Prince Charles Edward Stuart

“ He said quite airily: 'Oh! if we cannot persuade milor we must act independently of him. The Stuart will be tired by now of living in crags and will not be so chary of entrusting his valuable person to a comfortable French ship.' Then M. le Duc placed a hand on His Majesty's arm warning him of my presence and nothing more was said."
[Pg 196] "Then you think that the King of France is about to deliver Prince Charles Edward Stuart to his enemies?" she asked calmly.
"I am sure of it: and the thought is more than I can bear. And I am not alone in this, Lydie. ”

“ They were tall, vigorous, hardy men, all proud of their ancestry, each capable of deeds of individual daring and courage, but all loyal to their chiefs and to their temporary leader, {115} Prince Charles Edward Stuart. They were not only well dressed but well armed, each man having a broadsword, target, dirk, and fusee, or flintlock gun, and perhaps a steel pistol. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He, as well as other men of sense and observation, began to despair of making their fortune in the party which they had chosen. It was indeed sufficiently dangerous; for, during the short visit just described, one of Dr. King’s servants remarked the stranger’s likeness to Prince Charles, whom he recognized from the common busts.
The occasion taken for breaking up the Stuart interest we shall tell in Dr. King’s own words:—‘When he (Charles Edward) was in Scotland, he had a mistress whose name was Walkinshaw, and whose sister was at that time, and is still, housekeeper at Leicester House. ”

“ In Lord Braye’s manuscripts (published by the Historical MSS. Commission) is Charles’s solemn statement that, except Miss Walkinshaw’s daughter, he had no child. The time has not come to tell the whole strange tale of ‘John Stolberg Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart,’ if, indeed, that tale can ever be told. [321] Nor does space permit an investigation of Charles’s married life, of his wife’s elopement with Alfieri, and of the last comparatively peaceful years in the society of a daughter who soon followed him to the tomb. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Charles' council of war persistently argued for retreat. There were thirty thousand men in the field against them. If they were defeated they would be cut to pieces, and the Prince, if he escaped slaughter, would escape it only to die as a rebel on Tower Hill, whereas, if they were once back in Scotland, they would find new friends, new adherents, and even if they failed to win the English crown, might at least count, with reasonable security, upon converting Scotland, as of old, into a separate kingdom with a Stuart king on its throne. ”

“ The prodigal heir can only waste his own substance, and the punishment falls, as it should, upon himself; but the prince has an awful responsibility,—the welfare of others is required at his hands; his faults and his follies take a wide range, and not with him does their suffering end. I saw too much of Charles Stuart at Paris ever to wish him on the throne of his ancestors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How can they forget that he of all men yet alive was most forward in the death of Charles Stuart; and he has but now justified his share in it. Whomsoever they let escape, they will never loose their hold on him. Not the new king himself could help us."
"Not even the king," she repeated dully; "nay, I know not if the king be merciful; but," she cried, suddenly starting up, "it hath come back to me; there is one near to the king who may be our advocate—Prince Rupert!" ”

“ With an impatience which spurned delay, Charles would not even listen to the proposal, and declared his firm determination to take the field, however small the number of his attendants might be. “In a few days,” said he, “with the few friends that I have, I will erect the royal standard, and proclaim to the people of Britain, that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors—to win it, or to perish in the attempt: Lochiel, whom my father has often told me, was our firmest friend, may stay at home, and from the newspapers, learn the fate of his prince.” ”

“ Though the sceptre had departed from the House of Stuart, it was reserved for one of its last descendants to prove to the world, by his personal gallantry and noble spirit of enterprise, that he at least had not degenerated from his royal line of ancestors. The daring effort of Charles Edward to recover the crown of these kingdoms for his father, is to us the most remarkable incident of the last century. ”

“ FLORA MACDONALD ENCOURAGING THE SAILORS TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT. FLORA MACDONALD IN NORTH CAROLINA. BY BENSON J. LOSSING.
When the young Prince Charles Edward, grandson of James II., King of Great Britain, landed in Scotland in 1745, and claimed his right to the throne from which his grandfather had been driven, thousands of Scotchmen, regarding him as their lawful sovereign, joined him in fighting for the British crown. ”

“ Perhaps the most dramatically tragic of all the events after the defeat of Charles Stuart are connected with the fate of those of his adherents who were taken prisoners, and who were of too grave an importance to be put to the sword at once or hanged out of hand. Some, unhappily, of the followers of the young prince proved themselves to be unworthy of any cause of any monarch. Aeneas Macdonald, John Murray of Broughton, Lord Elcho, and Macdonald of Barrisdale have left behind them the infamous memory that always adheres to traitors. ”

“ Three times within the next half century a part of the Scottish people rose in arms against the king of England in favor of the exiled Stuart family, the last formidable rising being in 1745, under Charles Edward, the Pretender, who was disastrously defeated at the battle of Culloden ”

“ Charles, lonely, ill, and evidently near death, now summoned to Florence his natural daughter, Charlotte Stuart, the child of Clementina Walkinshaw, born at Liége in October 1753 and hitherto neglected by the prince. Charlotte Stuart, who was declared legitimate and created duchess of Albany, tended her father for the remaining years of his life, during which she contrived to reconcile the two Stuart brothers, so that in 1785 Charles returned to Rome, where he died in the old Palazzo Muti on the 30th of January 1788. ”

“ But we cannot but listen to Dawkins and the loyal Henry Goring. By 1754 the Prince, it is not to be denied, was impossible.
Honourable men like the old Laird of Gask, Bishop Forbes, Lord Nairne, and Andrew Lumisden (later his secretary) were still true to a Prince no longer true to himself. Even Lumisden he was to drive from him; he could keep nobody about him but the unwearied Stuart, a servant of his own name. The play was played out; honour and all was lost. There is, unhappily, no escape from this conclusion.
Charles declined to listen to the deputation headed by Cluny in August 1755. ”

“ 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! ”

“ When Charles Stuart, as a general of fourteen, was helping to besiege Gaeta, he had been hailed by Don Carlos as Prince of Wales, and as Prince of Wales he was invariably addressed by those outside the little circle of the sham court who wished to please the exiled princes or show their sympathy with their cause. The young Charles soon began to weary of being Prince of Wales only in name. It seems certain that from a very early age his thoughts were turned to England and the English succession. ”

“ He had the fortitude of Charles the First: in truth, and right intention he exceeded both of these his ancestors; and in this, as in other respects, he showed more of the Scottish character, more of the true sense of Highland honour, than any of his immediate predecessors in the Stuart line. Naturally gay, though variable; quick and shrewd, rather than deep or strong in intellect; easily to be flattered, too easily led by some, too wilful in resisting the counsels of others,—as a Prince, as the head of a Court, he soon won upon the affections of the people who beheld him ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It is not, as in the case of the Royalists in England in Charles's time or of the Covenanters of Scotland, that a great principle is involved--a principle for which men may well risk their lives and all they hold dear. It is a question of persons only, and although I may hold that by right of descent Charles Edward is Prince of Wales and rightful heir to the throne of England, that is no reason why I should risk my life to place him there ”

“ Charles Stuart, the accomplished scholar and elegant poet—Charles Stuart, the husband, father, friend—Charles Stuart, the descendant of a long line of sovereigns, and legitimate king of the most potent nation upon earth—was no more; and a human life was blotted from existence! ”

“ Stuart, Sir Charles, 1779-1845. Eldest son of Sir C. Stuart, General, and Louisa, daughter and co-heiress of Lord Vere Bertie. Minister at the Hague and Ambassador at Paris, and later on at St. Petersburg. British Envoy at the Congress of Vienna. Created Baron Stuart de Rothesay 1841. Married, 1816, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, third daughter of third Earl of Hardwicke. Gronow gives a more favourable account of him, "One of the most popular Ambassadors Great Britain ever sent to Paris."
[43] Under the Treaty of Paris France had been allowed to keep the Art Treasures taken by Napoleon. ”