In corroboration of the better feeling of the reigning family for that of the Stuarts, Hogg chronicles an act of graceful homage to loyalty to the Stuarts (on the part of the Prince Regent), which is graceful if it be true. He was heard to express himself one day, before a dozen gentlemen of both nations, with the greatest warmth, as follows: ‘I have always regarded the attachment of the Scots to the Pretender—I beg your pardon, gentlemen, to Prince Charles Stuart I mean—as a lesson to me whom to trust in the hour of need!’
The feeling of regard for those who had been true to the Stuarts was, no doubt, genuine. It was certainly shared by the regent’s brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex. At a meeting of the ‘Highland Society of London,’ when the Duke of Sussex was in the chair, a suggestion was made to Colonel Stuart of Garth, that it was desirable to rescue from oblivion the songs and ballads of the Jacobite period, by collecting and printing them. Colonel Stuart readily adopted the suggestion, which may be said to have been made by the royal family, in the person of one of its members; and ultimately the task of collecting devolved on ‘the Ettrick Shepherd.’ Hogg published a first volume in 1819, the second in 1822. Some of the songs were his own, after the old tunes and fashions. The genuine Jacobite ballads excited much attention; old Jacobites were amused rather than gratified by viewing Cumberland in Hell, and younger people whose sympathies had first been awakened (in 1805) by ‘Waverley,’ were subdued to a sentiment of love and pity for the Stuart whose sufferings are detailed in song, and the loyalty of whose adherents is so touchingly illustrated in ardent, sometimes ferociously attuned, minstrelsy. The republication of these ‘Jacobite Relics,’ by Mr. Gardner, of Paisley, in 1874, is a proof that the old interest has not died out either in London or the kingdoms generally.
‘HENRY THE NINTH.’
Meanwhile, the French revolutionary wave reached Rome, and it ruined ‘Henry the Ninth, by the Grace of God, but not by the will of men, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,’ as it did his sister-in-law, the Countess of Albany. Cardinal York did not seek refuge in London: he found one in Venice. In London, however, Sir John Cave Hippisley, having been informed of the venerable Cardinal’s destitute condition, submitted the lamentable case of this Prince of the Church to the Ministry (February, 1800). Almost immediately, in the king’s name, an offer by letter was made to him of a pension of 4,000l. a year. ‘The letter,’ wrote the Cardinal to Sir John, in Grosvenor Street, ‘is written in so extremely genteel and obliging a manner, and with expressions of singular regard and consideration for me, that, I assure you, excited in me most particular and lively sentiments, not only of satisfaction for the delicacy with which the affair has been managed, but also of gratitude for the generosity which has provided for my necessity.’ The Cardinal adds a touching statement of his utter destitution. Sir John was right in informing the still illustrious prince that the king’s action had the sympathy of the whole British nation, irrespective of creeds and parties. ‘Your gracious Sovereign’s noble and spontaneous generosity,’ rejoins the Cardinal, ‘filled me with the most lively sensations of tenderness and heartfelt gratitude.’
HOME’S HISTORY OF THE REBELLION.
In 1802, Cadell and Davies, in the Strand, published the first regular history of the rebellion of 1745, and the London critics expressed their surprise that more than half a century had elapsed before a trustworthy account of so serious an outbreak had been given to the public. The key-note of Home’s book is in a paragraph which was very distasteful to the Jacobites. There it was laid down that the Revolution of 1688, which transferred the Crown ‘to the nearest protestant heir, but more remote than several Roman Catholic families, gave such an ascendant to popular principles as puts the nature of the constitution beyond all controversy.’ The critics with Jacobite tendencies were disappointed that Home cast no censure on the Duke of Cumberland. They supposed this was owing to the book being dedicated to the king. Jacobite disappointment found ample compensation in 1805, when romance flung all its splendour round the young Chevalier, in the novel by an anonymous author, ‘Waverley, or ’tis 60 years since.’
A JACOBITE DRAMA.
The last male heir of the royal Stuart line was then living. The good Cardinal York died in 1807 at Rome, when he was eighty-two years of age. The announcement of his death in the London journals shows sympathy and respect, without stint. It was well deserved, for he was a blameless prince of a not irreproachable line.
After this last male heir of the line of Stuart had died, with a dignity that characterised no other of his race, and with the respectful sympathy of his adversaries, if he had any, it might be supposed that all danger springing from such a line had ceased. The last of the race had abandoned the empty title of king, and had gracefully and without humiliation accepted a pension, gracefully and delicately offered, from George III. The peril, however, was not supposed to be over. While the last of the Stuarts was dying, Mr. Charles Kemble was translating a French drama (originally German, by Kotzebue), entitled ‘Edouard en Ecosse.’ On presenting it in 1808 to the Lord Chamberlain and the Licenser, they did not see treason in it, but much offence. The piece, in fact, represented the chances, mischances, adventures, and escapes of Charles Edward after the battle of Culloden. A licence to play a three-act drama, tending to keep up interest in ‘the Pretender,’ was refused point blank. Ultimately, it was granted under absurd conditions. THE DRAMA REVISED. Charles Kemble removed the scene to Sweden, and called his drama ‘The Wanderer, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles Edward (played by Kemble) became Sigismond, Culloden figured as the battle of Strangebro, and everything suffered silly change, except one character, which was overlooked—Ramsay (Fawcett)—who throughout the play talked in the broadest Scotch. When Sigismond’s perils culminated, he melodramatically escaped them all, and those who had helped him were proud of their aid, and not in much fear for having given it. More than twenty years elapsed before the great official at St. James’s thought that the original version might be acted without danger to the throne of George IV. In November, 1829, it was produced at Covent Garden as the ‘Royal Fugitive, or the Rights of Hospitality.’ Charles was played by the ex-artillery officer, Prescott, whose stage name was Warde. Diddear and Miss Tree acted the Duke and Duchess of Athol; Miss Cawse represented Flora Macdonald; and the terrible Duke William was roared through like a sucking dove by the milk-and-watery Horrebow. The drama did not shake the ‘happy establishment.’ Of the performers in 1829, one alone survives, the representative of the Duchess of Athol, Mrs. Charles Kean.
SATIRICAL BALLAD.