LORD MAR TO LORD STAIR.
"May 6th, 1719.
"Good Captain Brown will not, I hope, take amiss his old acquaintance Jo. Murraye's writing to him at this time; and when he knows the occasion, I am persuaded he will forgive him, and comply, as far as he can, with what he is to ask him. My health is not so good just now nor for some time past, as you would wish it; and I am advised to drink the waters of Bourbon for it, as being the likest to those of the Bath of any this side the sea, of which I formerly found so much good. The hot climate where I have been for some time past, by no means agrees with my health; and I am persuaded that where some of our company is gone will still do worse with me.
"The affair in which it might be thought my Captain would employ me being now, I suppose, over for this bout, there needs be, I should think, no objection to what I should ask.
"I am come part of the way already; but I would not go much further, without acquainting you with it. And now I beg that on the consideration of the health of an old friend, you will give me allowance or furlo to go to the waters of Bourbon, and to continue there so long as I may have occasion for them during the two seasons this year; and I promise to you I shall do nothing in any way, the time of my being there, but as you would have me; so that this allowance can be of no prejudice to the service. If you cannot give me the furlo yourself, I imagine your Colonel will not refuse it, if you will be so good as to ask it for me.
"But because the first season of the waters is going fast away, I should be glad you could do it without waiting to hear from your Colonel about it, who, I should think, will not take it amiss when you acquaint him with your having ventured to do so. Do not, I beg of you, think there is any fetch in this, or anything but what I have told you, which, upon honour, is nothing but truth, and all the truth.
"I hope there will be no occasion of your mentioning your having had this trouble from me to any, unless it be to your Colonel and one or two about him, and the person, it is like, you must speak to where you are. There is one with me, an old school acquaintance of yours too, Mr. Stuart of Invernethy, whom you have seen dance very merrily over a sword; and if the allowance is granted me, I hope it will not be refused to him, for whom I promise as I do for myself.
"When I have done with the waters, I hope there will be no objection to my returning to Italy again, if I have a mind; but I judged it fit to mention this to you.
"The person who delivers you this, will get conveyed to me what you will be so good to write."
Whilst he was thus in treaty with his former friend, Lord Mar was stopped on his way to St. Prix, near Geneva, by the orders of the Hanoverian Minister: his papers were seized and sealed up; and among them, a copy of that which was written to Lord Stair as Captain Brown. Lord Mar, who had borne an assumed name, disclosed his real rank, and wrote to Lord Stair for assistance,—again urging permission to go to the waters of Bourbon, or, if not allowed to go into France, the liberty to return to Italy, "where," he said, "I may end my days in quiet; and those, probably, will not be many in that climate." Whilst awaiting the reply of Lord Stair, the Earl was treated with respect by the authorities of Geneva; and "had only to wish that he had a little more liberty for taking air and exercise." He expected that Lord Stair's answer could not arrive in less than a fortnight: in the meantime, he adds, "I shall be obliged, on account of my health, to ask the Government here a little more tether."[158]
His indulgent friend, Lord Stair, was, meantime, urging his cause by every means in his power. "I wish Lord Mar," he wrote to the English Ministry, "was at liberty upon his parole to the town of Geneva, or he had permission to go to the waters of Bourbon. I should be glad to know what pension you would allow him till he be restored?"
Lady Mar was now in Rome, whither she had followed her husband soon after his leaving Scotland. Her jointure, it appears, was stopped by the Commissioners, and she was unable, without that supply, to travel from Rome to Geneva. She was, probably, aware of Lord Mar's intention to leave the Chevalier's service, for the Earl had written a long letter, explanatory of his situation and intentions, to her father the Duke of Kingston. "I have offered him for Lady Mar's journey," says Lord Stair, "credit upon me for a thousand pounds." Yet notwithstanding this liberality, Lord Mar now began to be extremely uneasy at Geneva, and to fear that the Government meant "merely to expose him." In vain, for some time, did Stair plead for him, with Secretary Craggs and Lord Stanhope. They were evidently, from Lord Stair's replies to their objections, afraid to have any dealings with him. "As to Lord Mar," writes Stair, "the things that shock you, shock me; but our business is to break the Pretender's party by detaching him from it, which we shall effectually do by letting him live in quiet at Geneva or elsewhere, and by giving him a pension. Whatever his Lordship's intentions may be, it is very certain, in a few months, that the Jacobites will pull his throat out,—you know them well enough not to doubt of it. The Pretender," he adds, "looks upon Mar as lost, and has had no manner of confidence in him ever since Lady Mar came into Italy. They looked upon her as a spy, and that she had corrupted her husband. This, you may depend on it, is true." Little more than a week afterwards, Lord Stair informed his friends that "Lord Mar was outré at the usage he had met with. He says our Ministers may be great and able men, but that they are not skilful at making proselytes, or keeping friends when they have them. I am pretty much of his mind."
It was, doubtless, as Lord Stair declared, the full determination of Lord Mar at that time to leave the Chevalier's interests. "The Pretender, I know," said Stair, "wrote him the kindest letter imaginable since his [the Pretender's] return into Italy from Spain, with the warmest invitations to return to his post."
The letters which Lord Stair had received, in the course of this negotiation, from Lord Mar, were instantly sent to Hanover. They were in some instances written in his own hand, but without signature, and in the third person. In the first which he wrote to Lord Stair, Mar announced that he had quitted the service of James, and was desirous of making peace with King George upon the promise of a pardon, and the restoration of his estates.
"You are to consider," says Lord Stair, writing to the Secretary of State at home concerning this proposal, "whether it will be worth the while to receive him. In my humble opinion the taking him on will be the greatest blow that can be given to the Pretender's interest, and the greatest discredit to it. And it may be made of use to show to the world that nobody but a Papist can hope to continue in favour with the Pretender. I wish," adds the Ambassador, "you may think as I do. I own all his faults and misfortunes cannot make me forget the long and intimate friendship and familiarity that has been between him and me." It is consoling to find any politician acting upon such good old-fashioned maxims, the result of honest feeling.
Lady Mar having now joined her husband, Lord Mar resolved to make his escape from Geneva. Lord Stair advised him against it; but adds, in his letters to his friends at home, "I could hardly imagine that a man of his temper, and in his circumstances, will refuse his liberty when he sees he has nothing but ill usage and neglect to expect from us."[159]
Thus ended this negotiation, the main conditions of which were, provided Lord Mar kept himself free from any plots against the Government, an offer of the family estate to his son; and, in the interim, till an act of Parliament could be obtained to that effect, a pension of two thousand pounds sterling, over and above one thousand five hundred pounds paid of jointure to his wife and daughter.[160]
It was the fortune of Lord Mar on this, as on many other occasions, to reap the ignominy of having accepted this pension, without ever receiving the profits of his debasement.
During the absence of Lord Mar at Geneva, his Countess, who remained in Rome, received the following letters from the Chevalier and his Princess, Maria Clementina: these epistles show how desirous the Chevalier still was to retain Lord Mar in his interests.[161]
"Montefiascony, Sept. 9, 1719.
"The Duke of Mar's late misfortunes and my own situation for some months past, hath occasioned my being much in the dark as to his present circumstances, which touche me too nearly not to desire you will inform me particularly of them. The last letter I had from him was in the begining of May, from Genua, in which he mentioned to me his ill state of health, and something of your comeing to meet him at Bourbon waters; but the season for them now advanceing, or rather passeing, I reckon that whether he had gone thither or not, he will soon be here on ye receipt of the note I sent you t'other day for him, and by consequence that what measures he may have taken with you about your meeting him will be altered on sight of that. I thought it necessary to inform you of these particulars to prevent any thoughts you might have of a journey so expensive and now useless: for as to his liberty, I make no doubt but that it will immediately follow the certainty of my return to this country. I should think it not prudent to write any politicks to him now, not knowing what fate my letters might meet with; but there is no secret in your sayeing all that is kind from me to him. If you cannot exagerate as to my impatience to see him, after all our mutual misfortunes and adventures, and I am sure he will be glad to know and see me more happy in a wife than I can be otherwayes, in most respects.
"I hope soon to have the satisfaction of seeing you at Rome, when I believe I shall soon convince you that if you and your lord have in the world many false friends, I am and ever shall be a true one to you both.
James R."