The next in order of date is a very undefined visit of 1748. In support of it there appears that exceedingly, questionable witness, namely, Thicknesse.
Crazy Philip Thicknesse, in his crazy Memoirs, on the title-page of which he crazily announced that he had the misfortune to be the father of George Thicknesse Tuchet. Lord Audley (the son George had succeeded to the ancient barony, through his deceased mother) was the man who, on his son refusing to supply him with money, set up a cobbler’s stall, opposite the son’s house, with a board on which was painted, ‘Boots and shoes mended in the best and cheapest manner, by Philip Thicknesse, father of Lord Audley.’ This had the desired effect. In the farrago, called his Memoirs, Thicknesse says he knew ‘an Irish officer who had only one arm.’ In a note, the name Segrave is given as that of the officer; but this editorial addition has been transferred to the text by all writers who have quoted crazy Philip’s account. The officer with only one arm assured Thicknesse that he had been with the Prince in England, between the years 1745 and 1756, and that ‘they,’ Prince and one-armed officer, ‘had laid a plan of seizing the person of the King, George II., as he returned from the play, by a body of Irish chairmen, fifteen hundred of whom were to begin a revolution, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ Philip, however, with a return of sense, remarks: ‘I cannot vouch for the truth of this story.’ Yet out of this unfounded story grew a report that Charles Edward was in London in 1748, which was between the years above named. Philip Thicknesse was in his 70th year when he began to put together his book, which was published in 1788. He reminds his readers, that he ‘never pretended to be an accurate writer.’ The reminder was hardly necessary.
THE VISIT IN 1750.
The next witness, in chronological order, is Dr. King, the Chevalier’s great agent, who gives the year 1750, as that in which Charles Edward came to London. This information was first furnished in a book which was published in 1818, under the title, ‘Political and Literary Anecdotes of his own time.’
The editor is anonymous. He gives this account of how he came in possession of the MS. ‘A Friend’ (no name given) ‘who was a long time a prisoner in France, met with the following work in the possession of two ladies’ (not named, but who are described as) ‘relations of the writer, Dr. King. From the interesting passages which he was permitted to extract, the Editor’ (as destitute of name as the others) ‘conceived that the original might be well worthy of publication, he therefore desired his friend to procure it, and found, on a comparison of the hand-writing with that which is well ascertained to be Dr. King’s, in the account books of St. Mary Hall, in Oxford,—that there is every reason to suppose this MS. to have been written by Dr. King himself.’ Four nameless persons, and only ‘a reason to suppose’ among them.
DR. KING AND THE CHEVALIER.
Dr. King’s life extended from 1685 to 1763; and it was towards the close of his life, that he collected the anecdotes from the manuscript of which the editor (1818) was permitted to take extracts. Where the original manuscript is to be found is not mentioned. The only reference to the young Chevalier of any importance is in the paragraph in which the writer leads us to infer that the prince was in England in September, 1750, at Lady Primrose’s house. ‘Lady Primrose,’ he says, ‘presented me to ——’ Why this mysterious dash, when frequent mention is made of Charles Edward, in description of character, as ‘the Prince’ or ‘Prince Charles?’ It is also stated that the prince was King’s guest, and was recognised by King’s servants. For a Jacobite, the doctor is as severe a dissector of the young Chevalier as the bitterest Whig could desire. He speaks ill of the illustrious visitor, morally and intellectually. As to his religion, King says he was quite ready to ‘conform’ to the religion of the country; that he was a Catholic with the Catholics, and with the Protestants, a Protestant. This was exactly what Lord Kilmarnock said before he was executed. King further states that Charles Edward would exhibit an English Common Prayer Book to Protestant friends; to the Catholics he could not have afforded much pleasure by letting Gordon, the Nonjuror, christen his first child, of which Miss Walkenshawe was the mother. Such an easy shifting of livery, from Peter’s to Martin’s, and back again to Peter’s, was natural enough in the case of a man, who had been brought up at Rome, but who was placed under the care of a Protestant tutor, who of express purpose neglected his education, and who, if King’s surmise be correct, made a merit of his baseness, to the Government in London, and was probably rewarded for it by a pension. Dr. King speaks of the prince’s agents in London, as men of fortune and distinction, and many of the first nobility, who looked to him as ‘the saviour of their country.’
MEMORANDA.
This visit to London in 1750, if it really was ever made, is supposed to be referred to, in one of several memoranda for a letter in the prince’s handwriting, preserved with other Stuart papers, in Windsor Castle; and first published by Mr. Woodward, Queen’s Librarian, in 1864. It runs thus: ‘8thly. To mention my religion (which is) of the Church of England as by law established, as I have declared myself when in London, the year 1750.’ This memorandum is at the end of a commission from the writer’s father dated 1743, to which commission is appended a copy of the ‘Manifesto’ addressed by the prince to Scotland, in 1745. At what date the memorandum was written there is no possibility of knowing. If the prince, as was his custom, used only the initial of the name of the city, it is possible that Liége was meant; and, after the word ‘when,’ the writer may have omitted the name of one of his many agents of ‘fortune and distinction,’ who looked to him as the saviour of their country.
FURTHER MEMORANDA.