Pickle’s remarks on Charles’s receipt of 4,000l. must be erroneous. His Royal Highness was in the very lowest water, and could not afford a new suit of clothes for his servant Daniel, ‘the profet,’ as he once calls him. This we learn from the following letter to Avignon:
To Sheridan and Stafford. From the Prince.
‘April 10, 1753.
‘This is to let you know that as I am extremely necessitous for money, it engages me out of economi to send for Daniell’s Close which you are to Pack up in his own trunc, and to send it adresed to Mr. Woulfe to Paris, but let there be in ye trunc none of Daniel’s Papers or anything else except his Close.’
Meanwhile, on March 20, 1753, Archy Cameron had been arrested. His adventure and his death, with the rumours which flew about in society, bring us into collision with a great authority, that of Mr. Carlyle.
‘If you, who have never been in rich Cyrene, know it better than I, who have, I much admire your cleverness,’ said the Delphian Oracle to an inquiring colonist. Mr. Carlyle had never lived in the Courts of Europe about 1753; none the less, he fancied he knew more of them, and of their secrets, than did their actual inhabitants, kings, courtiers, and diplomatists. We saw that, in September 1752, according to Pickle, Prince Charles sent Archibald Cameron and Lochgarry to Scotland, with a mission to his representative, Cluny Macpherson, and the clans. The English Government, knowing this and a great deal more through Pickle, hanged Cameron, in June 1753, on no new charge, but on the old crime of being out in the Forty-five. Sir Walter Scott was well aware of the circumstances. We have already quoted his remark. ‘The ministers thought it prudent to leave Dr. Cameron’s new schemes in concealment, lest by divulging them they had indicated the channel of communication which, it is well known, they possessed to all the plots of Charles Edward.’
Mr. Carlyle, however, knew better. After giving a lucid account of the differences which, in 1752–1753, menaced the peaceful relations between England and Prussia; after charging heavily in favour of his hero Frederick, Mr. Carlyle refers to Archibald Cameron. Cameron, he says, was ‘a very mild species of Jacobite rebel. . . . I believe he had some vague Jacobite errands withal, never would have harmed anybody in the rebel way, and might with all safety have been let live. . . . ’ But ‘His Grace the Duke of Newcastle and the English had got the strangest notion into their head; . . . what is certain, though now well nigh inconceivable, it was then, in the upper classes and political circles, universally believed that this Dr. Cameron was properly an emissary of the King of Prussia, that Cameron’s errand here was to rally the Jacobite embers into a flame, . . . ’ and that Frederick would send 15,000 men to aid the clans. These ideas of the political circles Mr. Carlyle thinks ‘about as likely as that the Cham of Tartary had interfered in the Bangorian Controversy.’ [196a] Now, Horace Walpole says [196b] ‘intelligence had been received some time before [through Pickle] of Cameron’s intended journey to Britain, with a commission from Prussia to offer arms to the disaffected Highlanders . . . That Prussia, who opened her inhospitable doors to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. . . . Two sloops were stationed to watch, yet Cameron landed.’ Writing to Mann (April 27, 1753), Horace Walpole remarks: ‘What you say you have heard of strange conspiracies fomented by our nephew [Frederick] is not entirely groundless.’ He adds that Cameron has been taken while ‘feeling the ground.’
Information as to Frederick’s ‘tampering’ with Jacobitism came to the English Government not only through Pickle, but through Count Kaunitz, the Austrian minister. On December 30, 1753, Mr. Keith wrote to the Duke of Newcastle from the Imperial Court. He had thanked Count Kaunitz for his intelligence, and had expressed the wish of George II. for news as to ‘the place of the Young Pretender’s abode.’ He commented on Frederick’s ‘ill faith and ambition,’ which ‘could not fail to set the English nation against his interest, by showing the dangerous effects of any increase of force, or power, in a Prince capable of such horrid designs.’ [197]
As between Mr. Carlyle in 1853, and the diplomatists of Europe in 1753, the game is unequal. The upper classes and political circles knew more of their own business than the sage of Ecclefechan. Frederick, as Walpole said, was ‘tampering’ with the Jacobites. He as good as announced his intention of doing so when he sent the Earl Marischal to Paris, where, however, the Earl could not wear James’s Green Ribbon of the Thistle! But, to Frederick, the Jacobites were mere cards in his game. If England would not meet his views on a vexed question of Prussian merchant ships seized by British privateers, then he saw that a hand full of Jacobite trumps might be useful. The Earl Marischal had suggested this plan. [198a] The Earl wrote from Paris, February 10, 1753: ‘The King of England shows his ill-will in his pretensions on East Frisia, in the affairs of the Empire, and in revoking the guarantee of Silesia. Your Majesty, therefore, may be pleased to know the strength of the party hostile to him at home, in which, and in the person of Prince Edouard [Charles] you may find him plenty to do, if he pushes you too far.’ The Earl then suggests sending a rich English gentleman to Frederick; this was Mr. James Dawkins, of the Over Norton family, the explorer of Palmyra. Pickle mentions him as ‘D-k-ns.’
Frederick did not expect a rupture with England, but condescended to see the Earl’s friend, Mr. Dawkins. On May 7 the Earl announces his friend’s readiness to go to Berlin, and says that there is a project maturing in England. The leaders are Dawkins, Dr. King of Oxford, ‘homme d’esprit, vif, agissant,’ and the Earl of Westmoreland, ‘homme sage, prudent, d’une bonne tête, bon citoyen, respectable, et respecté.’ [198b] They will communicate with Frederick through the Earl Marischal, if at all. ‘The Prince knows less of the affair than Dawkins does. The Prince’s position, coupled with an intrepidity which never lets him doubt where he desires, causes others to form projects for him, which he is always ready to execute. I have no direct communication with him, not wishing to know his place of concealment: we correspond through others.’
Frederick (May 29, 1753) thinks the plot still crude, and advises the Jacobites to tamper with the British army and navy. ‘It will be for my interest to encourage them in their design underhand, and without being observed. You will agree with me that the state of European affairs does not permit me to declare myself openly. If the English throne were vacant, a well conceived scheme might succeed under a Regency.’
Such is the attitude of Frederick. He receives a Jacobite envoy; he listens to tales of conspiracies against his uncle; he offers suggestions; he will encourage treason sous main. In fact, Frederick behaves with his usual cold, curious, unscrupulous skill.