualities of a ruler, he would have had a better chance of reducing his kingdom to order than any of his predecessors, because a middle class was at length rising into importance. As far as knowledge and discernment went, he was an able politician, and on several occasions he showed not only skill in his combinations, but—what he is not generally credited with by those who study only his career in England—considerable energy and courage. ”

“ The licentiousness which had marked the whole Stuart period had lost nothing of its wickedness, but a good deal of its elegance, in its union with the corruption of a small German court. With a king without wit, without taste for the arts, without knowledge of literature, without perception of beauty, and swayed by two ugly, ignorant and rapacious mistresses, we hear with no surprise tales of the coarseness of the time. ”

“ Finally, Elizabeth asked them what guarantee they would give for her life in the event of her consenting to pardon the Queen of Scotland. The envoys responded that they were authorised to make pledges in the name of the King of Scotland, their master, and all the lords of his realm, that Mary Stuart should renounce in favour of her son all her claims upon the English crown, and that she should give as security for this undertaking the King of France, and all the princes and lords, his relations and friends. ”

“ If, in my time, and under the circumstances into which the English Ministers had plunged the nation, there had been some young Stuart, of a brave and enterprising character, equal to the present age, he would have been landed in Ireland, escorted by the modern doctrines; and then we should undoubtedly have seen the regenerate Stuarts driving out the degenerate Brunswicks. England would have had its 20th of March. Such are thrones and their contagious influence; scarcely is one seated there when the poison begins to operate. ”

“ The King and one of his many faithful followers, perchance, wearied to death and very cold. It was a pity the fire had fallen so low on the hearth. It was unfortunate, too, that the landlord should have so [28] short an intimation of the royal coming. But he must contrive to give Charles Stuart some sort of a reception, because all the world over a king is still a king; and whatever one’s politics, should royalty honour one’s roof-tree, it is impossible to assert them. Therefore he called up the stairs in his greatest voice:
“Joseph, come down at once. Cicely, my wench, do you come too. ”

“ The memory of one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the House of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the wounds of the lacerated State would heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles the First or King Charles the Second, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver. ”

“ Their worst effect was in changing the whole attitude of the nation towards the Crown. England had trusted the Tudors, it distrusted the Stuarts. The mood indeed both of king and people had grown to be a mood of jealousy, of suspicion, which, inevitable as it was, often did injustice to the purpose of both. King James looked on the squires and merchants of the House of Commons as his Stuart predecessors had looked on the Scotch baronage. ”

“ Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles Stuart; an awful lesson to the possessors of royalty, to watch the growth of public opinion, and to moderate their pretensions in conformity with the reasonable desires of their subjects. Had he lived at a more early period, when the sense of wrong was quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his reign would probably have been marked with fewer violations of the national liberties. It was resistance that made him a tyrant. The spirit of the people refused to yield to the encroachments of authority ”

“ Royal-souled Charles Edward Stuart had certainly been in his youth; brilliant with all those virtues of endurance, clemency, and affability which the earlier eighteenth century still fondly associated with the divine right of kings; and royal-souled, hard and weak with all the hardness and weakness, the self-indulgence, obstinacy, and thoughtlessness for others of effete races of kings, he had become no less certainly, in the second part of his life; branded with God's own brand of unworthiness, which signifies that a people, or a class, or a family, is doomed to extinction. ”

“ We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart, of itself, is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example, and, while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another. ”

“ I tied up his head with my handkerchief to stanch the blood—though I myself needed the same attention—and on dividing the contents of my pocket-flask between us, the commandant recovered wonderfully.
"Sir, you have betrayed yourself to be British!" said I, in a low stern voice. "With me your secret is safe: I respect you as a brave man, and should have done so still more had you been a Frenchman; but beware how you become known to Sir John Stuart: he is a stern soldier of the old school, who will assuredly order a drum-head court-martial, and have you shot as a traitor!" ”

“ Listen to the conscience which the penetrating eye of true affection seeth even now reproving thee, and have no further hand in this bloody work. Charles Stuart may be all that the Parliament and your court have named him; and if he be, God forbid that I should justify his baseness. But as we are all prone to err, it is sweet to forgive, even as we hope to be forgiven. Go not to the court to-morrow, William, nor stain this hand of thine by affixing thy signature to the death-warrant of the king. ”

“ The new king would be a Stuart, and never again can I trust a Stuart."
"Is there no hope then?" I asked despondently, for the constant repetition of such speeches had made me believe that no man was to be trusted.
"There is no hope except you can get men in your power," replied my father.
"In my power?" I repeated, for I scarce knew what he meant.
"Ay, in your power, Roland. There is a secret in most men's lives. If you can find that secret, you are a force to be reckoned with. You then have the means whereby you can fight your way into position. Look here. Charles Stuart is now in France. ”