[792] Letter from Lord John to Secretary Edgar among the Stuart Papers, Feb. 25th, 1743.
[793] Letter from Lord Marischal to Lord John Drummond.—Stuart Papers, Feb. 12th, 1743.
[794] “My children,” says James in a letter to Sempil, 9th January, 1744, “parted both this morning from hence before day, the duke for Cisterna and the prince for his long journey. We have been at so much pains and contrivance to cover it, that I hope the secret will be kept for some days, perhaps for several.”—Stuart Papers.
[795] Alluding to the discovery, James says, (letter to Sempil, 23d January, 1744,) that it made “a great noise, as you may believe, here,” viz. at Rome.—Stuart Papers.
[796] About this time, if we may believe the accounts of the Stuart party, the spirit of Jacobitism was widely diffused in Scotland. “The violentest Whigs,” says Mr. John Stuart in a letter to Secretary Edgar from Boulogne, in February, 1744, “are become the most zealous Jacobites. My friend says that the last night of the year with us (that is to say, the prince’s birth-night,) was celebrated there (in Scotland) as publicly as we could do it here,—that he was himself in a numerous company of people of fashion, amongst whom were several officers of the army,—that the health of the day, the merry meeting, and a whole train of such, were drunk publicly,—that about the third hour, when the third bottle had banished all reserve, servants were turned out and the doors lockt, one of the company made a speech, and filled a bumper to the restoration, and damnation to every one that would not help; the whole stood to their feet, drunk the (some words are here torn away in the original,) and their hands to their swords: the officers pulled the cockades out of their hats, trampled them under feet, and then tossed them into the fire; then called for music, and serenaded the ladies with loyal tunes, songs,” &c.—Stuart Papers.
[797] Memoirs of Europe, vol. ii. p. 197.
[798] The Chevalier de St. George drew up an address to both universities. It bears the same date (23d December, 1743,) as the two declarations published in 1745. This address was not published.—Stuart Papers.
[799] Smollett’s History of England, vol. iii. book ii. chap. 5.
[800] The Marshal, in answer to a querulous note sent by the prince on 11th of March, says in his answer on the 13th, “Vous ne pouvez, Monseigneur, accuser que les vents et la fortune des contretemps qui nous arrivent.” But he promises after the ships were refitted to proceed with the expedition.—Stuart Papers.
[801] James, however, at first approved of the incognito. Writing to Sempil, on 10th March, 1744, he observes, “The prince will have been tired with his confinement; but, as matters stand, the French court was much in the right to keep him private, tho’ that will not, it is true, hinder the Elector of Hanover from taking the alarm, and his measures against the invasion.” His views were different when writing Drummond on 12th June. After complaining of the disagreeable way in which the prince had been employed on his first arrival at Gravelines, (of which no particulars are given,) he continues, “I shall not be easy till I know the prince is out of his strange and long confinement and incognito, which must be so uneasy to him, and, I think, does little honor to the King of France, while it must carry something very odd with it in the eye of the public. But there were, to be sure, reasons for it which the public never knew, but I hope I shall at last.”—Stuart Papers.