Charles Stuart

“ It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such a gilded nonentity was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox, who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ They couldn't be misinformed. Charles Stuart was caught in a woodcutter's hut in Brewood Forest. He fought so hard that it took ten men to secure him, and the reward will be divided among 'em, consequently, they'll only have a hundred apiece. Well, here's Old Noll's health, and hoping he may soon reign over us."
"Reign over us?" cried Charles.
"Ay, reign," said the ostler. "When he has cut off Charles Stuart's head he'll be King of England. He has got the army with him, and can do as he likes."
"He aims at the crown, I make no doubt," said Charles. "But here comes my young mistress. ”

“ Her sister was stealing down through the orchard, her light summer dress plainly visible against its dim greenness. She stopped at the bars that led into the pasture field, and as she did, Charles Stuart came vaulting over the fence from the lane and strode towards her. And surely everybody must have been touched with a magic wand, and turned into somebody else; because it wasn't Charles Stuart at all, but Mr. Coulson, to whom Elizabeth had bidden such an agonized farewell only yesterday! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Charles Stuart fled to France in 1646, returned briefly to Scotland in 1651, where he was crowned, was routed by Cromwell in September, and returned to France until Mazarin signed a treaty with Cromwell in 1655 declaring the deposed monarch persona non grata in France. With Monk’s support, he finally returned to London as a king in 1661. During his reign there were two wars with the Dutch, the great plague occurred, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, and the Great Fire swept London. ”

“ Not less heightened, however, was that coldly resolute air likewise previously alluded to—so that if evidently sad, it might likewise have been seen that Charles Stuart was also determined unto death.
What were his reflections in view of the announcement he had just received from the lips of Alice Heath, and which he saw no means of averting short of sacrificing the dignity with which his rank as sovereign of England invested him, we will not attempt to conjecture. None who have not been in his situation can form any thing like an adequate conception of his state of mind ”

“ I asked his lordship what had become of the Berwick branch of the Churchills. He answered drily that he did not know—so drily in fact that I inferred he had forgotten there had ever been such a branch.
In order to introduce that branch I must ask you to go back with me to the middle of the seventeenth century.
Charles Stuart, Charles II. sits on the throne of England, or rather perambulates about it, for he is a great walker: he and his dogs are always in motion; and his favorite breed of those animals is still known as the King Charles spaniel. ”

“ STUART, CHARLES, sixth Duke of Lennox and third Duke of Richmond (1640–1672) , born in London on 6 Mar. 1639–40, was the only son of George Stuart, ninth seigneur d'Aubigny, who was fourth son of Esmé, third duke of Lennox [see under Stuart, Ludovick, second Duke of Lennox] . Charles Stuart's mother was Catherine Howard (d. 1650) , eldest daughter of Theophilus, second earl of Suffolk, who, after the death of her husband, George Stuart, at Edgehill in 1642, married Sir James Levingstane, created Earl of Newburgh in 1660. ”

“ He nevertheless gained his point, for he set the Parliament at defiance, and had the king removed to Hurst Castle, in Hampshire, which was so dull that Charles could not help remarking that coming to Hurst was like going to be buried. He was again removed to Windsor, and subsequently to St. James's Palace, where the guards were ordered to call him Charles Stuart, in order to show the magnanimity of the revenge of such a man as Cromwell. The king was exposed to every petty insult that littlemindedness could suggest or coarse brutality execute. ”

“ James Hepburn of Keith, with drawn sword, led the way; beautiful women distributed white cockades to enraptured Jacobites; the stateliest chivalry of Scotland made obeisance to its rightful prince. The intoxicating day ended with a great ball at the palace, at which the youthful grace of Charles Stuart confirmed the charm that already belonged to the adventurous and victorious Prince of Wales. September 17, 1745, was one of the brightest days in the Stuart calendar. ”

“ The suffering people of color, as peculiarly outraged and afflicted, were objects of peculiar compassion to them. The hearts of Englishmen were their home, even while colonial guilt made England, also, a house of bondage to them—but the British mind, after writhing for a while under the abomination, threw it finally and forever off, as we have seen in 1772. England remained their country, as it is the country of every man in the world, who flies to it from oppression. No white man is more honored there, than brown men, or sallow, or yellow men—or pale men, or red men ”

“ Noble, thy heart overflows with kindness for Charles Stuart: if he were at liberty to-morrow by thy intercession, he would sign thy death-warrant the day after, for serving the Commonwealth. A generation of vipers! there is nothing upright nor grateful in them: never was there a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we have a clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I suspect that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once crossed the current. ”

“ For all which high and treasonable Offences the said Charles Stuart might long since justly have been brought to exemplary and condign Punishment: Whereas also, the Parliament well hoping that the Restraint and Imprisonment of his Person, after it had pleased God to deliver him into their Hands, would have quieted the distempers of the Kingdom, did forbear to proceed Judicially against him ”

“ Among those who had been driven, by the disturbances in England, to seek a more quiet home in the wilds of Virginia, was a gentleman of the name of Temple. An Englishman by birth, he was an unwilling spectator of the revolution which erected the dynasty of Cromwell upon the ruins of the British monarchy. He had never been able to divest his mind of that loyal veneration in which Charles Stuart was held by so many of his subjects, whose better judgments, if consulted, would have prompted them to unite with the revolutionists. ”

“ When Prince Charles Stuart arrived on the western coast of Scotland, near Borrodale, in July 1745, the bishop hastened to him, and vainly urged him to return to France. On 19 Aug. the prince's royal standard was blessed by the bishop, and displayed in Glenfinnan, a part of Moidart belonging to Macdonald of Glenaladale. After the rebellion the bishop escaped to Paris, and obtained from the crown of France a pension, which he enjoyed until his death, under the name of Marolle. He returned to Scotland in 1749, and being betrayed by a namesake, he was apprehended at Edinburgh in July 1755. ”

“ The seed Charles Stuart had sown had flourished and grown rank and strong, so that the great seat of learning was rich with dissolute young fools and madcaps and their hangers-on. But even the most foolish swaggerer of them could not call milksop a man who could outride, outleap, outfence, outhunt him; who could drive the four horses of his coach to London and back at such a pace and in such a manner as made purple-faced old stage-coach drivers shake their heads with glee, and who, in a wrestling-match, could break a man's back at a throw if he chose to be unmerciful. ”

“ There is red blood in both, and not less in Charles Stuart, a hero whose earlier adventures with smugglers, secret passages and the like have an almost STEVENSONIAN vigour. All the life of impoverished Waterpark, with its wonderful drawing-room full of precarious furniture, is excellently drawn. ”

“ It is part of a prince's business to be brave, and if Charles Stuart had been lacking in that essential quality of sovereignty he could scarcely have concealed the want until the day of Culloden, or have inspired the clans with the personal enthusiasm which they so readily evinced for him. Nor is it necessary for us to follow out in full the details of the unhappy young man's miserable flight and final escape. ”

“ Britain, in boasting of liberty, was a hypocrite; for her liberty was licentiousness; the dreadful licentiousness practiced by the learned and rich, of plundering and oppressing without remorse, the ignorant and the poor. In the midst of this wickedness, a man with a single eye to God, arose! What was darkness through sophistry, to the highest intellects and to the deepest scholarship of the mighty minds around him, to him was light. No selfishness—no partiality—no prejudice—no pride—no fear or idolatry of man, clouded the light of eternal equity and love, which burnt in his bosom. ”

“ When Barbara Villiers was enslaving Charles by her opulent charms, the queen of his many mistresses, Frances Stuart was growing to beautiful girlhood, an exile at the French Court, with no dream or care of her future conquest of a king. Her father, a son of Lord Blantyre, had carried his death-dealing sword through many a fight for the first Charles, a distant kinsman of his own; and, when the Stuart sun set in blood, had made good his escape to the friendly shores of France, where he had found a fresh field for his valour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lastly, the sergeant took out a printed copy of the proclamation, promising 'the reward of a thousand pounds for the apprehension of the young man, Charles Stuart, eldest son of the late King Charles,' and fastened it on the trunk of the royal oak where his majesty was sitting in the branches above them, hearing all they said, and an eye-witness of their treason. ”

“ 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! ”

“ It is true, England is not what it was two hundred years ago, but it is still the sovereign power—the symbol for which men should be as willing to live as to die. Do you not know that every time an Englishman forgets to be honorable, forgets to be just, forgets to be courteous, forgets to be a gentleman—do you not know, young sir, that the whole shield of England takes on a touch of tarnish? If you do not know, take heed now, for it is I, Charles Stuart, who tell you!”
“And why on earth should you tell me?” said Fulham, with an ugly look. ”