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Cf/J 7v; PICKLE THE SPY OR Zbc 3ncognito of fl>rmce Charles BY ANDEEW LANG ' I knew the Master: on many secret steps of his career I have an authentic memoir in my hand ' Thk Master of Ballantraf. THIRD EDITION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1897 AH rights reserved ^ f) LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ) 4 • S SANTA BARBARA 7 DEDICATION TO THE LOED NAPIER AND ETTBICK, K.T. THIS STUDY OF OLD DIPLOMACY AND STATE SECEETS IS DEDICATED WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION As was to be expected, some Highlanders have declined to believe that Pickle was Young Glengarry, jably these gentlemen do believe in the authen- of Macpherson's Ossian. I ought perhaps to re said before that I did what I could, before publication, to obtain rebutting evidence, from the best source known to me, but without success. I may here sum up the evidence against Glen- garry. 1. Pickle and Glengarry have both been officers in the French service. 2. Both, and no other Highland chief, are to take an active part in the Elibank plot in London (1752). Both are intimate with the Earl Marischal, in Paris. 3. Both declare that no rising in the Highlands can take place without them. 4. Both are sons and heirs of the chief of the greatest Jacobite clan. Pickle says that whatever the Macdonnells do must be known, first, to him. Vlll TICKLE THE SPY 5. Both lose their fathers when Old Glengarry dies (September 1, 1754). 6. Both then go to their Highland estates. 7. Both are then specially observed by the Governor of Fort Augustus, near Glengarry's house (pp. 283-285). 8. Both are very ill in February-March, 1753. 9. Both use the unusual misspelling, 'how' for ' who.' 10. Pickle foolishly signs ' Alexander Jeanson ' and ' Alexander Jackson,' Young Glengarry being Alexander, son of John. 11. Glengarry's character, according to Holker, Blair, young Edgar, Mrs. Cameron (on Lochnell's information), Archy Cameron, .ZEneas Macdonald, and Colonel Trapaud, is that - of a thief, forger, traitor, swindler, swaggerer, and oppressor. 12. Prince Charles demands an interview with 4 G.' — and Pickle travels from England to meet him (September, 1752). 13. Pickle, in his last extant letter, asks the answer to be sent To Alexander MackdoneU of Glen- garry, Foraugustus. 14. Glengarry dies, and the Pickle letters cease. I la}' no stress on identity of handwriting, for that can always be contested. The only conceivable evasion is to suppose that Glengarry was always personated, to Henry Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, Gwynne Yaughan, and others, by somebody else. I gave my attention to this PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION IX theory and found it impossible. On no otlier hypo- thesis could even a jury of Macdonalds acquit Mr. Pickle. I may add that I have found the tradition of Glengarry's treachery surviving orally in the West Highlands. I observe that, according to Macallester, the Prince spoke of Glengarry as ' not fit even to be a sergeant.' This was probably false, but may have been reported. The writer on James Mohr in Blackwood (Decem- ber, 1817) was Dr. Macleay : see his Rob Roy and his limes, second edition, 1810, or that of 1881 (Brown, Edinburgh). Horace Walpole mentions Charles's abjuration of the Catholic faith in St. Martin's Church in London (Letters, iv. 390). By 1800-1820 Glengarry had acquired, as Mr. F. H. Groome points out to me, a character quite un- like that given by Colonel Trapaud, and the contem- porary Jacobite witnesses. In ' A Family Memoir of the Macdonalds of Kepj>och, by Angus Macdonald, M.D., of Taunton, written from 1800 to 1820, for his Niece, Mrs. Stanley, edited by Clements E. Markham, C.B., with some notes bv the late Charles Edward Stuart, Conite d'Albanie, 1885 ' [150 copies], we read, p. 138 : ' You know that your cousin Duncan, the late Glengarry, succeeded his uncle Alexander, one of the best men in the Highlands in his day, possess- ing eminently all the virtues of a Cean Cuine, whose hospitable mansion was ever open, as his assistance X PICKLE THE SPY to distress was ever ready. But, alas ! like too many of our clan, he was cut off in the prime of life, to the great grief of his family, and while he was busy in promoting the happiness of his people, as his worthy ancestor, Lord Macdonald of Aros, had done before him.' Mr. P. Eeid points out that Pickle, among his Jacobite friends, ascribes his supplies of money to ' Baron Kenady ' (p. 172). I have suggested 'New- castle ' as the real, and Major Kennedy as the feigned source of supplies. But in Lord Advocate Craigie's Letters, in Jesse's Pretenders, Sir Patrick Murray says : ' In most things Young Glengarry is advised and directed by Baron Kennedy. .' Pickle, too, tells his Jacobite friends that his money comes from ' Baron Kenady.' The inference is obvious. A. L. St. Andrews : January 24, 1897. PEEFACE This woful History began in my study of the Pelham Papers in the Additional Manuscripts of the British Museum. These include the letters of Pickle the Spy and of James Mohr Macgregoe. Transcripts of them were sent by me to Mr. PlObert Louis Stevenson, for use in a novel, which he did not live to finish. The character of Pickle, indeed, like that of the Master of Ballantrae, is alluring to writers of historical romance. Eesisting the temptation to use Pickle as the villain of fiction, I have tried to tell his story with fidelity. The secret, so long kept, of Prince Charles's incognito, is divulged no less by his own correspondence in the Stuart MSS. than by the letters of Pickle. For Her Majesty's gracious permission to read the Stuart Papers in the library of Windsor Castle, and to engrave a miniature of Prince Charles in the Royal collection, I have respectfully to express my sincerest gratitude. To Mr. Holmes, Her Majesty's librarian, I owe much kind and valuable aid. The Pickle Papers, and many despatches in the Xli PICKLE THE SPY State Papers, were examined and copied for me by Miss E. A. Ibbs. In studying the Stuart Papers, I owe much to the aid of Miss Violet Simpson, who has also assisted me by verifying references from many sources. It would not be easy to mention the numerous correspondents who have helped me, but it were ungrateful to omit acknowledgment of the kindness of Mr. Horatio F. Brown and of Mr. George T. Omond. I have to thank Mr. Alexander Peliiam Trotter for pet-mission to cite the MS. Letter Book of the exiled Chevalier's secretary, Andrew Lumisden, in Mr. Trotter's possession. Miss Macpherson of Cluny kindly gave me a copy of a privately printed Memorial of her celebrated ancestor, and, by Cluny's kind permission, I have been allowed to see some letters from his charter chest. Apparently, the more important secret papers have perished in the years of turmoil and exile. This opportunity may be taken for disclaiming any belief in the imputations against Cluny conjectu- rallv hazarded by 'Newton,' or Kennedy, in the following pages. The Chief's destitution in France, after a long period of suffering in Scotland, refutes these suspicions, bred in an atmosphere of jealousy and distrust. Among the relics of the family are none of the objects which Charles, in 1766-1767, found it difficult to obtain from Cluny's representa- tives for lack of a proper messenger. PREFACE XI 11 To Sir Arthur Halkktt, Bart., of Pitfirrane, I am obliged for a view of Balhaldie's correspondence with his agent in Scotland. The Directors of the French Foreign Office Archives courteously permitted Monsieur Leon Pajot to examine, and copy for me, some of the documents in their charge. These, it will be seen, add but little to our information during the years 1749-1766. I have remarked, in the proper place, that Mr. Murray Eose has already printed some of Pickle's letters in a newspaper. As Mr. Murray Eose assigned them to James Moiir Macgregor, I await with interest his arguments in favour of this opinion in his pro- mised volume of Essays. The ornament on the cover of this work is a copy of that with which the volumes of Prince Charles's own library were impressed. I owe the stamp to the kindness of Miss Warrender of Bruntsfield. Among printed books, the most serviceable have been Mr. Ewald's work on Prince Charles, Lord Stanhope's History, and Dr. Browne's ' History of the Highlands and Clans.' Had Mr. Ewald explored the Stuart Papers and the Memoirs of d'Argenson, Grimm, de Luynes, Barbier, and the Letters of Madame du Defiand (edited by M. de Lescure), with the ' Political Correspondence of Frederick the Great,' little would have been left for gleaners in his track. I must not foniet to thank Mr. and Mrs. I Cartels for researches in old magazines and journals. Mr. XIV PICKLE THE SPY Baktels also examined for me the printed corre- spondence of Frederick the Great. To the kindness of J. A. Ekskine Cunningham, Esq., of Balgownie I owe permission to photograph the portrait of Young Glengarry in his possession. If I might make a suggestion to historical students of leisure, it is this. The Life of the Old Chevalier (James III.) has never been written, and is well worth writing. My own studies, alas ! prove that Prince Charles's character was incapable of enduring misfortune. His father, less brilliant and less popular, was a very different man, and, I think, has every- thing to gain from an unprejudiced examination of his career. He has certainly nothing to lose. Since this work was in type the whole of Bishop Forbes's MS., The Lyon in Mourning, has been printed for an Historical Society in Scotland. I was unable to consult the MS. for this book, but it con- tains, I now find, no addition to the facts here set forth. November 5, 189G. CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY TO TICKLE Subject of this book — The last rally of Jacobitism hitherto ob- scure — Nature of the new materials — Information from spies, unpublished Stuart Papers, &c. — The chief spy — Probably known to Sir Walter Scott — ' Redgauntlet ' cited — ' Pickle the Spy '■ — His position and services — The hidden gold of Loch Arkaig — -Consequent treacheries — Character of Pickle — Pickle's nephew — Pickle's portrait — Pickle detected and de- nounced—To no purpose — -Historical summary — Incognito of Prince Charles — Plan of this work. ..... CHAPTER II CHARLES EDWARD STUART Prince Charles — Contradictions in his character — Extremes of bad and good — Evolution of character — The Prince's personal advantages — Common mistake as to the colour of his eyes — His portraits from youth to age — Descriptions of Charles by the Due de Liria ; the President de Drosses ; Gray ; Charles's courage — The siege of Gaeta — Story of Lord Elcho — The real facts — The Prince's horse shot at Culloden — Foolish fables of David Hume confuted — Charles's literary tastes — His cle- mency — His honourable conduct — Contrast with Cumberland — His graciousness — His faults — Charge of avarice — Love of wine — Religious levity — James on Charles's faults — An un- pleasant discovery — Influence of Murray of Broughton — Rapid decline of character after 1746 — Temper, wine, and women- Deep distrust of James's Court — Rupture with James — Divisions among Jacobites — King's men and Prince's men— Marischal, Kelly, Lismore, Clancarty — Anecdote of Clancarty and Draddock — Clancarty and d'Argenson — Balhaldie — Lally Tollendal — The Duke of York — His secret flight from Paris — ' Insigne Fourberie ' — Anxiety of Charles — The fatal cardinal's [•AGE xvi PICKLE THE SPY hat — Madame de Pompadour — Charles rejects her advances — His love affairs— Madame de Talmond— Voltaire's verses on her — Her scepticism in Religion— Her husband — Correspon- dence with Montesquieu — The Duchesse d'Aiguillon — Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle — Charles refuses to retire to Fribourg — The gold plate — Scenes with Madame de Talmond — Bulkeley's interference — Arrest of Charles — The compasses — Charles goes to Avignon — His desperate condition — His policy — Based on a scheme of D'Argenson — He leaves Avignon — He is lost to sight and hearing . . . . . . . . .11 CHAPTER III THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND FEBRUARY 1749 SEPTEMBER 1750. I. WHAT THE WORLD SAID Europe after Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle — A vast gambling establish- ment — Charles excluded — Possible chance in Poland — Sup- posed to have gone thither — ' Henry Goring's Letter ' — Romantic adventures attributed to Charles — Obvious blunders — Talk of a marriage — Count Briml's opinion — Proposal to kidnap Charles — To rob a priest — The King of Poland's ideas — Lord Hyndford on Frederick the Great — Lord Hyndford's mare's nest — Charles at Berlin — ' Send him to Siberia ' — The theory contradicted — Mischievous glee of Frederick — Charles discountenances plots to kill Cumberland — Father Myles Mac- donnell to James — London conspiracy — Reported from Rome —The Bloody Butcher Club — Guesses of Sir Horace Mann — Charles and a strike — Charles reported to be very ill — Really on the point of visiting England — September 1750 . . .44 CHAPTER IV THE PRINCE IN FAIRYLAND. II. — WHAT ACTUALLY OCCURRED Charles mystifies Europe — Montesquieu knows his secret — Sources of information — The Stuart manuscripts — Charles's letters from Avignon — A proposal of marriage — Kennedy and the hidden treasure — Where to look for Charles — Chcrclicz lafemme! — Hidden in Lorraine — Plans for entering Paris — Letter to Mrs. Drummond — To the Earl Marischal — Starts for Venice — At Strasbourg — Unhappy Harrington — Letter to James — Leaves Venice — ' A bird without a nest ' — Goes to Paris —The Prince's secret revealed — The convent of St. Joseph — CONTEXTS XV11 I'AGB Curious letter as Cartouche — Madame cle Routh — Cartouche again — Goring sent toEngland — A cypher — Portrait of Madame de Talmond — Portrait of Madame d'Aiguillon — Intellectual society — Mademoiselle Luci — ' Dener Bash ' — The secret hoard — Results of Goring's English mission — Timidity of English Jacobites — Supply of money — Charles a bibliophile — ' My big muff '■ — A patron of art — Quarrels with Madame de Tal- mond — Arms for a rising — Newton on Cluny — Kindness to Monsieur Le Coq — Madame de Talmond weary of Charles — Letters to her — Charles reads Fielding's novels — Determines to go to England — Large order of arms — -Reproached by James — Intagli of James — En route for London — September 1750 67 CHAPTER V THE PRINCE IN LONDON ; AND AFTER. — MADEMOISELLE LUCI (SEPTEMBER 1750 — JULY 175l) The Prince goes to London — Futility of this tour — English Jaco- bites described by iEneas Macdonald — No chance but in Tear- lach — Credentials to Madame de Talmond — Notes of visit to London — Doings in London — Gratifying conversion — Gems and medals — Pieport by Hanbury Williams — Hume's legend — Report by a spy — Billets to Madame de Talmond — Quarrel — Disappearance — ' The old aunt ' — Letters to Mademoiselle Luci — Charles in Germany — Happy thought of Hanbury Williams — Marshal Keith's mistress — Failure of this plan — The English ' have a clue ' — Books for the Prince — Made- moiselle Luci as a critic — Jealousy of Madame de Talmond — Her letter to Mademoiselle Luci — The young lady replies — Her bad health — Charles's reflections — Frederick ' a clever man ' — A new adventure 102 CHAPTER VI INTRIGUES, POLITICAL AND AMATORY. — DEATH OF MADEMOISELLE LUCI, 175:2 Hopes from Prussia — The Murrays of Elibank — Imprisonment of Alexander Murray — Recommended to Charles — The Elibank plot — Prussia and the Earl Marischal — His early history — Ambassador of Frederick at Versailles — His odd household- Voltaire — The Duke of Newcastle's resentment — Charles's view of Frederick's policy — His alleged avarice — Lad}' Mon- tagu — His money-box — Goring and the Earl Marischal — a Xviii PICKLE THE SPY ; .-^ CHAPTER VIII PICKLE AND THE ELIBANK PLOT The Elibank plot— George II. to be kidnapped — Murray and Young Glengarry — As Pickle, Glengarry betrays the plot — His revelations — Pickle and Lord Elibank — Pickle meets Charles — Charles has been in Berlin — Glengarry writes to James's secretary — Regrets failure of plot — Speaks of his illness — Laments for Archy Cameron — Hanbury "Williams seeks Charles in Silesia — Pickle's 'fit of sickness ' — His dealings with the Earl Marischal — Meets the Prince at the masked ball — ' A little piqued ' — Marischal criticises the plot to kidnap George II. — ' A night attack ' — Other schemes — ■ Charles's poverty — 'The prophet's clothes' — Mr. Carlyle on Frederick the Great — Alleges his innocence of Jacobite intrigues — Ccntradicts statesmen — Mr. Carlyle in error — I'AGK Secret meetings — The lace shop — Albemarle's information — ■ Charles at Ghent— Hanbury Williams's mares' nests — Charles and 'La Grandemain ' — She and Goring refuse to take his orders — Appearance of Miss Walkinshaw — Her history — Remonstrances of Goring — 'Commissions for the worst of men ' — ■' The little man ' — Lady Primrose — Death of Mademoiselle Luci — November 10, date of postponed Elibank plot — Danger of dismissing an agent . . . . 124 CHAPTER VII YOUNG GLENGARRY Tickle the spy — Not James Mohr Macgregor or Drummond — Pickle was the young chief of Glengarry — Proofs of this — His family history — His part in the Forty-five — Misfortunes of his family — In the Tower of London — Letters to James III. No cheque ! — Barren honours — In London in 1749 — His poverty — Mrs. Murray of Broughton's watch — Steals from the Loch Arkaig hoard — Charges by him against Archy Cameron — Is accused of forgery — Cameron of Torcastle — Glengarry sees James III. in Rome — Was he sold to Cumberland ? — Anonymous charges against Glengarry — A friend of Murray of Broughton — His spelling in evidence against him — Mrs. Cameron's accusation against Young Glen- garry — Henry Pelham and Campbell of Loclmell — Pickle gives his real name and address — Note on Glengarry family —Highlanders among the Turks . . . . . . 145 CONTEXTS XIX PAGE Correspondence of Frederick with Earl Marischal — The Earl's account of English plotters — Frederick's advice- Encouragement underhand — Arrest of Archy Cameron — His early history — Plea for clemency — Cameron is hanged — His testimony to Charles's virtues— His forgiveness of his ene- mies—Samuel Cameron the spy— His fate— Young Edgar on the hidden treasure— The last of the treasure— A salmo ferox ......-•••• F39 CHAPTEE IX DE PKOFUNDIS Charles fears for his own safety— Earl MarischaTs advice- Letter from Goring — Charles's danger — Charles at Coblentz— His changes of abode — Information from Fickle — Charles as a friar — Fickle sends to England Lochgarry's memorial- Scottish advice to Charles — List of loyal clans — Fickle on Frederick — On English adherents — ' They drink very hard ' — Fickle declines to admit arms — Frederick receives Jemmy Dawkins — His threats against England — Albemarle on Dawkins — Dawkins an archaeologist — Explores Palmyra — Charles at feud with Miss Walkinshaw — Goring's illness— A mark to be put on Charles's daughter — Charles's objets ■ TAUH Charles asks Louis for money — Idea of employing him in 1757 — Letter from Frederick — Chances in 1759 — French friends — ■ Murray and ' the Pills ' — Charles at Bouillon — Madame de Pompadour — Charles on Lord George Murray — The night march to Nairn— Manifestoes — Charles will only land in England — Murray wishes to repudiate the National Debt — Choiseul's promises — Andrew Lumisden — The Marshal's old boots — Clancarty — Internal feuds of Jacobites — Scotch and Irish quarrels — The five of diamonds — Lord Elibank's views — The expedition starting — Routed in Quiberon Bay — New hopes — Charles will not land in Scotland or Ireland — ' False subjects' — Pickle waits on events — His last letter — His ardent Patriotism —Still in touch with the Prince — Offers to sell a regiment of Macdonalds — Spy or colonel ? — Signs his real name — ' Alexander Macdonnell of Glengarry ' — Death of Pickle — His services recognised 300 CHAPTER XIV CONCLUSION Conclusion — Charles in 1762 — Flight of Miss Walkinshaw— Charles quarrels with France — Remonstrance from Murray — Death of King James — Charles returns to Rome — His charm — His disappointments — Lochgarry enters the Portuguese service — Charles declines to recognise Miss Walkinshaw— Report of his secret marriage to Miss Walkinshaw — Denied by the lady — Charles breaks with Lumisden — Bishop Forbes — Charles's marriage — The Duchess of Albany — ' All ends in song ' — The Princesse de Talmond— The end .... 316 Appendix A 325 Index 327 LIST OF PLATES PICKLE THE SPY Frontispiece THE PRINCE OF WALES, 1735 ... To face p. 18 From a Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. PRINCE CHARLES ABOUT 1734 . . 38 From a miniature at Strathtyrum. (By permission of Messrs. Charles Scribners' Sons.) PRINCE CHARLES IN 1750 „ 98 From a miniature in Her Majesty's Collection at Windsor Cast!--. MISS AVALKINSHAW ,, 140 From a miniature in the possession of Mrs. Wedderburn Ogilvie, of Rannagulzion. (By permission of Messrs. Charles Scribners' Sons.) THE KING, 1780 (?) » 320 From a Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. PICKLE THE SPY CHAPTEE I INTRODUCTORY TO PICKLE Subject of this book — The last rally of Jacobitism hitherto ob- scure — Nature of the new materials — Information from spies, unpublished Stuart Papers, &c. — The chief spy — Probably known to Sir Walter Scott—' Eedgauntlet ' cited — ' Pickle the Spy '—His position and services — The hidden gold of Loch Arkaig — Con- sequent treacheries — Character of Pickle — Pickle's nephew — Pickle's portrait — Pickle detected and denounced — To no purpose — • Historical summary— Incognito of Prince Charles — Plan of this work. The latest rally of Jacobitism, with its last romance, so faded and so tarnished, has hitherto remained obscure. The facts on which ' Waverley ' is based are familiar to all the world : those on which ' Eedgauntlet ' rests were but imperfectly known even to Sir Walter Scott. The story of the Forty-five is the tale of Highland loyalty : the story of 1750-1763 is the record of Highland treachery, or rather of the treachery of some Highlanders. That story, now for the first time to be told, is founded on documents never hither- to published, or never previously pieced together. The Additional Manuscripts of the British Museum, with relics of the government of Henry Felham and his J<. 2 PICKLE THE SPY brother, the Duke of Newcastle, have yielded their secrets, and given the information of the spies. The Stuart Papers at Windsor (partly published in Browne's ' History of the Highland Clans ' and by Lord Stanhope, but mainly virginal of type) fill up the inter- stices in the Pelham Papers like pieces in a mosaic, and reveal the general design. The letters of British ambassadors at Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Florence, St. Petersburg, lend colour and coherence. The political correspondence of Frederick the Great contributes to the effect. A trifle of in- formation comes from the French Foreign Office Archives ; French printed i Memoires ' and letters, neglected by previous English writers on the subject, offer some valuable, indeed essential, hints, and illus- trate Charles's relations with the wits and beauties of the reign of Louis XV. By combining information from these and other sources in print, manuscript, and tradition, we reach various results. We can now follow and understand the changes in the singular and wretched development of the character of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. We get a curious view of the manners, and a lurid light on the diplomacy of the middle of the eighteenth centurv. We go behind the scenes of many conspiracies. Above all, we en- counter an extraordinary personage, the great, high- born Highland chief who sold himself as a spy to the English Government. His existence was suspected by Scott, if not clearly known and understood. THE SECRET TREASURE 3 Iii his introduction to ' Eedgauntlet,' ] Sir Walter Scott says that the ministers of George II. : thought it proper to leave Dr. Cameron's new schemes in concealment (1753), lest by divulging them they had indicated the channel of communication which, it is now well known, they possessed to all the plots of Charles Edward.' To 'indicate' that secret 'channel of communication ' between the Government of the Pelhams and the Jacobite conspirators of 1749- 17G0 is one purpose of this book. Tradition has vaguely bequeathed to us the name of ' Pickle the Spy,' the foremost of many traitors. Who Pickle was, and what he did, a whole romance of prosperous treachery, is now to be revealed and illustrated from various sources. Pickle was not only able to keep the Duke of Newcastle and George II. well informed as to the inmost plots, if not the most hidden movements of Prince Charles, but he could either paralyse a serious, or promote a premature, rising in the Highlands, as seemed best to his English employers. We shall find Pickle, in company with that devoted Jacobite, Loch- garry, travelling through the Highlands, exciting- hopes, consulting the chiefs, unburying a hidden treasure, and encouraoino- the clans to rush once more on English bayonets. Romance, in a way, is stereotyped, and it m characteristic that the last romance of the Stuarts should be interwoven with a secret treasure. This mass of French gold, buried after Culloden at Loch 1 Edition of 1832, i. p. x. b2 4 PICKLE THE SPY Arkaier, in one of the most remote recesses of the Highlands, was, to the Jacobites, what the dwarf Andvari's hoard was to the Niflungs, a curse and a cause of discord. We shall see that rivalry for its possession produced contending charges of disloyalty, forgery, and theft among certain of the Highland chiefs, and these may have helped to promote the spirit of treachery in Pickle the Spy. It is probable, though not certain, that he had acted as the agent of Cumberland before he was sold to Henry Pelham, and he was certainly communicating the results of his inquiries in one sense to George II., and, in another sense, to the exiled James III. in Borne. He was betraying his own cousins, and traducing his friends. Pickle is plainly no common spy or ' paltry vidette,' as he words it. Possibly Sir Walter Scott knew who Pickle was : in him Scott, if he had chosen, would have found a character very like Barry Lyndon (but worse), very unlike any personage in the Waverley Novels, and somewhat akin to the Master of Ballantrae. The cool, good-humoured, smiling, unscrupulous villain of high rank and noble lineage ; the scoundrel happily unconscious of his own un- speakable infamy, proud and sensitive upon the point of honour ; the picturesque hypocrite in religion, is a being whom we do not meet in Sir Walter's romances. In Pickle he had such a character readv made to his hand, but, in the time of Scott, it would have been dangerous, as it is still disagreeable, to unveil this old mystery of iniquity. A friend of Sir SCOTT AND PICKLE 5 Walter's, a man very ready with the pistol, the last, as was commonly said, of the Highland chiefs, was of the name and blood of Pickle, and would have taken up Pickle's feud. Sir Walter was not to be moved by pistols, but not even for the sake of a good story would he hurt the sensibilities of a friend, or tarnish the justly celebrated loyalty of the Highlands. Now the friend of Scott, the representative of Pickle in Scott's generation, was a Highlander, and Pickle was not only a traitor, a profligate, an oppressor of his tenantry, and a liar, but (according to Jacobite gossip which reached ' King James ') a former of the Kino's name ! Moreover he was, in all probability, one fountain of that reproach, true or false, which still clings to the name of the brave and gentle Archibald Cameron, the brother of Lochiel, whom Pickle brought to the gallows. If we add that, when last we hear of Pickle, he is probably engaged in a double treason, and certainly meditates selling a regiment of his clan, like Hessians, to the Hanoverian Government, it will be plain that his was no story for Scott to tell. Pickle had, at least, the attraction of being eminently handsome. No statelier gentleman than Pickle, as his faded portrait shows him in full High- land costume, ever trod a measure at Holyrood. Tall, athletic, with a frank and pleasing face, Pickle could never be taken for a traitor and a spy. He seemed the fitting lord of that castellated palace of his race, which, beautiful and majestic in decay, mirrors 6 PICKLE THE SPY itself in Loch Oicli. Again, the man was brave ; for he moved freely in France, England, and Scotland, well knowing that the skian was sharpened for his throat if he were detected. And the most extraordinary fact in an extraordinary story is that Pickle was detected, and denounced to the King over the water by Mrs. Archibald Cameron, the widow of his victim. Yet the breach between James and his little Court, on one side, and Prince Charles on the other, was then so absolute that the Prince was dining with the spy, chatting with him at the opera-ball, and pre- senting him with a gold snuff-box, at about the very time when Pickle's treachery was known in Eome. Afterwards, the knowledge of his infamy came too late, if it came at all. The £>Teat scheme had failed : Cameron had fallen, and Frederick of Prussia, ceas- ing to encourage Jacobitism, had become the ally of England. These things sound like the inventions of the romancer, but the} T rest on unimpeachable evidence, printed and manuscript, and chiefly on Pickle's own letters to his King, to his Prince, and to his English employers — we cannot say ' pay-masters,' for Pickle was never paid ! He obtained, indeed, sin- gular advantages, but he seldom or never could wring ready money from the Duke of Newcastle. To understand Pickle's career, the reluctant reader must endure a certain amount of actual history in minute details of date and place. Every one is acquainted with the brilliant hour of Prince CHARLES'S INCOGNITO 7 Charles : his landing in Moidart accompanied by only seven men, his march on Edinburgh, his success at Preston pans, the race to Derby, the retreat to Scotland, the gleam of victory at Falkirk, the ruin of Culloden, the long months of wanderings and distress, the return to France in 174G. Then came two years of baffled intrigues ; next, the Treaty of Aix- la-Chapelle insisted on the Prince's expulsion from France ; last, he declined to withdraw. On Decem- ber 10, 1748, he was arrested at the opera, was lodged in the prison of Vincennes, was released, and made his way to the Pope's city of Avignon, arriving there in the last days of December 1748. On February 28, 1749, he rode out of Avignon, and disappeared for many months from the ken of history. For nearly eighteen years he preserved his incognito, vaguely heard of here and there in England, France, Germany, Flanders, but always involved in mystery. On that mystery, impenetrable to his father, Pickle threw light enough for the purposes of the English Government, but not during the darkest hours of Charles's incognito. 'Le Prince Edouard,' says Barbier in his journal for February 1750, 'fait l'admiration et la curiosite de l'Europe.' This work, alas ! is not likely to add to the admiration entertained for the unfortunate adventurer, but any surviving curiosity as to the Prince's secret may be assuaged. In the days of 1740-1700, before Pickle's revelations begin, the drafts of the (Prince's memoranda, notes, and angry 8 PICKLE THE SrY love-letters, preserved in Her Majesty's Library, enable us to follow his movements. On much that is obscurely indicated in scarcely decipherable scrawls, light is thrown by the French memoirs of that age. The names of Madame de Talmond, Madame d'Aiguillon, and the celebrated Montesquieu, are beacons in the general twilight. The memoirs also explain, what was previously inexplicable, the motives of Charles in choosing a life ' in a hole of a rock,' as he said after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). It is necessary, however, to study the internal feuds of the Jacobites at this period, and these are illuminated by the Stuart Papers, the letters of James and his ministers. The plan of our narrative, therefore, will be arranged in the following manner. Pirst, we sketch the character of Prince Charles in boyhood, during his Scottish expedition, and as it developed in cruelly thwartinq- circumstances between 1746 and 1749. In illustrating his character the hostile parties within the Jacobite camp must be described and defined. From February 1749 to September 1750 (when he visited London), we must try to pierce the darkness that has been more than Egyptian. We can, at least, display the total ignorance of Courts and diplomatists as to Charles's movements before Pickle came to their assistance, and we dis- cover a secret which they ought to have known. After the date 1752 we give, as far as possible, the personal history of Pickle before lie sold himself, PLAN OF THE BOOK 9 and we unveil his motives for his villany. Then we display Pickle in action, we select from his letters, we show him deep in the Scottish, English, and continental intrigues. He spoils the Elibank Plot, he reveals the hostile policy of Frederick the Great, he leads on to the arrest of Archibald Cameron, he sows disunion, he traduces and betrays. He finally recovers his lands, robs his tenants, dabbles (pro- bably) in the French scheme of invasion (1759), offers further information, tries to sell a regiment of his clan, and dies unexposed in 1761. Minor spies are tracked here and there, as Rob Hoy's son, James Mohr Macgregor, Samuel Cameron, and Oliver Macallester. English machinations against the Prince's life and liberty are unveiled. His utter decadence is illustrated, and we leave him weary, dishonoured, and abandoned. ' A sair, sair altered man Prince Charlie cam' hame ' to Eome ; and the refusal there of even a titular kingship. The whole book aims chiefly at satisfying the passion of curiosity. However unimportant a secret may be, it is pleasant to know what all Europe was once vainly anxious to discover. In the revelation of manners, too, and in tracing the relations of famous wits and beauties with a person then so celebrated as Prince Charles, there is a certain amount of entertainment which may excuse some labour of research. Our history is of next to no 10 PICKLE THE SPY political value, but it revives as in a magic mirror somewhat dim, certain scenes of actual human life. Now and again the mist breaks, and real passionate faces, gestures of living men and women, are beheld in the clear-obscure. We see Lochgarry throw his dirk after his son, and pronounce his curse. We mark Pickle furtively scribbling after midnight in French inns. We note Charles hiding in the alcove of a lady's chamber in a convent. We admire the * rich anger ' of his Polish mistress, and the sullen rage of Lord Hyndford, baffled by ' the perfidious Court ' of Frederick the Great. The old histories emerge into light, like the writing in sympathetic ink on the secret despatches of King James. 11 CHAPTER II CHARLES EDWARD STUART Prince Charles — Contradictions in his character — Extremes of had and good — Evolution of character — The Prince's personal ad- vantages — Common mistake as to the colour of his eyes — His portraits from youth to age — Descriptions of Charles by the Due de Liria ; the President de Brosses ; Gray; Charles's courage — The siege of Gaeta — Story of Lord Elcho — The real facts — The Prince's horse shot at Culloden — Foolish fables of David Hume confuted — Charles's literary tastes — His clemency — His honour- able conduct — Contrast with Cumberland— His graciousness — His faults — Charge of avarice — Love of wine— Religious levity — ■ James on Charles's faults — An unpleasant discovery — Influence of Murray of Broughton — Rapid decline of character after 1740 — - Temper, wine, and women — Deep distrust of James's Court — Rupture with James — Divisions among Jacobites — King's men and Prince's men — Marischal, Kelly, Lismore, Clancarty — Anec- dote of Clancarty and Braddock — Clancarty and d'Argenson — Balhaldie— Lally Tollendal— The Duke of York— His secret flight from Paris — ' Insigne Fourberie ' — Anxiety of Charles — The fatal cardinal's hat — Madame de Pompadour — Charles rejects her advances — His love affairs— Madame de Talmond — Voltaire's verses on her — Her scepticism in religion — Her husband — Correspondence with Montesquieu — The Duchesse d'Aiguillon— Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle — Charles refuses to retire to Fribourg — The gold plate — Scenes with Madame de Talmond — Bulkeley's interference — Arrest of Charles — The compasses — Charles goes to Avignon — His desperate condition — His policy — Based on a scheme of d'Argenson— He leaves Avignon — He is lost to sight and hearing. 1 Charles Edward Stuart,' says Lord Stanhope, ' is one of those characters that cannot be portrayed at a single sketch, but have so greatly altered as to 12 PICKLE THE SPY require a new delineation at different periods.' l Now lie ' glitters all over like the star which they tell you appeared at his nativity,' and which still shines beside him, Micat inter omnes, on a medal struck in his boyhood. 2 Anon he is sunk in besotted vice, a cruel lover, a solitary tippler, a broken man. We study the period of transition. Descriptions of his character vary between the noble encomium written in prison by Archibald Cameron, the last man who died for the Stuarts, and the virulent censures of Lord Elcho and Dr. King. Veterans known to Sir Walter Scott wept at the mention of the Prince's name ; yet, as early as the tenth year after Prestonpans, his most devoted adherent, Henry Goring, left him in an angry despair. Nevertheless, the character so variously estimated, so tenderly loved, so loathed, so despised, was one character ; modified, swiftly or slowfy, as its natural elements developed or decayed under the various influences of struggle, of success, of long endurance, of hope deferred, and of bitter disappointment. The gay, kind, brave, loyal, and clement Prince Charlie became the fierce, shabby, battered exile, homeless, and all but friendless. The change, of course, was not instantaneous, but gradual ; it was not the result of one, but of many causes. Even out of his final degradation, Charles occasionally speaks with his 1 History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. London, 1838, iii. 279. 2 An authentic account of the conduct of the Young Chevalier, p. 7. Third edition, 1749. DEVELOPMENT OF CHARLES 13 real voice : his inborn goodness of heart, remarked before his earliest adventures, utters its protest against the self he has become ; just as, on the other hand, lonsr ere he set his foot on Scottish soil, his father had noted his fatal inclination to wine and revel. The processes in this change of character, the events, the temptations, the trials under which Charles became an altered man, have been very slightly studied, and, indeed, have been very obscurely known. Even Mr. Ewald, the author of the most elaborate biography of the Prince, 1 neglected some important French printed sources, while manuscript documents, here for the first time published, were not at his command. The present essay is itself un- avoidably incomplete, for of family papers bearing on the subject many have perished under the teeth ,pf time, and in one case, of rats, while others are not accessible to the writer. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this work elucidates much which has long been veiled in the motives, conduct, and secret movements of Charles during the vears between 1749 and the death, in 17 GG, of his father, the Old Chevalier. Charles then emerged from a retirement of seventeen years ; the European game of Hide and Seek was over, and it is not proposed to study the Prince in the days of his manifest decline, and among the disgraces of his miserable marriage. His ' incognito ' is our topic ; the period of ' deep and isolated enter- 1 Loudon, 1879. 14 PICKLE THE SPY prise ' which puzzled every Foreign Office in Europe, and practically only ended, as far as hope was concerned, with the break-up of the Jacobite party in 1754-1756, or rather with Hawke's defeat of ■Conflans in 1759. Ours is a strange and melancholy tale of desperate loyalties, and of a treason almost unparalleled for secrecy and persistence. AVe have to do with the back-stairs of diplomacy, with spies and traitors, with cloak and sword, with blabbing servants, and inquisitive ambassadors, with disguise and dis- covery, with friends more staunch than steel, or weaker than water, with petty jealousies, with the relentless persecution of a brave man, and with the consequent ruin of a gallant life. To understand the psychological problem, the degradation of a promising personalit) T , it is necessary to glance rapidly at what we know of Charles before his Scottish expedition. To begin at the beginning, in physical qualities ■the Prince was dowered by a kind fairy. He was firmly though slimly built, of the best stature for strength and health. ' He had a body made for war,' writes Lord Elcho, who hated him. The gift of beauty (in his case peculiarly fatal, as will be seen) had not been denied to him. His brow was high and broad, his nose shapely, his eyes of a rich dark brown, his hair of a chestnut hue, golden at •the tips. Though his eyes are described as blue, both in 1744 by Sir Horace Mann, and in later life CHARLES'S PERSON 15 (1770) by an English lady in Borne, though Lord Stanhope and Mr. Stevenson agree in this error, brown was really their colour. 1 Charles inherited the dark eyes of his father, ' the Black Bird,' and of Mary Stuart. This is manifest from all the original portraits and miniatures, including that given by the Prince to his secretary, Murray of Broughton, now in my collection. In boyhood Charles's face had a merry, mutinous, rather reckless expression, as por- traits prove. Hundreds of faces like his may be seen at the public schools ; indeed, Charles had many ' doubles,' who sometimes traded on the resemblance, sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, misled the spies that constantly pursued him. 2 His adherents fondly declared that his natural air of distinction, his princely bearing, were too marked to be concealed m any travesty. Yet no man has, in disguises of his person, been more successful. We may grant ' the grand air ' to Charles, but we must admit that he could successfully dissemble it. About 1743, when a number of miniatures of the Prince were done in Italy for presentation to adherents, Charles's boyish mirth, as seen in these 1 Letters from Italy by an Englishwoman, ii. 198. London 1776. Cited by Lord Stanhope, iii. 556. Horace Mann to the Duke of Newcastle. State Papers. Tuscany. Jan. ^J, 174;,-. In Ewald, i. 87. Both authorities speak of blue eyes. 2 A false Charles appeared in Selkirkshire in 1745. See Mr. Craig Brown's History of Ettrich Forest. The French, in 1759, meant to send a false Charles to Ireland with Thurot. Another appeared at Civita Vecchia about 1752. The tradition of Roderick Mackenzie, who died under English bullets, crying ' You have slain your Prince,' is familiar. We shall meet other pseudo-Chaikb*s. 16 PICKLE THE SPY works of art, lias become somewhat petulant, if not arrogant, but he is still ' a lad with the bloom of a lass.' A shade of aspiring melancholy marks a portrait done in France, just before the expedition to Scotland. Le Toque's fine portrait of the Prince in armour (1748) shows a manly and martial but rather sinister countenance. A plaster bust, done from a life mask, if not from Le Moine's bust in marble (1750), was thought the best likeness by Dr. King. This bust was openly sold in Eed Lion Square, and, when Charles visited Dr. King in September 1750, the Doctor's servant observed the resemblance. I have seen a copy of this bust, and the medal struck in 1750, an intaglio of the same date, and a very rare profile in the collection of the Duke of Atholl, give a similar idea of the Prince as he was at thirty. A distinguished artist, who outlined Charles's profile and applied it to another of Her present Majesty in youth, tells me that they are almost exact counterparts. Next we come to the angry eyes and swollen features of Ozias Humphreys's miniature, in the Duke of Atholl's collection, and in his sketch published in the ' Lockhart Papers' (1776), and, finally, to the fallen weary old face designed by Gavin Hamilton. Charles's younger brother, Henry, Duke of York, was a prettier bo}*, but it is curious to mark the prematurely priestly and ' Italianate ' expression of the Duke in youth, while Charles still seems a merry lad. Of Charles in boyhood many anecdotes are CHARLES AS A BOY 17 told. At the age of two or three he is said to have been taken to see the Pope in his garden, and to have refused the usual marks of reverence. Walton, the English agent in Florence, reports an outbreak of ferocious temper in lToo. 1 Though based on gossip, the story seems to forebode the later excesses of anger. Earlier, in 1727, the Due de Liria, a son of Marshal Berwick, draws a pretty picture of the child when about seven years old : — ' The Kins of England did not wish me to leave before May 4, and I was only too happy to remain at his feet, not merely on account of the love and re- spect I have borne him all my life, but also because I was never weary of watching the Princes, his sons. The Prince of Wales was now six and a half, and, besides his great beauty, was remarkable for dexterity, grace, and almost supernatural cleverness. Not only could he read fluently, but he knew the doctrines of the Christian faith as well as the master who had taught him, He could ride ; could fire a gun ; and, more surprising still, I have seen him take a cross- bow and kill birds on the roof, and split a rolling ball with a shaft, ten times in succession. He speaks English, French, and Italian perfectly, and altogether he is the most ideal Prince I have ever met in the course of my life. ' The Duke of York, His Majesty's second son, is two years old, and a prodigy of beauty and strength.' 2 1 Ewald, i. 41. 2 Document os Incditos. Madrid. 1883. Vol. xciii. 18. C 3 8 PICKLE THE SPY Gray, certainly no Jacobite, when at Borne with Horace Walpole speaks very kindly of the two gay young Princes. He sneers at their melancholy father, of whom Montesquieu writes, ' ce Prince a une bonne pliysionomie et noble. 11 paroit triste, pieux! 1 Young Charles was neither pious nor melancholy. Of Charles at the age of twenty, the President de Brosses (the author of 'Les Dieux Fetiches') speaks as an unconcerned observer. ' I hear from those who know them both thoroughly that the eldest has far higher worth, and is much more beloved by his friends ; that he has a kind heart and a high courage ; that he feels warmly for his family's misfortunes, and that if some day he does not retrieve them, it will not be for want of intrepidity.' 2 Charles's gallantry when under fire as a mere boy, at the siege of Gaeta (1734), was, indeed, greatly admired and generally extolled. 3 His courage has been much more foolishly denied by his enemies than too eagerly applauded by friends who had seen him tried by every species of danger. Aspersions have been thrown on Charles's per- sonal bravery ; it may be worth while to comment on them. The story of Lord Elcho's reproaching the Prince for not heading a charge of the second line at Culloden, has unluckily been circulated by Sir 1 Voyages de Montesquieu. Bordeaux, 1894. P. 250. 2 Letters of De Brosses, as translated by Lord Stanhope, iii. 72. 3 See authorities in Ewald, i. 48-50. //. SnfiMire.paud ':%: i^,,,,,- ,./^/ '„/;■., 1735. CHARLES'S COURAGE 19 Walter Scott. On February 9, 1S2G, Scott met Sir James Stuart Denham, wlio.se father was out in the Forty-live, and whose uncle was the Lord Elclio of that date. Lord Elclio wrote memoirs, still unpub- lished, but used by Mr. Ewald in his ' Life of the Prince.' Elclio is a hostile witness : for twenty years he vainly dunned Charles for a debt of I.500Z. According to Sir James Stuart Denham, Elclio asked Charles to lead a final charge at Culloden, retrieve the battle, or die sword in hand. The Prince rode off the field, Elclio calling him ' a damned, cowardly Italian .' No such passage occurs in Elcho's diary. He says that, after the flight, he found Charles, in the belief that he had been betrayed, anxious only for his Irish officers, and determined to go to France, not to join the clans at Euthven. Elclio most justly censured him, and resolved ' never to have anything more to do with him,' a broken vow ! l As a matter of fact, Sir Eobert Strange saw Charles vainly trying to rally the Highlanders, and Sir Stuart Thriepland of Fingask gives the same evidence. 2 In his seclusion during 1750, Charles wrote a little memoir, still unpublished, about his Highland wanderings. In this he says that he was ' led off the field by those about him,' when the clans broke at Culloden. ' The Prince then changed his horse, his o 1 Ewald, ii. 30. Scott's Journal, i. 114. 2 Dennistoun's Life of Strange, i. 63, and an Abbotsford manu- script. c 2 20 PICKLE THE SPY own having been wounded by a musket-ball in the shoulder.' * The second-hand chatter of Hume, in his letter to Sir John Pringle (February lo, 1773), is unworthy of serious attention. Helvetius told Hume that his house at Paris had sheltered the Prince in the years following his ex- pulsion from France, in 1748. He called Charles ' the most unworthy of mortals, insomuch that I have been assured, when he went down to Nantz to em- bark on his expedition to Scotland, he took fright and refused to go on board ; and his attendants, thinking the matter gone too far, and that they would be affronted for his cowardice, carried him in the night time into the ship, pieds et mains lies.' The sceptical Hume accepts this absurd state- ment without even asking, or at least without giving, the name of Helvetius's informant. The adventurer who insisted on going forward when, at his first landing in Scotland, even Sir Thomas Sheridan, with all the chiefs present, advised retreat, cannot con- ceivably have been the poltroon of Hume's myth. Even Hume's correspondent, Sir John Pringle, was manifestly staggered by the anecdote, and tells Hume that another of his fables is denied by the very wit- ness to whom Hume appealed. 2 Hume had cited Lord Holdernesse for the story that Charles's presence 1 Stuart Papers, in the Queen's Library. Also the Lockhart Papers mention the wounding of the horse. 2 Life and Correspondence of David Hume. Hill Burton, ii. 404-466. CHARLES'S STRENGTH 21 in London in 17-53 (1750 seems to be meant) was known at the time to George II. Lord Holdernesse declared that there was nothing in the tale given by Hume on his authority ! That Charles did not join the rallied clans at Kuthven after Culloden was the result of various misleading circumstances, not of cowardice. Even after 1746 he constantly carried his life in his hand, not only in expeditions to Eng- land (and probably to Scotland and Ireland), but in peril from the daggers of assassins, as will later be shown. High-spirited and daring, Charles was also hardy. In Italy he practised walking without stockings, to inure his feet to lon^ marches : he was devoted to boar-hunting, shooting, and golf. 1 He had no touch of Italian effeminacy, otherwise he could never have survived his Highland distresses. In travelling he was swift, and incapable of fatigue. * He has,' said an early observer, ' the habit of keeping a secret.'' Many secrets, indeed, he kept so well that history is still baffled by them, as diplomatists were perplexed between 1749 and 1766. 2 We may discount Murray of Broughton's eulogies on Charles's Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and his know- ledge of history and philosophy, though backed by the Jesuit Cordara. 3 Charles's education had been inter- rupted by quarrels between his parents about Catholic 1 Jacobite Memoirs. Lord Elcho's MS. Journal. Ewald, i. 77. 2 State Papers Domestic. 1745. No. 79. 3 Genuine Memoirs of John Murray of Brougliton. La Spedizione di Carlo Stuart. 22 PICKLE THE SrY or Protestant tutors. His cousin and governor, Sir Thomas Sheridan (a descendant of James II.), certainly did not teach him to spell; his style in French and English is often obscure, and, when it is clear, we know not whether he was not inspired by some more literary adviser. In matters of taste he was fond of music and archeology, and greatly addicted to books. De Brosses, however, considered him ' less cultivated than Princes should be at his a<">~e ' and d'Amenson savs that his knowledge was scanty and that he had little conversation. A few of his books, the morocco tooled with the Prince of Wales's feathers, remain, but not enough to tell us much about his literary tastes. On these, however, we shall give ample information. In Paris, after Culloden, he bought Macchiavelli's works, probably in search of practical hints on state-craft. In spite of a proclamation by Charles, which Montesquieu applauded, he certainly had no claim to a seat in the French Academy, which Montesquieu playfully offered to secure for him. In brief, Charles was a spirited, eager boy, very capable of patience, intensely secretive, and, as he showed in 1745-1746, endowed with a really extra- ordinary clemency, and in one regard, where his enemies were concerned, with a sense of honour most unusual in his generation. His care for the wounded, after Prestonpans, is acknowledged by the timid and Whiggish Home, in his 'History of the Rebellion,' and is very warmly and gracefully ex- CHARLES'S HONOUR 23 pressed in a letter to his father, written atHolyrood. 1 He could not be induced to punish miscreants who attempted his life and snapped pistols in his face. He could hardly be compelled to retort to the English offer of 30,000/. for his head by issuing a similar proclamation about ' the Elector.' ' I smiled and treated it' (the proclamation of a reward of 30,000/. for his head) ' with the disdain it deserved, upon which they ' (the Highlanders) ' flew into a violent rage, and insisted upon my doing the same by him.' This occurs in a letter from Charles to James, Sep- tember 10, 174-3, dated from Perth. A copy is found among Bishop Forbes's papers. Here Charles de- plores the cruelties practised under Charles II. and James II., and the consequent estrangement of the Duke of Argyll. 2 In brief, the contest between Charles and Cum- berland was that of a civilised and chivalrous com- mander against a foe as treacherous and cruel as a Huron or an Iroquois. On this point there is no possibility of doubt. The English Government offered a vast reward for Charles, dead or alive. The soldiers were told significantly, by Cumberland, that he did not want prisoners. On the continent assassins lurked for the Prince, and ambassadors urged the use of personal violence. Meanwhile the Prince absolutely forbade even a legitimate armed 1 Treasury Papers. 1745. No. 214. First published by Mr. Ewabt, i. 21."). 2 Jacobite Memoirs, p. 32. 24 PICKLE THE SPY attack directed mainly against his enemy, then red- handed from the murder of the wounded. With this loyalty to his foes, with this clemency to enemies in his power, Charles certainly combined a royal grace, and could do handsome things hand- somely. Thus, in 1745, some of the tenants of Oliphant of Gask would not don the white cockade at his command. He therefore 'laid an arrest or inhibition on their corn-fields.' Charles, finding the grain hanging dead-ripe, as he marched through Perthshire, inquired the cause, and when he had learned it, broke the ' taboo ' by cutting some ears with his sword, or by gathering them and giving them to his horse, saying that the farmers might now, by his authority, follow his example and break the inhibition. 1 Making every allowance for an enthusiasm of loyalty on the part of the narrators in Bishop Forbes's MS. 'Lyon in Mourning' (partly published by Eobert Chambers in 'Jacobite Memoirs 2 ), it is certain that the courage, endurance, and gay content of the Prince in his Highland wanderings deserve the high praise given by Smollett. Thus, in many ways we see the elements of a distinguished and attractive character in Charles. His enemies, like the rene- gade Dr. King, of St. Mary's Hall (ob. 1763), in his 1 Chambers's Rebellion of 1745, i. 71. The authority is ' Tra- dition.' 2 I have read parts of Forbes's manuscript in the Advocates' Library, but difficulties were made when I wished to study it for this book. CONDUCT AS TO MONEY 25 posthumous ' Anecdotes,' accused the Prince of avarice. He would borrow money from a lady, says King, while he had plenty of his own ; he neglected those who had ruined themselves for his sake. Henry Goring accused the Prince of shabbiness to his face, but assuredly he who insisted on laying down money on the rocks of a deserted fishers' islet to pay for some dry fish eaten there by himself and his com- panions — he who gave liberally to gentle and simple out of the treasure buried near Loch Arkaig, who refused a French pension for himself, and asked favours only for his friends — afforded singular proofs of Dr. King's charge of selfish greed. The fault grew on him later. After breaking with the French Court in 1748, Charles had little or nothing of his own to give away. His Sobieski jewels he had pawned for the expenses of the war, having no heart to wear them, he said, ' on this side of the water.' He was often in actual need, though we may not accept d'Argenson's story of how he was once seen selling his pistols to a gun-maker. 1 If ever he was a miser, that vice fixed itself upon him in his utter moral ruin. Were there, then, no signs in his early life of the faults which grew so rapidly when hope was lost ? There were such signs. As early as 1742, James had observed in Charles a slight inclination to wine and gaiet}^, and believed that his companions, especially Francis Strickland, 2 were setting him 1 D'Argenson's Mcmoircs. 2 This gentleman died at Carlisle in 1745, according to Bishop Forbes. Jacobite Memoirs, p. 4. 26 PICKLE THE SPY against his younger brother, the Duke of York, who had neither the health nor the disposition to be a roysterer. 1 Again, on February 3, 1747, James recurs, in a long letter, to what passed in 1742, ' because that is the foundation, and I may say the key, of all that has followed.' Now in 1742 Murray of Broughton paid his first visit to Home, and was fascinated by Charles. This unhappy man, afterwards the Judas of the cause, was unscrupulous in private life in matters of which it is needless to speak more fully, He was, or gave himself the air of being, a very stout Protestant. James employed him, but probably liked him little. It is to be gathered, from James's letter of February 3, 1747, that he suspected Charles of listening to advice, probably from Murray, about his changing his religion. ' You cannot forget how you were prevailed upon to speak to your brother ' (the devout Duke of York) ' on very nice and delicate subjects, and that without saying the least thing to me, though we lived in the same house. . . . You were then much younger than you are now, and therefore could be more easily led by specious argu- ments and pretences. ... It will, to be sure, have been represented to you that our religion is a great prejudice to our interest, but that it may in some measure be remedied by a certain free way of thinking and acting.' 2 1 Stuart MSS. in Windsor Castle. 2 Stuart Papers. Browne's History of the Highland Clans, iii. 481. AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY 27 Iii 1749 James made a disagreeable discover)', which lie communicated to Lord Lismore. A cassette, or coffer, belonging to Charles, had, apparently, been left in Paris, and, after many adventures on the road, was brought to Borne bv the French ambassador. James opened it, and found that it contained letters ' from mvself and the Queen.' Bat it also offered proof that the Prince had carried on a secret corre- spondence with England, long before he left Eome in 1744. Probably his adherents wished James to resign in his favour. 1 As to religion, Dr. Kino;- admits that Charles was no bigot, and d'Argenson contrasted his disengaged way of treating theology with the exaggerated devoutness of the Duke of York. Even during the march into England, Lord Elcho told an inquirer that the Prince's religion 'was still to seek.' As- suredly he would never make shipwreck on the Stuart fidelity to Catholicism. All this was deeply distressing to the pious James, and all this dated from 1742, that is, from the time of Murray of Broughton's visit to Eome. Indifference to religious strictness was, even then, accompanied by a love of wine, in some slight degree. Already, too, a little rift in the friendship of the princely brothers was apparent ; there were secrets between them which Henry must have communicated to James. As for the fatal vice of drink, it is hinted at on April 15, 1747, by an anonymous Paris correspondent 1 James to Lismore. June 23, 1749. Stuart MSS. 28 PICKLE THE SPY of Lord Dunbar's. Charles had about him ' an Irish cordelier,' one Kelly, whom he employed as a secre- tary. 1 Kelly is accused of talking contemptuously about James. ' It were to be wished that His Eoyal Highness would forbid that friar his apartment, because he passes for a notorious drunkard . . . and His Eoyal Highness's character, in point of sobriety, lias been a little blemished on this friar's account.' 2 The cold, hunger, and fatigue of the Highland distresses had, no doubt, often prompted recourse to the national dram of whiskey, and Charles would put a bottle of brandy to his lips ' without ceremony,' says Bishop Forbes. The Prince on one occasion is said to have drunk the champion ' bowlsman ' of the Islands under the table. 3 What had been a jovial feast became a custom, a consolation, and a curse, while there is reason, as has been seen, to suppose that Charles, quite early in life, showed promise of intemperance. In happier circumstances these early tastes might never have been developed into a positive disease. James himself, in youth, had not been a pattern of strict sobriety, but later middle age found him almost ascetic. We have sketched a character endowed with many fine qualities, and capable of winning devoted affection. We now examine the rapid decline of a nature originally noble. Returned from Scotland in 1746, Prince Charles 1 See Appendix A. 2 Stanhope. Vol. iii. Appendix, p. xl. 3 Jacobite Memoirs. IN PARIS 29 brought with him a head full of indigested romance, a heart rich in chimerical expectations. He now prided himself on being a plain hardy mountaineer. He took a line of his own; he concealed his measures from the spy-ridden Court of his father in Borne ; he quarrelled with his brother, the Duke of York, when the Duke accepted a cardinal's hat. He broke violently with the French king, who would not aid him. He sulked at Avignon. He sought Spanish help, which was refused. He again became the centre of fashion and of disaffection in Paris. Ladies travelled from England merely to see him in his box at the theatre. Princesses and duchesses ' pulled caps for him.' Naturally cold (as his enemies averred) where women were concerned, he was now beleaguered, besieged, taken by storm by the fair. He kept up the habit of drinking which had been noted in him even before his expedition to Scotland. He allowed his old bojnsh scepticism (caused by a mixed Protestant and Catholic education) to take the form of studied religious indifference. After defying and being expelled by Louis XV., he adopted (what has never, perhaps, been observed) the wild advice of d'Argenson (' La Bete,' and Louis's ex- minister of foreign affairs), he betook himself to a life of darkling adventures, to a hidden and homeless exile. In many of his journeys he found Pickle in his path, and Pickle finally made his labours vain. The real source of all this imbroglio, in addition to an exas- perated daring and a strangely secretive tempera- 30 PICKLE THE SPY merit, was a deep, well-grounded mistrust of the people employed by his father, the old ' King- over the water.' Whatever James knew was known in London by next mail. Charles was aware of this, and was not aware that his own actions were almost as successfully spied upon and reported. He there- fore concealed his plans and movements from James, and even — till Pickle came on the scene — from Europe and from England. The result of his reti- cence was an irremediable rupture between ' the King and the Prince of Wales — over the water,' an incurable split in the Jacobite camp. The general outline here sketched must now be filled up in detail. The origo mail was the divisions among the Jacobites. Ever since 171-5 these had existed and multiplied. Mar was thought to be a traitor. Atterbury, in exile, suspected O'Brien (Lord Lismore). The Earl Marischal and Kelly 1 were set against James's ministers, Lord Sempil, Lord Lismore, and Balhaldie, the exiled chief of the Macgregors. Lord Dunbar (Murray, brother of Lord Mansfield) was in James's disgrace at Avignon Sempil, Balhaldie, Lismore were ' the King's party,' opposed to Marischal, Kelly, Sheridan, LalJy Tollen- dal, 'the Prince's party.' Each sect inveighed against the other in unmeasured terms of reproach. This division widened when Charles was in France, just before the expedition to Scotland. ^ 1 The Kelly of Atterbury's Conspiracy, long a prisoner in the Tower. It is fair to add that Bulkeley, Montesquieu's friend, defended Kelly. JACOBITE DIVISIONS 31 One of James's agents in Paris, Lord Sempil, writes to him on July 5, 1745, with warnings against the Prince's counsellors, especially Sir Thomas Sheridan (Charles's governor, and left-handed cousin) and Kelly. They, with Tally Tollendal and others, arranged the descent on Scotland without the know- ledge of James or Sempil, whom Charles and his party bitterly distrusted, as they also distrusted Tord Lismore (O'Brien), James's other agent. While the Prince was in Scotland (1745-1746), even before Prestonpans, the Jacobite affairs in France were perplexed by the action of Lismore, Sempil, and Balhaldie, acting for James, while the old Earl Marischal (who had been in the rising of 1715, and the Gdenshiel affair of 1719) acted for the Prince. With the Earl Marischal was, for some time, Lord Clancarty, of whom Sempil speaks as ' a very brave and worthy man.' x On the other hand, Oliver Macallester, the spy, describes Clancarty, with whom he lived, as a slovenly, drunken, blaspheming rogue, one of whose eyes General Braddock had knocked out with a bottle in a tavern brawl ! Clan- carty gave himself forth as a representative of the English Jacobites, but d'Argenson, in his ' Memoires,' says he could produce no names of men of rank in the party except his own. D'Argenson was pestered by women, priests, and ragged Irish adven- turers. In September 1745, the Earl Marischal and Clancarty visited d'Argenson, then foreign minister 1 Stuart Tapers. Browne, iii. 433. September 13, 1745. 32 PICKLE THE SPY of Louis XV. iii the King's camp in Flanders. They asked for aid, and the scene, as described by the spy Macallester, on Clancarty's information, was curious. D'Amenson taunted the Lord Marischal with not being at Charles's side in Scotland. To the slovenly Clancarty he said, ' Sir, your wig is ill-combed. Would you like to see my perruquier ? He manages wigs very well.' Clancarty, who wore 'an ordinary black tie-wig,' jumped up, saying in English, ' Damn the fellow ! He is making his diversion of us.' 1 The Lord Marischal was already on bad personal terms with Charles. Clancarty was a ruffian, d'Argenson was the adviser who suggested Charles's hidden and fugitive life after 1748. The singular behaviour of the Earl Marischal in 1751-1754 will afterwards be illustrated by the letters of Pickle, who drew much of his information from the unsuspicious old ambassador of Frederick the Great to the Court of Versailles. It is plain that the Duke of Ormonde was right when he said that ' too many people are meddling in your Majesty's affairs with the French Court at this junc- ture ' (November 15, 1745). The Duke of York, Charles's brother, was on the seaboard of France in autumn 1745. At Arras he met the gallant Chevalier Wogan, who had rescued his mother from prison at Innspruck. 2 Clancarty, Lord Marischal, and Lally Tollendal were pressing for a French expedition to 1 Macallester's book is entitled A Series of Letters, &c. London, 1767. 2 Wogan to Edgar. Stuart Papers, 1750. JACOBITE DIVISIONS 33 start in aid of Charles. Sempil, Balhaldie, Lismore, were intriguing and interfering. Voltaire wrote a proclamation for Charles to issue. An expedition was arranged, troops and ships were gathered at Boulogne. Swedes were to ioin from Gothenburg". On Christmas Eve, 1745, nothing was ready, and the secret leaked out. A million was sent to Scotland ; the money arrived too late ; we shall hear more of it. 1 The Duke of York, though he fought well at Antwerp, was kneeling in every shrine, and was in church when the news of Culloden was brought to him. This information he gave, in the present century, to one of the Stair family. 2 The rivalries and enmities went on increasing and multiplying into cross-divisions after Charles made his escape to France in August 1 74G. tie Was filled with distrust of his father's advisers ; his own were disliked by James. The correspondence of Horace Mann, and of Walton, an English agent in Florence, shows that England received all intelligence sent to James from Paris, and knew all that passed in James's cabinet in Borne. 3 The Abbe Grant was suspected of being the spy. Among so many worse than doubtful friends, Charles, after 174G, took his own course ; even his father knew little or nothing of his movements. Be- tween his departure from Avignon (February 1749) and the accession of Pickle to the Hanoverian side 1 D'Argenson, iv. 316-320. 2 Stair Papers. 3 Letters in the State Paper Office. S. P. Tuscany. Walton sends to England copies of the letters of James's adherents in Paris ; Horace Mann sends the letters of Townley, whom James so disliked. D 34 PICKLE THE SPY (Autumn 1749 or 1750), Charles baffled every Foreign Office in Europe. Indeed, Pickle was of little service till 1751 or 1752. Curious light on Charles's cha- racter, and on the entangled quarrels of the Jacobites, is cast by d'Argenson's ' Memoires.' In Spring, 1747, the Duke of York disappeared from Paris, almost as cleverly as Charles himself could have done. D'Ar- genson thus describes his manoeuvre. ' He fled from Paris with circumstances of distinguished treachery ' (insigne fourberie) towards his brother, the Prince. He invited Charles to supper ; his house was brilliantly lighted up ; all his servants were in readiness ; but he had made his escape by five o'clock in the after- noon, aided by Cardinal Tencin. His Governor, the Chevalier Graeme, was not in the secret. The Prince waited for him till midnight, and was in a mortal anxiety. He believed that the English attempts to kidnap or assassinate himself had been directed against his brother. At last, after three days, he re- ceived a letter from the Duke of York, ' explaining his fatal design ' to accept a cardinal's hat. ' Prince Charles is determined never to return to Eome, but rather to take refuge in some hole in a rock.' Charles, in fact, saw that, if he was to succeed in England, he could not have too little connection with Eome. D'Argenson describes his brother Henry as ' Italian, superstitious, a rogue, avaricious, fond of ease, and jealous of the Prince.' Cardinal Tencin, he says, and Lord and Lady Lismore, have been bribed by England to wheedle Henry into the cardinalate, MADAME DE POMPADOUR 35 ' which England desires more than anything in the world.' Charles expressed the same opinion in an epigram. Lady Lismore, for a short time believed to be the mistress of Louis XV., was deeply suspected. Whatever may be the truth of these charges, M. de Puysieux, an enemy of Charles, succeeded at the Foreign Office to d'Argenson, who had a queer sentimental liking for the Prince. Cardinal Tencin was insulted, and was hostile ; the Lismores were absolutely estranged, if not treacherous ; there was a quarrel between James and Henry in Eome, and Charles, in Paris. 1 Such was the state of affairs at the end of 1747, while Pickle was still a prisoner in the Tower of London, engaged, he tells us, in acts of charity towards his fellow-captives ! Meanwhile Charles's private conduct demands a moment's attention. Madame de Pompadour was all powerful at Court, 2 This was, therefore, a favourable moment for Charles, in a chivalrous affection for the injured French Queen (his dead mother's kinswoman), to insult the reigning favourite. Madame de Pompa- dour sent him billets on that thick smooth vellum paper of hers, sealed with the arms of France. The Prince tossed them into the fire and made no answer ; it is Pickle who gives us this information. Maria Theresa later stooped to call Madame de Pompadour her cousin. Charles was prouder or less politic ; afterwards he stooped like Maria Theresa. For his part, says d'Argenson, the Prince ' now 1 D'Argenson's Memoires, v. 98, fol. 2 Ibid. v. 183. 3G PICKLE THE SPY amused himself with love affairs. Madame de Guemene almost ravished him by force ; they have quarrelled, after a ridiculous scene ; he is living now with the Princesse de Talmond. He is full of fury, and wishes in everything to imitate Charles XII. of Sweden and stand a sie^e in his house like Charles XII. at Bender.' This was in anticipation of arrest, after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in which his expulsion from France was one of the conditions. This Princesse de Tal- mond, as we shall see, was the unworthy Flora Mac- donald of Charles in his later wanderings, his pro- tectress, and, unlike Flora, his mistress. She was not young; Madame d'Aiguillon calls her vieille femme in a curious play, ' La Prison du Prince Charles Edouard Stuart,' written by d'Argenson in imitation of Shake- speare. 1 The Princesse, nee Marie Jablonowski, a cousin of the Queen of France and of Charles, mar- ried Anne Charles Prince de Talmond, of the great house of La Trimouille, in 1730. She must have been nearly forty in 1749, and some ten years older than her lover. We shall later, when Charles is concealed by the Princesse de Talmond, present the reader with her ' portrait ' by the mordant pen of Madame du Deffand. Here Voltaire's rhymed portrait may be cited : Les dieux, en la dormant naissance Aux lieux par la Saxe envahis, Lui doimerent pour recompense Le gout qu'on ne trouve qu'en France, Et 1' esprit de tous les pays. 1 Published by the Due de Broglie, in Bevue cVHistoire Dijyloma* tique. No. 4. Paris, 1891. MADAME DE TALMOXD 37 The Princesse, who frequented the Philosophes, appears to have encouraged Charles in free thinking and ostentatious indifference in religion. ' He is a handsome Prince, and I should love him as much as my wife does,' says poor M. de Talmond, in d'Argenson's pla} r , ' but why is he not saintly, and ruled bv the Cono-reo-ation de Saint Lmace, like his father ? It is Madame de Talmond who preaches to him independence and incredulity. She is bringing the curse of God upon me. How old will she be before the conversion for which I pray daily to Saint Francois Xavier ? ' Such was Madame de Talmond, an old mistress of a young man, flighty, philosophical, and sharp of tongue. On July 18, 1748, Charles communicated to Louis XV. his protest against the article of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which drove him out of every secular state in Europe. Louis broke a solemn treaty by assenting to this article. Charles published his protest and sent it to Montesquieu. He com- plained that Montesquieu had not given him the new edition of his book on the Eomans. ' La confiance devroit etre mieux etabli entre les auteurs : j'espere que ma faron de penser pour vous m'attirera la continuation de votre bonne volonte pour moi.' ' Montesquieu praised Charles's ' simplicit} T , nobility, and eloquence ' : ' comme vous le dites tresbien, vous estes un auteur.' ' Were you not so great a Prince, 1 Browne, iv. 30-38. 38 PICKLE THE SPY the Ducliesse de Guillon ' [d'Aiguillon) ' and I would secure you a place in the Academy.' The Ducliesse d'Aiguillon, who later watched by Montesquieu's death-bed, was a friend of Charles. She and Madame de Talmond literally ' pull caps ' for him in d'Argenson's play. But she was in favour of his going to Fribourg with a pension after the Peace : Madame de Talmond encouraged resistance. Louis's minister, M. de Cousteille, applied to Fribourg for an asylum for Charles on June 24,1748. On September 8, Burnaby wrote, for England, a long remonstrance to the ' Laudable States of Fribourg,' calling Charles ' this youiw Italian ! ' The States, in five lines, re- buked Burnaby's impertinence, as ' unconhned in its expressions and so unsuitable to a Sovereign State that we did not judge it proper to answer it.' * To Fribourg Charles would not go. He braved the French Court in every way. He even insisted on a goldsmith's preferring his order for a great service of plate to the King's, and, having obtained the plate, he feasted the Princesse de Talmond, his friend and cousin, the Due de Bouillon, and a crowd of other distinguished people. 2 In his demeanour Charles resolutely affronted the French Ministers. There were terrible scenes with Madame de Talmond, especially when Charles was forbidden the house by her husband. Charles was led away from her closed 1 Genuine Copies of Letters, dec,. London, 1748. 2 An Account of the Prince's Arrival in France, p. GG. London, 1754. PRINCE CHARLES, ABOUT 1734. From