James Francis Edward Stuart

“ James Stuart, the "Old Pretender," was now elderly and had always been apathetic, but his son Charles Edward Stuart was a young prince of a very different character. Reckless, adventurous, and light-hearted, he was the very man to lead a desperate venture. The French gathered an army of 15,000 men at Dunkirk, and promised to put it at his disposal if he would invade Scotland. But a storm scattered the transports, and the troops were ultimately drawn off to the war in Flanders. ”

“ In order to baffle the projects which rest entirely upon your highness, the usurper has given to Colonel Rutler the mission which came so near being fatal to you, your highness. You see, then, in all this Father Griffen has been perfectly innocent. Some one has abused his confidence most sacrilegiously; but, after all, sir, you must exercise forbearance, for it is to this discovery that you will have the glory, some day, of re-establishing James Stuart upon the throne of England. ”

“ And yet in that imaginary name and title there may perhaps be found a key to the mystery of the birth of the young James Stuart. For though the Neapolitan adventurer was an impostor, he enjoyed good sources of information, and possessed, though imperfectly, the secrets of King Charles's son. He knew that he was born at Jersey, and that his birth had been recognised by his father, and he had secured some of his papers and some of his property. All the wealth he showed at Naples did not come from that source, for the young novice was not so rich, and the impostor must have robbed other people. ”

“ It is singular that the three contemporary monarchs, Edward IV. of England—James III. of Scotland—Louis XI. of France, should have each murdered his brother.
[92] For further particulars relative to the duke of Albany, I refer to Pinkerton's History of Scotland. In a note to the Cronique Scandaleuse by the abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy, he says,—'Alexander Stuart, brother to James III. king of Scotland, died at Paris 1483, and was buried in the convent of the Celestins. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The "Divine Right" of Kings and the "Royal Touch."—With the end of the Tudor line (see p. 561) , James VI. of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, came to the English throne, as James I. of England. The accession of the House of Stuart brought England and Scotland under the same sovereign, though each country still retained its own Parliament.
The Stuarts were firm believers in the doctrine of the "Divine Right" of kings. They held that hereditary princes are the Lord's anointed, and that their authority can in no way be questioned or limited by people, priest, or Parliament. ”

“ In the spring 1646, during his first residence in Jersey, Charles fell in love with a young lady of high rank, who became the mother of a child, who enjoyed the prerogative, denied to all the other natural children of the king, of bearing his father's name. He was called James Stuart, and was brought up in the Protestant religion on the Continent. ”

“ The next family to bear this title was an illegitimate branch of the royal house of Stuart, James IV. creating his natural son, James Stuart (c. 1499–1544) , earl of Moray. James died without sons, and after the title had been borne for a short time by George Gordon, 4th earl of Huntly (c. 1514–1562) , who was killed at Corrichie in 1562, it wa.s bestowed in 1562 by Mary Queen of Scots upon her half-brother, an illegitimate son of James V. This was the famous regent, James Stuart, earl of Moray, or Murray (see below) , who was murdered in January 1570 ”

“ James IV, wounded by two arrows and a blow from a halberd, fell amidst his nobles on the battlefield of Flodden. James V died of grief at the loss of his two sons, and of remorse for the execution of Hamilton. James VI, destined to unite on his head the two crowns of Scotland and England, son of a father who had been assassinated, led a melancholy and timorous existence, between the scaffold of his mother, Mary Stuart, and that of his son, Charles I. Charles II spent a portion of his life in exile. ”

“ He would have no such mischievous work in England. He despised Elizabeth's grand national policy which his narrow intellect could not comprehend. He could see that in fighting Spain and aiding Dutchmen and Huguenots she was strengthening the very spirit that sought to pull monarchy down. In spite of her faults, which were neither few nor small, the patriotism of that fearless woman was superior to any personal ambition. It was quite otherwise with James. He was by no means fearless, and he cared more for James Stuart than for either England or Scotland. ”

“ He contrived to transmit to England letters summoning many Protestant women of quality to assist at the expected birth; and he promised, in the name of his dear brother the Most Christian King, that they should be free to come and go in safety. Had some of these witnesses been invited to Saint James's on the morning of the tenth of June 1688, the House of Stuart might, perhaps, now be reigning in our island. But it is easier to keep a crown than to regain one. It might be true that a calumnious fable had done much to bring about the Revolution. ”

“ No, for after all she was a Queen and a Stuart, and it is mere commonplace to say that she never failed to confront her fate.
It were easy and useless to dwell on the glaring contrasts in character between Mary and her son James, between the most tragically unfortunate and the most prosaically fortunate of the Stuarts. Such contrasts between the character and fate of parent and child are not uncommon in daily life. The first day of James on earth was memorable for the dramatic meeting of his father and mother. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soon after my grandfather had returned from the shire of Ayr, there was a weighty consultation held at the Earl his patron's lodging in Edinburgh, whereat, among others present, was that pious youth, afterwards the good Regent Murray. He was, by office and appointment, then the head and lord of the priory of St Andrews; but his soul cleaving to the Reformation and the Gospel, he laid down the use of that title, and about this time began to be called the Lord James Stuart. ”

“ James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled. Finding himself at once, after years of theological study, face to face with a foreign commonwealth and a momentous epoch, in which politics were so commingled with divinity as to offer daily the most puzzling problems, the royal pedant hugged himself at beholding so conspicuous a field for his talents. ”

“ To destroy the Protestant ascendancy, yet not to create a Catholic ascendancy in its place; to deprive the colonists of the power to exercise oppression, while leaving them the power necessary for self-defence, was, perhaps, a task beyond the range of human statesmanship. Still tact and moderation might have done much. But tact and moderation formed no part of the character of James Stuart. ”

“ But a great many people in Scotland still wished to have a king of the old Scotch family of Stuart again; so they encouraged young James Stuart, that is the Pretender, whom they called King James, to come to Scotland, and promised they would collect men and money enough to make an army, and buy guns and everything fit for soldiers, and march into England, and make him king instead of George I. From this time all those who took the part of the Pretender against George were called Jacobites, from Jacobus, the Latin for the Pretender’s name, James. ”

“ The man who had placed himself at the head of the Reformers, and who, although young, had already given Hamilton and his party good cause to tremble at his increasing authority, was James Stuart, the eldest of Mary’s three illegitimate brothers,—and one who occupies a most important station in the history of his country. ”

“ They are alike remembered in song and story because of qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be. They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as they had impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of a strange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, but which very few could experience and resist.
Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes. James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary monarch. ”

“ Yet it is evident generally that there was a disaffected party among the whigs, or, as in the Stuart Papers they were called, republicans, who entertained the baseless project of restoring James upon terms. These were chiefly what were called compounders, to distinguish them from the thorough-paced royalists, or old tories. One person whom we should least suspect is occasionally spoken of as inclined to a king whom he had been ever conspicuous in opposing—the Earl of Devonshire; but the Stuart agents often wrote according to their wishes rather than their knowledge ”

“ If James Stuart could easily obey his father by departing from Rome before the arrival of Queen Christina, it was certainly more difficult for him to conform to the frequently contradictory injunctions concerning the route to be taken and the precautions to be guarded against which had been successively transmitted to him. Everything which was rational and practicable the young man respected. He set sail from Leghorn about the middle of October, a fact which we learn from a brief letter of Father Oliva to the King of England. ”

“ Just when it was too late, and George I. had thoroughly settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier—the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender. A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the Whigs still held to the orange lily and orange ribbon, for the sake of William of Orange. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By the king he was sent to convey the son of the Duke of Lennox to Scotland, and landed at Leith with his charge on 13 Nov. (ib. iii. 749; Historie of James the Sext, p. 192) .
James Stuart, earl of Arran, who had been recently reconciled to the king, was now the reigning favourite. Gray, who had a previous acquaintance with Arran, became his special confidant. He was, however, too able in diplomacy to be the tool of any man, and his ability in intrigue was only equalled by his utter blindness to honourable obligations. ”

“ You are lying to me, sir,” she continued in a firmer tone. “There were brave men, experienced soldiers, with James. Would he be so base as to desert those who risked their lives and fortunes for him?” I shrugged my shoulders carelessly.
“Do not deceive yourself, madam,” I made answer. “Carry your mind back to the past. Hast James Stuart ever shown any consideration for others when his own worthless life was in danger? The man who could steal away from his palace by night, without striking one blow for his crown and kingdom, would care little what fate befell those who had supported him. ”

“ The moon is shining, is it not? Give me your arm, Carro. I-fegs, though our head be as strong as that of most folk, the good wine of my Lord of Salisbury is well nigh as much as we can carry."
The King and Queen then rose; and, according to the proposal of James, the whole party issued forth into the wide ornamented grounds--with one exception. Arabella Stuart, whispering to Anne of Denmark that she was somewhat faint, but would rejoin her in a few minutes, darted away to her own room, where, casting herself on her knees beside her bed, she hid her face upon her hands, and prayed. ”

“ 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." ”