HISTORIC SKETCHES. 



219 



Bloody Assizo, be WM joined by most of the Wet-country gen- 

 James got as far as Salisbury with an army, when many 

 of hi.-, officers and whole regiments of soldiers deserted to the 

 prince, and then he withdrew to London. From London he fled, 

 no one knew whither, on the defection of the ministers and the 

 y becoming general. Lord Halifax, with some other peers 

 .i-lio men, formed a provisional government, and the Prince 

 nge was invited to come to town. Suddenly the king re- 

 appeared in London, having been detected when about to escape 

 : -ii.un. in Kent ; but finding, after a few day's sojourn, 

 that the glory had really departed from him, he stole away 

 again, on the 23rd of December, and made his way to the French 

 king at St. Germain's, whither his queen and son had preceded 

 him. The Prince of Orange took possession of London, and a 

 Convention, or monster Parliament, summoned specially for the 

 occasion, asked him to be King of England. It had previously 

 been resolved by both Houses, after long and anxious delibera- 

 tion and discussion, " That King James II., having endeavoured 

 to subvert the constitution of the kingdom, /<;/ breaking //< 

 original contract between king and people, and having, by the 

 advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, violated the funda- 

 mental laws, and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has 

 abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby 

 vacant." The Bill of Bights, to which the sworn assent of the 

 new king and queon was required, contained a list of those rights 

 which had been most frequently invaded of late years ; and it 

 remains to this day one of the strongest bulwarks of the free 

 English constitution. 



James II. never made any attempt, after his overthrow at the 

 Boyne, to regain the crown ; but he did all he could to foment 

 the disorders which cropped up in England, and he procured his 

 son, the Prince of Wales, to be recognised by the French king and 

 some other Continental princes, as his successor to the English 

 throne ; and when he died, in 1 700, that son was recognised 

 and treated as a king. The English nation had formally taken 

 away from this prince the right to succeed, and had limited the 

 succession to members of the House of Hanover, failing the 

 continuance of heirs of William and Mary and Anne. They had 

 conferred a Parliamentary title upon the new line, and rudely 

 shaken " the right divine of kings to govern wrong " a right 

 which the House of Stuart put forward. It was quite natural 

 that they should put forward what they reckoned to be an 

 indefeasable right. A Parliamentary title was a new commodity 

 in English politics; for though Henry IV. had reigned by 

 virtue of one, it had not been able to stand abidingly against 

 the claim derived from birth, and had to be sustained in the 

 end by a marriage union with the claimant by descent. Many 

 people disbelieved in the power of the nation to decide who 

 should be its king ; many were attached to the old order of 

 things, and therefore to the old line of princes ; many more 

 were disgusted with the new order of things ; and some, especially 

 in Scotland, were animated by sentiments of personal loyalty, 

 the whole making up a large though disconnected following, 

 upon whom the exiled house of Stuart might reasonably rely 

 for assistance when called upon to give it. It was no small 

 matter to exchange the royal state and dignity of Great Britain 

 for the position of a dependant on the bounty of a foreign 

 prince, and quietly to step from the throne of a long line of 

 kings to take the part of a private gentleman. Then there was 

 a feeling of revenge, however carefully kept out of sight, which 

 urged the exiles to special exertion ; a desire to pay off old 

 scores, at least to a few, and to be in a position to humble those 

 who had hit them when they were down. There was also the 

 insult as to the birth of King James's son to be wiped out 

 in some signal way. All these motives stirred the hearts of 

 the banished, and they were aided, at least in the case of Prince 

 Charles Edward, by a personal courape which won for him 

 the admiration of foreigners, and even of many of his quondam 

 subjects. 



James II., as has been said, never made any attempt to regain 

 his throne. He contented himself, in return for the annual 

 pension of .2,800 which he received secretly from his daughter 

 Mary, with plotting against the life of his son-in-law, her 

 husband. His son, however, whose origin was questioned 

 the Old Pretender, as he was called did once, in 1715, make an 

 effort, such as it was, to " enjoy his own again." It was said 

 that Queen Anne had, for some time before her death, been 

 anxious for the restoration of her father's son to the throne. 



It is certain a large number of the English, including some of 

 the leading statesmen, were in favour of inch a plan ; and it u 

 said that arrangements were actually made for putting the 

 prince in military possession of the capital at the moment of 

 his sister's decease. William and Mary had died ehildleM; 

 Anne, who was appointed their successor by Act of Parliament, 

 had survived her children, and the nation saw about to happen 

 that which it certainly had contemplated as possible, though it 

 had hardly supposed it probable the advent of a pnrely un- 

 English prince to the throne, one utterly M untried M the 

 Pretender himself, without English proclivities, English idea*, 

 without so much as a knowledge of the English language. 

 There were very many who were willing to set aside the Act of 

 Settlement by which the House of Hanover was appointed to 

 succeed, and to try a prince of the old line, who, having been 

 schooled in adversity, they thought would be the less likely 

 (they forgot the precedent set by Charles II.) to kick orer the 

 traces. Only by the prompt and energetic action of the leading 

 Whig statesmen was the plot to shut out the House of Hanover 

 frustrated on the death of Queen Anne ; but so confident were 

 the intimate advisers of the exiled prince in the efficacy and 

 soundness of the Jacobite fervour, that when the dream they 

 had indulged in was rudely broken, and George I. quietly, and 

 for that matter deliberately, ascended the throne, they insisted 

 that the prince had but to show himself to kindle the enthu- 

 siasm of his followers into a flame. The King of France (Louis 

 XIV.) was appealed to for help. His vanity was flattered, and 

 his political instincts were touched with the notion of creating 

 a diversion in England, and of being able to claim friendship 

 from the future king by having placed him on the throne. AU 

 that was wanted from him was a vessel, a few officers, and a 

 little money. 



A vessel was granted, the officers were granted, but Louis had 



not the money to lend. He wrote, however, to his grandson, 



the King of Spain, who lent 400,000 crowns to further the 



enterprise. With one ship, with a few officers, and with the 



Spanish king's money, the Pretender sailed, reached the coast of 



' Scotland, disembarked, was warmly welcomed by a considerable 



party, and was defeated by the English army King George 



! sent against him. He escaped back to France, his adherents 



! were captured and put to death, and the hopes of the Jacobites 



were for a time destroyed. This was in 1715. 



For thirty years there was a cessation in the activity of the 

 Stuarts and their friends. The " Young Pretender," as he was 

 called, the grandson of James II., grew up in banishment, and 

 learned those principles which are always advocated by the 

 desperate, who are ever the companions of exiled princes. 

 He learned that it was the one object of his life, the reason 

 almost for his existence, that he should seek to recover by 

 fair means or foul the throne which had belonged to his 

 fathers. The French people had grown indifferent to the 

 king-errant, who never tried to win his own. The French 

 king was deterred by political considerations from even counte- 

 nancing his presence, and it behoved the Young Pretender, if 

 he wished not to lose himself utterly, to make an attempt after 

 so long an interval as thirty years. It was also represented 

 to him by those who should have known, that the oppor- 

 tunity was a favourable one for an invasion, that the clans 

 were ready to rise as soon as ever he appeared, and that the 

 old feeling against the House of Hanover, and in favour 

 of " the king over the water," had increased with the lapse 

 of time. 



So it was that at length on the 12th of June, 1745, Charles 

 Edward Stuart embarked on board a private vessel of eighteen 

 guns, with seven of his own friends, 1,800 sabres, 1,200 muskets, 

 and .1,920 in French money. These, besides the crew of the 

 vessel, who were only enough to work her, constituted the sum 

 total of the means upon which the prince relied for an invasion 

 of Great Britain. Soon after leaving port he was joined by a 

 French man-of-war of sixty-four guns, which had been hired of 

 the French Government, according to the custom of the time, 

 by a merchant of Dunkirk. This vessel was totally disabled 

 by a British ship which fell in with her, and only by good 

 fortune escaped capture. Charles Edward went on his way, 

 and in a few days arrived off the Scotch coast. He landed, 

 disembarked his arms, swords, and money, and then sent his 

 vessel back to the Continent to apprise the French and Spanish 

 kings of his doings. 



