Of course it would be comparatively rarely that the adapted plate could be wholly apropos, but such capital ingenuity was exercised, once the stratagem had been imagined, that the practice was not so uncommon nor so unsuccessful as might be naturally expected. In this chapter I am only treating of those dealing with one particular episode, but I have in my possession at least thirty of these remarkable productions.
From them we find that it was not always the engraver of a plate who re-adjusted his own {197} handiwork, but piratical hands were sometimes laid upon the work of a master by mere journeymen engravers who did not scruple to leave the original artist’s name for the better selling of the plate, although it had ceased to represent even in the remotest degree his sentiments or intentions.
Indeed, I could tell of at least one remarkable plate originally prepared in honour of a certain great personage, which, being thievishly appropriated by his opponents, was by them so judiciously metamorphosed as to cover him with as much confusion as it had originally panoplied him with honour.[38]
[38] Mozley, in his entertaining Reminiscences, tells the following story of the latter days of the Oxford Movement, which is somewhat parallel: “Isaac Williams published a volume of poetry called The Baptistry, upon a series of curious and very beautiful engravings, by Boetius a Bolswert, in an old Latin work, entitled Via Vitæ Æternæ. In these pictures, besides other things peculiar to the Roman Church, there frequently occurs the figure of the Virgin Mother, crowned and in glory, the object of worship, and distributing the gifts of Heaven. For this figure Williams substituted the Church, and thereby incurred a protest from Newman for adopting a Roman Catholic work just so far as suited his own purpose, without caring for the further responsibilities.”
This is, I believe, the first time that any attempt has been made to bring this fascinating subject before the public. Incidentally it has {198} been touched upon once or twice in publications of my own as it affected other byways in art, and has been alluded to in the Introductions to the Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum (Satires), prepared under the direction of the late Keeper of the Prints and Drawings, George William Reid, by F. G. Stephens, to which monumental work all students of such subjects are profoundly indebted. But it has never been treated with anything approaching the completeness that it deserves. It is practically an unworked phase of print-collecting—a new craze in which the dilettante may specialise.
As I have said, we are fortunate in having in this place so picturesque a figure as that of the Old Pretender, or the Chevalier de St. George, as some like to call him, round whom to group our first batch of these pictorial palimpsests.
James Francis Edward Stuart was, as all who know their history will remember, the son of James II. by his second wife, Mary of Modena. He was born on June 10, 1688, at St James’s Palace.
James II. was then in his fifty-fifth year. By {199} his cruelties after Monmouth’s rebellion, by his attack on the Universities, by the Trial of the Seven Bishops, by his Court of Commissioners of Ecclesiastical Causes, and by his misuse of the Dispensing Power he had alienated the whole nation, with the exception of a few Roman Catholics and hangers-on of the Court, and his throne was tottering.
The only element of strength in his position was the certainty that sooner or later the crown was bound to pass to one of the Protestant daughters of his first marriage; for though the present Queen had borne him four or five children they had all died young. It was now six years since there had been any hint of a royal birth. What were probably grossly exaggerated accounts of the King’s early irregularities were matter of common gossip, and the Queen’s health was far from robust. Suddenly, at a most opportune moment for the Roman Catholics—so opportune a moment indeed that intrigue at once suggested itself—it was announced to the world that Mary was with child, and a day of thanksgiving was appointed five months before the Queen’s delivery. {200}
Now was the occasion for reviving a report which had been sedulously spread by the enemies of the Court from the very earliest days of the Queen’s marriage—that the King, in order to transmit his dominions and his bigotry to a Roman Catholic heir, had determined to impose a surreptitious offspring on his Protestant subjects.