415 



of James the Second. Had this little volume the arms of the 

 Duke of Monmouth on it, — either his own or the royal arms, 

 which the Duke was not unlikely to have assumed, — and had it 

 been among James's manuscripts connected with the history of 

 his own times, the defacement of the binding in this way 

 would be additional evidence of the authenticity of the volume; 

 for the history of James's manuscripts is this ; that at the period 

 of the French Revolution the persons in whose custody they 

 were, being fearful of the suspicion likely to arise from their 

 possession of books with royal arms on them, tore off the 

 covers and sent the books to St. Omer's. The after fate of 

 the larger books was, that they were burned; some small 

 ones, we are distinctly told, were saved from this fate, but 

 seem to have been disregarded, and all trace of them lost. 

 The Abbe Waters was the person with whom George the 

 Fourth negotiated for the Stuart papers, and from whom the 

 volumes which have since appeared as ' Clarke's Life of James 

 the Second' were obtained ; and it is from the Abbe Waters 

 we have the account of the destruction of King James's auto- 

 graph papers. I do not know whether it is worth observing, 

 that on the inner cover of this volume we find written the 

 words, ' Baron Watiers,' or ' Watrers.' It is not distinctly 

 enough written for me to be quite sure of the letter between 

 the ' t' and the ' e,' but there is a letter, and the name is not 

 Waters as now spelled. It is said by Sir John Reresby, that 

 in the book found on the Duke's person there were ' charms 

 against being wounded in battle.' I do not find any 

 such, but there are some prayers against a violent death, 

 which may have been his own, but have, to me, rather the 

 appearance of having been transcribed from some devotional 

 book. I suspect there is a mistake in supposing that this 

 book contains any charm for breaking open prison doors, and 

 I think it likely that Sir John Reresby was misled in the 

 same way that I was for a moment. There is in page 7 a 

 charm in French to procure repose of body and mind, and de- 



