204 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'"i S. NO 115., Mau. 13. '58. 



Gens d'Armes keep guard in the house. Myself and 



had a short view of them before they were seized, in 



company with Mr. and Lord . How the papers 



first got out of the Cabinets of the Cardinal I have not 

 heard; but they came into the possession of Tassoni, 

 auditor of the Pope, and were confidentially entrusted to 

 a Priest of the name of Lussi. — Watson heard of this, 

 and, after assuring himself of the authenticity of the in- 

 formation, applied for them to the Priest. Lussi required 

 the permission of Tassoni, and it is understood, that, by 

 well-directed douceurs, his concurrence was obtained. A 

 receipt was given for two hundred crowns, and the papers 

 secured in Watson's lodgings. The new possessor of 

 them talked and would take no advice. The circum- 

 stance at length transpired. Tassoni regretted the affair, 

 and applied to the Secretary of State, who interfered, on 

 the ground of a misrepresentation bj' Lussi. The latter 

 and the papers were immediatelj' seized. This is the ex- 

 terior state of the case : what other motive may have 

 prevailed — the affair is still a matter of discussion. 



"The Papers are numerous, authentic, and valuable. 

 They are supposed to amount to half a million. Many of 

 them %ere not packed when I saw them, and covered, in 

 great packages, the sides of a small chamber. The whole 

 weighed seven tons. Thej' began with James IL, and go 

 down to the death of Cardinal York. In those which I 

 saw, every thing public and private is embraced, from 

 plots of invasion and correspondence with foreign powers, 

 &c. &c. to the amours of the Pretender, and the details of 

 the domestic menage of the Court of Albany. Several 

 letters are in the handwriting of James and the Preten- 

 der, and the collection is arranged with an elaborate care 

 which does credit to the mere mechanical talents for busi- 

 ness of the exiles and their party. 



" I saw among the political papers, four proclamations 

 of the son of James, particularly to the Universities; the 

 Pretender promises the entire establishment of their ec- 

 clesiastical rights, and his full support of the Protestant 

 church in all its privileges, however ample. A short date 

 after comes a letter of the Cardinal, congratulating him 

 on his open avowal of the Catholic religion ! Of course 

 these are admirable illustrations of each other. Then there 

 is a letter to James, from the General of the Jesuits, ofier- 

 ing him the support of himself individually, and his order 

 for any religious purpose he might design them ; it is 

 very short and vague, signed, I think, Ritz or Retz. Al- 

 most all the principal families of Ireland and Scotland 

 are implicated. A Colonel O'Brj'an seems to have been a 

 remarkably active personage. Many, that have hitherto 

 been only suspected, are now deeply compromised ; par- 

 ticularly the Wyndham family, who gave most minute 

 information, and many other Members of the Parliament 

 of the day. There is a very long letter of the Attorney, 

 arranging a plan for invasion, one from the Duke of 

 Leeds, offering Admiral Baker, then in the command of 

 the Channel Fleet, a Peerage, and 400,000/. in the result 

 of defection. There are letters of the Duke of Norfolk, 

 signed N., but of no importance ; he seems to have been 

 the most cautious of the party. I have heard something, 

 but not with that precision which you require, of a 



scheme arranged between a Mr. H and , for the 



assassination of the Pretender. This, if accurate, is a 

 serious charge, and may develope a singular scene of this 

 strange drama. 



" The letters of the Queen are principally introductions 

 of Irish families exiled and fugitive, to her Roman and 

 Italian friends. They enter, though numerous in the ex- 

 treme, but little into the political intrigues of the day. 



" Perhaps the most curious of the whole are the letters of 

 Miss Walkinshaw to Prince Charles ; the letters of her 

 daughter to the same ; the letters of James to him ; and 

 the remonstrance of his friends in Scotland." 



When such very curious matter as the above 

 came to light on a hurried glance at the Stuart 

 papers, what a mass of important and intensely 

 interesting historical information would doubtless 

 have been disclosed, had the entire of the half 

 million of documents been carefully examined and 

 noted ! 



In an old newspaper dated April 20, 1817, I 

 find the following additional particulai's respecting 

 the singular sale, and still more singular seizure, 

 of those valuable documents : — 



" It is now above two years since these important docu- 

 ments were discovered at Rome, by Mr. Watson, a Scotch 

 Gentleman, then resident in that city, in a situation which 

 must soon have produced their destruction, from the joint 

 operation of vermin and the elements. 



" M. Caesarini, the auditor of the Pope, was the Exe- 

 cutor of Cardinal York, the last male descendant of James 

 II. The Executor did not long survive the Cardinal: 

 and his successor M. Tassoni became his representative as 

 Executor of the Cardinal York. To M. Tassoni, then, 

 application was made for leave to examine the papers. 

 It was granted, together with permission to copy at plea- 

 sure. This last indulgence was soon discovered, from the 

 number and importance of the documents, to present 

 labour almost without end and led to the acquisition of 

 the originals, by purchase, from M. Tassoni. Though the 

 sura which he received for them was inconsiderable, yet 

 so little value did M. Tassoni set upon them, that he ac- 

 tually considered himself as much over paid. As they 

 were perused, however, their immense worth became 

 known, and Mr. Watson, unfortunately, considered him- 

 self under no necessity of concealing the value of the pro- 

 perty which he had bought. The archives of the Stuarts 

 were seized by an order of the Papal Government, in the 

 apartments of the proprietor ; and Cardinal Gonsalvi jus- 

 tified this despotic act bj' a brief avowal that the Stuart 

 papers were too great a prize for any subject to possess. 

 With his Eminence Cardinal Gonsalvi the proprietor in 

 vain remonstrated ; and at length notified his determina- 

 tion to appeal to his own Government, the British 

 Consul having declined to interfere. The Roman Go- 

 vernment, upon reflection, saw that the measure which 

 it adopted could neither be justified nor tolerated ; and 

 offered the property to the Prince Regent, as a present. 

 The British Government never denied the right of Mr. 

 Watson to a property which he had fairly bought, though 

 it wisely entered into a negociation with him, for the 

 purpose of rendering objects of much peculiar national in- 

 terest the property of the nation. — A respectable com- 

 mission has lately been appointed, under the Royal 

 warrants of the Prince Regent, to inquire into their nature 

 and value, and will report upon them accordingly." 



Is it known what conclusion the Royal Com- 

 missioners came to ? I understand that the Stuart 

 papers are still preserved at Rome, but I know 

 not in what repository. His Holiness Pius IX. 

 (the present Pope) possesses a conside'rable share 

 of that literary taste and liberality of disposition 

 which characterised the pontificate of Leo X. ; 

 and, were he solicited, might allow access to the 

 documents for historical purposes. 



A recent letter from Rome in the Augsburgh 

 Gazette informs us that the printing-office of the 

 Vatican is about to be reestablished, in order to 

 print a vast number of valuable documents pre- 



