The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites 9781472599773, 9781852851194

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Preface

In addition to the authors of the essays, there are many others who, in one way or another, have made an important contribution to this volume. I should like to record my sincere thanks to all of them. In the first place I am deeply grateful to Her Majesty the Queen for granting access to the Royal Collection, the Royal Library and the Royal Archives. Without this, and the kindness of the people who run these three departments, it would not be possible to make an effective study of the Stuart court in exile. I am also grateful to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales for accepting my invitation to visit the Chateau de Saint-Germainen-Laye in March 1992. His was the first visit to the Jacobite court in France by a member of the British Royal family since 1855. It is difficult to appreciate the splendour of what was once the exiled court without having recourse to visual objects and artefacts, particularly paintings. It was for this reason that a large exhibition was organised in the Chateau de SaintGermain in the spring of 1992. I not only offered striking evidence of the reality of the court, but also provided the occasion for scholars from Western Europe and North America to assemble and exchange views. I wish to thank all those

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who made the exhibition possible, in particular Jacques Berlie, Bernard Cottret, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Alastair Laing, Jean-Pierre Mohen, Robert Oresko, Jean Register, Jacqueline Sanson, and the depute-maire of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Michel Pericard. I am greatly indebted to all those who came to Saint-Germain and took part in the conference, particularly the chairmen and the speakers. I must especially thank Eveline Cruickshanks, who has edited this volume with me, and written the first part of the introduction. Her contribution to Jacobite studies, are unrivalled. It has been a great pleasure to collaborate with her on the preparation of this book. Edward Corp Saint-Germain-en-Laye February 1995

Introduction Eveline Cruickshanks and Edward Corp

In recent years Jacobitism has become a popular and highly controversial subject. Little has been done, however, on the first phase of Jacobitism between 1689 and 1715, the years when the Stuart court in exile resided in Saint-Germain-enLaye, the home of the kings of France before Louis XIV built Versailles. To remedy this, a conference was held in SaintGermain-en-Laye in February 1992 and the present volume incorporates the most significant papers on British history delivered there. The years between 1689 and 1716 saw a massive influx of Jacobite exiles to France, mainly English and Irish, who made, as Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac shows, a greater contribution to French life than their counterparts, the Huguenots, made in England. There were large numbers of Jacobite exiles going to Spain after 1697 and to Russia and Sweden after 1715. They made a major contribution to the economic, military and intellectual life of the host countries and may be regarded, in a real sense, as the first true 'Europeans'. The common aim of the exiled court and the British Jacobites was a restoration of the Stuarts, which, in view of the military and naval strength of William III and his continental allies, could be brought about only with Louis XI V's assistance.

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In a robustly Whiggish piece, John Childs compares the logistics of William's successful invasion in 1688 and the abortive invasion of 1692, which was defeated by the battle of La Hogue, pointing out that whatever the outcome, the threatened invasion helped Louis in the siege of Namur. Any change of regime, however, needed not only troops and naval support to bring it about, but the adherence of a sufficient number of the nobility and gentry to give it credibility and permanence. The leaders of the attempts to restore the Stuarts in England from 1689 to 1696 were mostly High Anglicans, men who had played a major role in political life before the Revolution. The English Jacobite regiments raised in 1692, however, were composed mainly of Catholics, in Lancashire especially, and represented the largest native military force the Jacobites ever raised. On the Scottish side, Paul Hopkins examines the part played by Sir James Montgomerie, a prominent radical Whig politician and a Presbyterian, who had supported the offer of the Crown of Scotland to William and Mary, then turned to Jacobitism, asked Louis XIV for troops to restore James II and died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The exiles at Saint-Germain were persons of high political status, mostly nobles, who emigrated in order to be near their king. Those who had places at court received regular salaries. In addition, persons like Lord Powis, the lord chamberlain, and Lord Middleton, secretary of state, were able to receive income from their estates through complicated financial arrangements. There were close links between the exiles in SaintGermain and those in Paris, where the Catholic religious houses provided advice and assistance. The Scots College in Paris, the repository of the Stuart archives, played an important part in this process, as James McMillan shows. Its head, Lewis Innes, was a notable figure at the court of Saint-Germain, while his brother Thomas Innes exerted crucial intellectual and financial influence on the Jacobites. Like Clarendon, John, first Baron Caryll, one of the secretaries of state to James II,

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accompanied his sovereign into exile in the hope of a restoration. His view that 'no Power on earth can absolve us from our natural allegiance' to the rightful king was echoed in the dying speech of Sir John Fenwick and other Jacobites executed in England. In his study of Caryll, Howard Erskine-Hill shows that the secretary was putting forward ways in which Protestants and Catholics could and should be able to live together in harmony. Realising that a peaceful restoration was impossible, he set about to prove in his writings that to restore James was in the best interests of France as well as England. Jacobitism had a powerful as well as a credible ideology. Murray Pittock looks at Jacobite propaganda in Scotland, with its emphasis on sanctity and sacrifice in contrast to the corruption and party interests of its opponents. Deeply religious in origin, it was sustained by the Episcopalians, who outnumbered the Catholics by two to one and looked to a lost Scotland to be redeemed by its native kings. In Jacobite typology, a highlander was a patriot. To Whig propagandists, on the other hand, highlanders were bandits, much as the exiles at Saint-Germain were Jacobite bandits. A powerful appeal to history is presented here by Roger Schmidt's portrait of Roger North, attorney-general to Mary of Modena, brother of Lord Keeper North and a member of a distinguished family dispossessed at the Revolution. Reacting to Whig historians such as Echard and White Kennett, North was the first to identify what is known as the Whig Interpretation of History. He showed that history is not an oracle and the generalisations about the inevitable progress of the Whigs crumble when primary sources are looked at. In a survey of Jacobite propaganda after 1689, some printed in Saint-Germain but mostly produced clandestinely in London, Paul Monod challenges Macaulay's assertion that there was freedom of the press after the Revolution. The lapsing of the Licensing Act of 1695 ended the monopoly of the Stationers Company rather than marking a milestone in the freedom of the press. Press freedom was non-existent as far as Jacobites were concerned. Jacobite

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propaganda was aimed at the Protestant majority and used the language of liberty rather than merely defending the Stuarts. Though denounced as 'Papist' by its opponents, it was written by influential Nonjurors, High Anglicans, women, and by talented Whig Jacobites such as Charlwood Lawton and Robert Ferguson, skilfully taking advantage of political divisions and uncertainties. The career of Sir Toby Bourke, examined here by Micheline Kerney-Walsh, on the other hand, was wholly European. An eminent Irish Jacobite, educated as a Catholic in France, and a talented linguist and diplomat, Bourke was sent as James Ill's ambassador to the court of Spain. The normally vitriolic due de Saint-Simon, the French ambassador there, held him in high esteem and describes him as an honourable man. An associate of Bourke was Patrick Lawless, who had fought for James in Ireland and was outlawed by William, entered Spanish service and was sent as Spanish ambassador to London in 1713, much to the fury of the Whigs.

The revival of Jacobite studies has inevitably focused attention on the Stuart court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Too often dismissed in the past as a 'phantom court', consisting of no more than a 'cluster of exiled Jacobites and priests',1 it can now be seen as a particularly interesting example of a European court during the Baroque period. As such it provokes some important questions, and merits a more detailed examination than it has so far received.2 The Stuart court occupied for a quarter of a century one of the very finest of the French royal chateaux, within a short distance of both Versailles and Paris. Its members were 1

W.S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times (London, 1933), i, p. 441. For the Stuart court itself, as distinct from the Jacobite movement, see E.T. Corp and J. Sanson, La cour des Stuarts a Saint-Germain-en-Laye au temps de Louis XIV, exhibition catalogue (Paris, 1992). 2

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predominantly English, with a significant group of Italians in the household of the queen, and various French servants, mainly in subordinate positions, most of whom had previously lived in England. In addition to these, there was also a small number of Irish and Scots. These five groups, including wives, husbands and children, probably numbered about a thousand people. The majority were Catholic, but there were many Anglicans as well. Some were wealthy and had large incomes, others had lost all their possessions when they came to France. Very little attention has so far been given to the ways in which they were accommodated, organised, financed, rewarded, occupied and entertained.3 The Chateau de Saint-Germain had been used by Louis XIV as his principal residence from 1666 to 1682. It consisted of an irregular pentagon around a central courtyard.4 One wing was occupied by a chapel; another contained a magnificent theatre. The remaining three each had a ground floor and three storeys above. At the five corners of the chateau a pavilion had recently been added, and each of these contained four storeys above the ground floor. The Stuarts themselves occupied most of the second floor, in the three wings not given up to the chapel and the theatre. They had the apartments previously used by Louis XIV, Queen Marie-Therese and the dauphin, now extended into the recently added pavilions. The rest of the chateau was divided up into apartments of various sizes, which were allocated among the most important courtiers and the most essential household servants. Some apartments were of course very small, but others rivalled those of the royal family. The 3

For a preliminary study, see the article on 'La Maison du Roi a SaintGermain-en-Laye, 1689-1718', in E.T. Corp, L'autre exil: Les Jacobites en France au debut de XVIIIesiecle (Montpellier, 1993), pp. 55-78. Unless otherwise stated, the present introduction is based on that article. 4 It should really be called the Chateau-Vieux de Saint-Germain, to distinguish it from the Chateau-Neuf de Saint-Germain. The latter was situated about fifty yards away, but was not used by the Stuart court. See B. Saule, Louis XIV a Saint-Germain, 1638-1682: de la naissance a la gloire, exhibition catalogue (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1988).

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most impressive was the former apartment of Madame de Montespan, which had recently been richly decorated, and was occupied by the earl of Melfort. Apart from one visit by the French court in 1685, the chateau had been vacant since Louis XIV's move to Versailles in 1682. If Versailles had had its obvious advantages, Saint-Germain had also had its disadvantages, and these were inherited by the Stuarts. There was insufficient accommodation in the chateau itself, so that the majority of the Jacobites, like the French courtiers before them, had to find lodgings in the town. The shape of the chateau, with narrow wings built around a central courtyard, created serious problems of circulation, with the need to go up and down stairs, and even out of doors, to get from one apartment to another. Most serious of all, from the point of view of James II, was the shortage of space in the king's apartment. This reason alone would have obliged Louis XIV to transfer his court elsewhere: it was the only French royal chateau with only one antechamber between the guard chamber and the bed chamber. As the etiquette of the English court, and indeed the departmental organisation of the king of England's household, was by the late seventeenth century based on the existence of three such antechambers, James II was placed at a serious disadvantage. He was accordingly obliged to curtail his social activities as the head of the exiled court, and to modify the organisation of his household. This might eventually have suited the aging king, but when James III succeeded his father in 1701 he refused to occupy the same apartment. Instead he occupied the former apartment of the dauphin, precisely because it did contain the necessary number of rooms. As a result, English etiquette was not fully introduced, nor the traditional departmental organisation of the household established, until 1701-2. Our impressions of the Stuart court at Saint-Germain have all too often been based on the hostile comments of outsiders, mainly the diplomats and secret agents of the government in London. These sources are particularly suspect when they tell

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us that there was no toleration for Anglicans at Saint-Germain, that the court was desperately short of money and unable to support its members, and that it was dying of boredom. These accusations were all too obviously designed to deter potential Jacobite supporters in England, and have been shown to be unfounded. 5 What these sources never tell us is that the Stuart court was an important centre of musical and artistic patronage, with a flourishing social and even literary life. Music played a particularly important role at the court. Regular concerts were organised in the apartments of the queen and the prince of Wales/James III, as well as in those of the leading courtiers. There were some gifted amateurs, such as Sir William Waldegrave (the king's doctor: theorbo) and Lord Caryll (secretary of state: viol). But the chief responsibility for the musical life of the court was entrusted to the resident composer and Master of the Music, Innocenzo Fede. The latter employed a small group of professional musicians, who performed regularly in the chapel as well as these secular concerts. The repertory seems mainly to have been Italian, much of it written by Fede himself. Additional French musicians were employed as and when they were needed, the most important of whom was Francois Couperin. Indeed it was these exchanges which helped popularise the Italian style in the Paris area during the 1690s, and inspired Couperin to become the first Frenchman to write an Italian sonata (in 1692). Music was also to be heard at the court balls which were given regularly in the Chateau de Saint-Germain by the Stuarts. Opera became increasingly popular after the death of James II, resulting in a restoration of the court theatre in 1709. The Stuart court was also an important centre for painting. The chapel already contained an impressive collection of works by both French and Italian artists, the most important of which was Nicolas Poussin's monumental altar piece, The Last Supper (now in the Louvre). While Lord Melfort lived in the chateau 5

See above, n. 3.

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there was also his celebrated collection of Italian paintings. The court employed various painters to produce a series of portraits of the royal family and the leading courtiers. At first the artists were Nicolas de Largilliere and Benedetto Gennari (who had followed the court from England), but they were not favoured by Lord Melfort and his brother Lord Perth, who used their influence to have them replaced by Frangois de Troy and his pupil Alexis-Simon Belle. Works by these four artists, and particularly by Belle, were displayed in the royal apartments, and elsewhere in the chateau, and dispersed throughout Europe. Well over fifty of these portraits have survived (excluding copies); many of them were copied at the time, reproduced as miniatures, or engraved. The Stuart court at Saint-Germain was unquestionably an extremely important centre of artistic patronage. The most significant single work was the large family group, painted by Pierre Mignard in 1694, showing James II, Mary of Modena, the prince of Wales and the two-year-old Princess Louise-Marie. This was displayed in James IPs antechamber to provide a permanent royal presence, though once the full court etiquette had been re-established by James III it was withdrawn to the new king's closet. Mignard's painting shows James II, not as king, but as a knight of the Garter. The prince of Wales was made a knight in 1692, and every existing portrait of him painted at SaintGermain after that date shows him with his Garter insignia. He is never shown as king, even after his accession in 1701. Nor is he shown as a Knight of the Thistle, as the two orders were not made compatible until 1716. But both orders existed at the court of Saint-Germain, and were given to a select few. James II used them as a way of rewarding loyal Jacobites who had followed him into exile. James III changed this policy, and used the Thistle to stimulate support among the leading nobles who had remained in Scotland. He only gave the Garter once,6 as a 6

For the suggestion that the Garter was also given (but secretly) to the earl of Burlington, see J. Clark, 'Lord Burlington is Here: A View without Architecture,'

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reward to the duke of Perth for his service as governor. But Perth already had the Thistle, and the new honour was clearly intended to counter accusations that the Scots were not properly treated at Saint-Germain. Noble titles were also given out at the exiled court, the majority of them by James II. Once again they were only given to a select few, as part of a clearly defined policy. Two were given in 1689 to provide a higher rank for the queen's ladies at the French court, and two in 1692 as a reward for loyalty. Otherwise they were given by James II to his younger illegitimate son, to three of his secretaries of state, and to the governor of the prince of Wales. James III only gave two peerages: one to Colonel Hooke in 1708, immediately before the attempted invasion of Scotland; the other (in secret) to the brother of the papal nuncio (who also secretly received the Thistle) to secure diplomatic support at Rome.7 In addition to these aspects of the life of the exiled court, mention should be made of its activities in connection with literature, some of it printed at the royal press established by William Weston at Saint-Germain. James II himself produced various papers of devotion, and some advice for his son, and commissioned the writing of his memoirs based on his own original papers and correspondence — a task not finished until after his death. The king's confessor arranged for the publica2tion of a short Life of James //, while two books were published concerning the education of the prince of Wales.8 John Caryll

in T. Barnard and J. Clark, Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life (London, 1995). 7 The lists were published in Marquis de Ruvigny et Raineval, The Jacobite Peerage (Edinburgh, 1904), pp. xv-xviii. The majority of these Jacobite peerages in the years 1689-1714 were given by James II during the campaign in Ireland. Of the total of twenty-eight, only eleven were given at Saint-Germain itself. 8 Corp and Sanson, Cour des Stuarts, pp. 141-43; E. Gregg, 'New Light on the Authorship of the Life of James H\ English Historical Review (\§§?>}, pp. 947-65; G. Scott, John Betham et 1'education du Prince de Galles', Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale, 46 (1992), pp. 32-39.

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was particularly active. In addition to a quantity of poetry, some of it published, he translated much of the New Testament for the use of the court.9 His translation of the Psalms was published by Weston at Saint-Germain in 1700. Lord Maitland translated three books of the Aeneid in 1690, and sent the manuscript to John Dryden, who used it when preparing his own translation.10 Jane Barker followed the court to SaintGermain, and produced a large quantity of poetry, much of which makes specific reference to the life of the exiled community.11 The best-known writer at Saint-Germain was probably Anthony Hamilton, whose younger brother Richard was Master of the Robes, and whose sister had married the comte de Gramont. Hamilton was one of the many Jacobites who moved freely between the Stuart and French courts, particularly after his sister had been given a 'jolie maison . . . dans le Pare de Versailles' in 1703.12 Hamilton produced a quantity of stories, and some poetry concerning the exiled court and its members, all written in French and published 9

National Library of Scotland, MS 14266, the journal of David Nairne, 16551708, contains many references to these translations. 10 Corp and Sanson, Cour des Stuarts, p. 201. 11 Jane Barker (1652-1732) lived at Saint-Germain from 1689 to 1704. The second part of her 'Poems on Several Occasions in Three Parts' (Magdalen College Library, Oxford, MS 343) contains 'poems writ since the author was in France'. These give a great deal of information about the court, particularly a poem entitled 'The miseries of St Germains, writ at the time of the pestilence and famin, which reign'd in the years 1694 et 1695'. The first part contains poems 'referring to the times'. (The copy presented to the Prince of Wales on 1 January 1701, is in the British Library, Add. MS 21621.) Barker lived in England from 1704 to 1727 and published several novels, including Love Intrigues; or The History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia, as Related to Lucasia, in St Germain's Garden (London, 1713) and The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen (London, 1726): both contain numerous references to the court of Saint-Germain. (I am grateful to Carol Shiner Wilson for this information.) Barker returned to Saint-Germain in 1727, and lived in the former Hotel de la Chancellerie until her death on 29 March 1732. (This is recorded in the parish registers, kept in the Hotel de Ville de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.) 12 Madame de Coulanges to Madame de Grignan, 5 August 1703, quoted in the introduction to the 1911 edition of Count Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of the Count de Grammont (London), p. 8.

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posthumously.13 His best-known work is unquestionably Des fragments de la vie du comte de Grammont, of which only two of the planned three parts seem to have been written.14 The work concentrated on the English court during the 1660s, and described in detail the amorous adventures of James II while duke of York with, among others, the future countess of Erroll (governess of the prince of Wales at Saint-Germain), the future duchess of Tyrconnell (lady of the bedchamber to Mary of Modena at Saint-Germain), and Arabella Churchill (mother of the duke of Berwick). If this book did little for Hamilton's popularity in the Chateau de Saint-Germain, where he lived until his death in 1719,15 it certainly helped establish the importance of the Stuart court there as an important literary centre. Hamilton provided a link with the circle of Alexander Pope and Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu in England, and with Claude Crebillon and the younger generation of writers in France.16 13

Le better (Paris, 1730); Uhistoire de fleur d'epine (Paris, 1730); Les quatre facardins (Paris, 1730); Oeuvres melees en prose et en vers (Paris, 1731). 14 It was circulating in manuscript by 1712, and was published anonymously and without authorisation in 1713 as Memoires de la vie du comte de Grammont, contenant particulierement Vhistoire amoureuse de la cour d'Angleterre sous le regne de Charles II. One of the manuscript copies was sent by the duchesse d'Orleans to the electress of Hanover in May 1712. See P. Koch, 'Trajectoire europeenne d'une oeuvre sans passeports: les "Fragments de la vie du comte de Grammont" ', Trasmissione dei testi a stampa nelperiodo moderno, ii, Seminario Internazionale, Roma-Viterbo, June 1985, ed. Giovanni Crapulli, (Rome), pp. 207-11. 15 HMC, Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle [HMC Stuart] (London, 1902), p. 267. Berwick to James III, 23 May 1713: 'I wonder M. Anthony Hamilton will still be rambling, his age and infirmitys should induce him to be quiet some where with his friends.' It was probably this clandestine publication, at 'Cologne' (but probably Rouen), that stopped Hamilton writing or circulating the third part, promised in all five surviving manuscripts. The third part would have covered the court of France, and possibly also that of Saint-Germain. Anthony Hamilton's papers, which included 'la suite des Quatre facardins\ were all burned at the Chateau de Saint-Germain in 1754. If he had ever written the missing third part of the Vie du comte de Grammont it would have been destroyed on this occasion, Baron Grimm, Correspondance litteraire, 15 December 1754. 16 Hamilton translated Pope's Essay on Criticism into French; through his niece Lady Stafford he carried on a correspondence with her friend Lady Mary continued

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The Jacobite court was made up of the members of the royal household, who received salaries, and a large number of loyal supporters who received pensions. These two, combined, accounted for approximately two-thirds of the 600,000 livres that the Stuarts received each year from Louis XIV. But beyond the court itself, there were many other exiled Jacobites who had also come to France, and who were living either at Saint-Germain or in Paris. There were probably as many as 40,000, most of them Irish and many of them serving in the Irish regiments of the French army. The distinction between the members of the court and the other exiled Jacobites who came to live near it was not always clear, because of the complexity of family relationships, but in general terms the courtiers were financially secure, whereas the other Jacobites, unless employed in the French army or in local commerce, were often reduced to dire poverty. It was this environment which inevitably led some of them to speculate in espionage. It is traditional to regard the court at Saint-Germain as full of spies, and unable to keep its own secrets. This view seems to be based on a misunderstanding. There were very few secrets to be discovered, and those that there were were entrusted to a mere handful of people, working in the small department of the secretaries of state. There are no grounds for believing that any of these officials betrayed these secrets. On the contrary, the destruction of the bulk of the Saint-Germain archives, including the minutes of the privy council, has left us with very continued

Wortley-Montagu; and Crebillon fils (1707-77), author of Le Sopha (1740) among others, regarded himself as Hamilton's literary heir. This literary tradition at Saint-Germain was maintained during the eighteenth century. Eliza Hay wood's novel The Fortunate Foundlings (1744) was partly set at the court of James III in the Chateau de Saint-Germain, was translated by Crebillon's wife (daughter of John Stafford and Theresa Strickland), was adapted, and then finally published under Crebillon's name in 1754 as Les heureux orphelins. Translation and adaptation were both carried out in the Chateau de SaintGermain, which was still occupied by the Jacobites at that time. See Anne Feinsilber, 'Crebillon et 1'Angleterre' (unpublished thesis, universite de Paris IV, 1993), particularly pp. 43-49. Baron Grimm's letter about the Hamilton papers is quoted on p. 44.

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little detailed knowledge of the politics of the court. Those few archives that have survived, make it clear that the court was remarkably successful in maintaining its correspondence with both England and Scotland. Some letters inevitably went astray, or were intercepted, but that was not unusual at the time, and also happened to the correspondence of the government in London. There is no evidence that the ministries of William III or Queen Anne succeeded in planting a spy in the secretariat at Saint-Germain, as the Jacobites were able to do in the office of Robert Harley when he was secretary of state at London.17 Problems of circulation in the Chateau de Saint- Germain, however, meant that it was very difficult for people to visit the court unobserved, so there were any number of exiles who tried to obtain money from London, or from the English embassy at Paris in 1698-1701, by relating court gossip and identifying visitors. Espionage at Saint-Germain, when examined, tends to fall within this category. Indeed, the embassy correspondence of both Matthew Prior and Lord Manchester, in the years 1698-1701, suggests that the exiled court at SaintGermain had a definite advantage over the embassy at Paris.18 Petty espionage worked both ways. The ambassador's chapel was openly used by the Anglicans from Saint-Germain as a means of observing the life of the embassy and discovering what they could; while both Prior and Manchester received visits from Jacobite double-agents pretending to offer their services to the government in London, but with nothing in fact 17

The spy was William Greg, arrested in the winter of 1707-8. HMC Bath Papers, iii (London, 1908), for the correspondence of Matthew Prior; C. Cole, Memoirs of Affairs of State (London, 1733), for the correspondence of Lord Manchester. The English Embassy at Paris was more successful after the failure of the Scottish rising in 1715-16. George Higgons lived at the Chateau de Saint-Germain from 1715 to 1718 with his brother Thomas, who had been secretary of state from 1713 to 1715. He stole some secret papers from the queen's apartment while Mary of Modena lay dying in May 1718, and might have worked for the ambassador over a longer period. (See Corp and Sanson, Cour des Stuarts, p. 218.) 18

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to give.19 Prior sent a spy to Saint-Germain in 1699, but he was almost immediately discovered and ordered to leave.20 Manchester, who was vainly attempting to use the same spy a year later,21 admitted frankly in June 1701 that 'it is now harder than ever to know what is doing at St Germains, and especially what correspondence they have in England'.22 In December 1700 he informed the secretary of state in London that 'the Court of St Germains is thoroughly acquainted, by one in the office at Whitehall, with all that [has recently] passed' there.23 A few years later Colonel Hooke repeatedly argued that the details of the planned Franco-Jacobite invasion of Scotland could not safely be entrusted to the court at Saint-Germain,24 an allegation that has sometimes been accepted at face value. It is clear, however, that he wished to keep the Scottish negotiations as far as possible in his own hands, and to increase his own importance in the eyes of the French government. On one occasion he even asserted, to both Mary of Modena and to the French foreign secretary (Torcy), that both Lord Middleton and Lord Caryll were traitors, and that they were giving away secrets to London.25 No one who has studied the papers of these two men, or those of David Nairne, private secretary to both of them, can take such accusations seriously. But it is

19

HMC Bath, iii, p. 272, Prior to Vernon, 4 October 1698 (Dennis Kelly); p. 324, Prior to Portland, 18 March 1699 (Sir George Maxwell); Cole, Memoirs, p. Ill, Manchester to Jersey, 31 March 1700 (Sir William Ellis); p. 402, Manchester to Vernon, 22 July 1701 (Dicks). 20 HMC Bath, iii, p. 358, Prior to Jersey, 24 June 1699; and p. 378, Manchester to Prior, 30 September 1699. The spy was known as Brocard, 'the chit-chat of St Germains being his forte'. 21 Cole, Memoirs, p. 349 and p. 363, Manchester to Vernon, 1 April and 20 April 1701. 22 Ibid., p. 387, Manchester to Vernon, 4 June 1701. 23 Ibid., p. 257, Manchester to Vernon, 4 December 1700. 24 N. Hooke, Correspondence, 1703-1707, 2 vols (London, 1870-71). 25 Ibid., 2, p. 194, Hooke to Torcy, 10 June 1705.

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precisely accusations such as these that have helped create the legend of espionage at the Stuart court at Saint-Germain.26 One other legend can be briefly referred to here. It seems that some of the Jacobites at Saint-Germain were freemasons, and that a masonic lodge was established in the chateau. The evidence is very scanty: it is based on masonic tradition and some documentation of a slightly later period. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that the earliest recorded lodge in France, established in Paris in 1726, was almost entirely composed of Jacobites who had been brought up at Saint-Germain, who had fathers and uncles who had been very close to James II and James III, and who were themselves still living in the Chateau de Saint-Germain when their lodge was established.27 If there was indeed a masonic lodge at the exiled Stuart court, its existence was the best-kept secret of all. It could have provided an additional means of contacting secret supporters in both England and Scotland. Just as the growing interest in Jacobite studies has demonstrated the need for a detailed examination of the exiled Stuart court, so there are aspects of that court that can in turn help

26

One of the spies trying to obtain information at Saint-Germain was James Ogilvie, son of Lord Boyn: see HMC Portland Papers, iv (London, 1897), particularly p. 307, Ogilvie to Harley, 9 June 1706; p. 375, Ogilvie to Harley, undated, 1706; and p. 425, Ogilvie to Harley, 12 July 1707. Despite this it was Hooke himself who arranged for Ogilvie to have a secret meeting with James III and Mary of Modena. (Hooke, Correspondence, ii, pp. 468-69, Hooke to Middleton and Middleton to Hooke, 9 September 1707.) When Robert Murray of Abercairney was arrested in Scotland in September 1707, because he had secretly gone to Saint-Germain during his recent visit to France, Hooke immediately blamed the members of the court for giving him away. The duchess of Gordon had to write from Scotland to point out that Murray's visit had been discovered because he had entrusted the secret to his private diary, which had been examined by the Scottish Privy Council. (Ibid., ii, p. 504, memoire given by Hooke to Chamillart, 2 November 1707; and p. 511, duchess of Gordon to Hooke, 11 November 1707.) 27 Corp, L'autre exit, pp. 15-17 and 20.

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The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

shed light on Jacobitism in general. The essays presented in the present volume, which concern both the court and the Jacobite movement, should therefore make a major contribution to our understanding of this important subject.

1 Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689-96 Eveline Cruickshanks The Revolution of 1688, in which parliament had played little part, had left the Tory party, who were the mainstay of the Stuarts, in a state of disarray. Many of the great landed families and heads of the Church of England were unable to accept the legality of the prince of Orange becoming king and became Nonjurors. These included the earl of Clarendon, Princess Anne's uncle, the duke of Beaufort, the earls of Exeter, Chesterfield, Huntingdon, Lichfield, Yarmouth, Lord Griffin, Sir John Friend, Sir John Fenwick, Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe and others. Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, Turner of Ely, Frampton of Gloucester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough and Lloyd of Norwich refused to take the oaths and were removed, as well as about 400 other clergy.l It used to be thought that this was a mere scruple of conscience, but we now know that Nonjurors were among the most active of the 1

See House of Lords divisions on the transfer of the crown in 1689, Bulletin of Institute of Historical Research, 127 (1980), pp. 81-7; Archives of the Archbishopric of Westminster, AAW B6/200, memo, by Captain David Lloyd, St-Germain, 23 March [1691]. I wish to thank the archbishop of Westminster for allowing me to consult these archives. For a good account of a Nonjuror's standpoint see Lord Chesterfield's letterbook, BL, MS Add. 15953. For the Nonjuring clergy see J.C. Findon. 'The Nonjurors and the Church of England, 1689-1716' (unpublished University of Oxford D. Phil, thesis, 1978).

2

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

Jacobites.2 Others, like most of the Tory party, accepted William as de facto but not dejure. Lord Ailesbury, for instance, took the oaths in order to serve James in parliament, as did Jacobite MPs such as Sir John Knight and Sir Richard Hart who sat for Bristol, or Sir John Parsons, lord mayor of London, Sir Christopher Musgrave and, more cautiously and intermittently, Sir Edward Seymour, the west country magnate.3 This does not mean to say that Tory rancour at James H's policy of admitting Roman Catholics and dissenters into office had ceased, but they disliked William of Orange even more. Indeed, contemporaries asserted that High Anglicans 'would prefer a Papist' to William III, a dissenter.4 The most active group working for a restoration after 1689 were high Anglicans, the same people who had persuaded James II in September 1688 to restore the Church of England's monopoly of office in church and state and to call a free parliament. This group included the duke of Beaufort; the earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, Ailesbury, Yarmouth, Huntingdon, Weymouth; Lord Preston, who had managed the 1685 parliament for James II, and his brother James Grahme; the bishop of Ely and Sir John Fenwick, Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, Colonel Edward Sackville, Colonel Henry Slingsby, four experienced army officers who had been MPs.5 The only nonAnglican was William Penn the Quaker and the founder of Pennsylvania.6 They were trying to foment a rising in the north in 1689 and some wanted James to divert troops from Ireland 2

Paul Monodjacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge, 1989). Bibliotheque Nationale, nouvelles acquisitions franchises [BN, n.ac.fr.] Renaudot papers 7492, fos 408-9; 7487, fos. 34-35, 276-79; Christian Cole, Historical and Political Memoirs (1735), pp. 52-53; duke of Manchester, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne (2 vols 1864), ii, p. 107. 4 HMC Finch, ii, p. 265; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. A. Browning (Glasgow, 1936), p. 572. 5 HMC Finch, ii, pp. 310, 313; Prussian despatches, Bonet 27 June/7 July and 18/28 July 1690 (microfilm at History of Parliament Trust). For the Grahmes, Fenwick, Sackville and Slingsby, see The House of Commons, 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning (3 vols, 1983), ii, pp. 307-9, 428-31; iii, pp. 439-40. 6 HMC Finch, ii, p. 278; CSP Dom., 1690-91, p. 65; 1691, p. 349, 3

Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689-96

3

to send to England, but the end of the Scottish rising with the battle of Killiecrankie in July 1689 and of the effective end of the war in Ireland at the battle of the Boyne in July 1690 and the capitulation of Limerick brought an end to those hopes. It is ironic that the best time for an English rising would have been in the summer of 1690, had the French and the comte de Tourville been able to follow up their victory at Beachy Head in June. The council of state informed William of Orange that 'the French have it in their power to land where they please in England' at this time.7 But the Jacobites in the south were not organised for a rising to coincide with a French descent. Fresh plans were made by this group under the leadership of Lord Preston, who had been appointed secretary of state by James in the winter of 1688. Lord Preston had been envoy to France from 1682 to 1685 and had found favour with Louis XIV so there was good reason for him to be secretary at SaintGermain. Before leaving he had several conferences with Members of both Houses of parliament and others, Whigs as well as Tories, as to the best ways of restoring the Stuarts with French assistance while safeguarding the Protestant religion and the English constitution. What it amounted to was that James was asked to worship privately as a Catholic but to govern as the head of the Church of England. He took over with him letters from influential persons in England, including William Penn and the bishop of Ely, as well as lists of the English navy supplied by Lord Dartmouth, who had commanded the fleet in 1688. Unfortunately, the wife of the boat owner, though herself a Jacobite, was indiscreet, so that Preston and his papers were captured.8 Taken with him was John Ashton, who had been clerk of the closet in Mary of Modena's household. Ashton 7

HMC Finch, ii, p. 347. A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. T.B. Howell (23 vols, London, 180926), xii, pp. 436-747; AAW B6 'the sum of my Lord Preston's Tryall' and Sir Edward Hales to Lord Melfort, 17 February 1691; Bonet 20/30 January, 29 January/8 February, 10/20 February 1691; Life of James II, ed. J.S. Clarke (2 vols, 1816), ii, p. 442. 8

4

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

was not centrally involved though some of the meetings had been held at his father-in-law's in Covent Garden and it was thought that the chief reason for his execution was that he had been collecting testimony from eyewitnesses to the birth of the Prince of Wales, sixty of them Protestants, to present to the inquiry William of Orange had promised but never held. Ashton was swiftly executed, the first in James IFs words 'that suffered by a court of justice for the royal cause'. Lord Preston saved his own life but not his estates by confessing, but only to what the government already knew from his papers. Lord Dartmouth, however, was imprisoned in the Tower, where he died.9 Despite this setback, preparations for a rising in England to coincide with a French landing continued apace. The expedition of 1692 consisted mainly of James II's own army, together with about 4,000 French troops under the marechal d'Harcourt about 14,000 in all, the size of William's army in 1688. It was the largest expedition ever mounted by Louis XIV.10 It was also the biggest effort English Jacobites ever made. Eight regiments were raised in the northern counties, mainly composed of Catholics and Nonjurors. The four Lancashire regiments said to number 7,000-8,000 were commanded by Colonel John Parker sent from Saint-Germain. Three of the nephews of the earl of Bath, all Nonjurors, came over from Saint-Germain too: Thomas Higgons (Jacobite secretary of state 1713-15), Bevill Higgons, the poet, and George Higgons. Commissions with the name of the officer left blank signed by James II were sent out by Lord Melfort into England. Over 100 of these were found in 1757 hidden inside a wall in Standish Hall, the headquarters of 9

Howell, State Trials, xii, pp. 747-822; earl of Ailesbury, Memoirs, ed. W.E. Buckley (2 vols, Roxburghe Club, 1890), ii, pp. 276-79; James //, ii, p. 443; The Life and Times of Anthony Wood (4 vols, Oxford, 1891-95), iii, pp. 353, 357, 359; BL, MS Add. 37,662, fo. 250. 10 James II, ii, pp. 471-74, 478; Memoires du Marechal de Berwick, ed. Petitot et Monmerque, Collection des memoires relatifs a I'histoire de France, series 2, Ixv (1828), pp. 371-74; James Macpherson, Original Papers (2 vols, 1775), i, pp. 4008; BL, MS Add. 47,608, fo. 133.

Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689-96

5

the Lancashire Jacobites. They were mainly Catholics and included William Dicconson, later treasurer to the Stuart court. Among the Anglicans were William Tempest, MP for Durham, 1690-95, and Hugh Smithson of Stanwick in Yorkshire, MP for Middlesex, 1701-05 and 1710-22. The duke of Beaufort was said to have raised 6,000 men. Lord Montgomery, son of the duke of Powis in the Jacobite peerage and lord chamberlain at the Stuart court, raised forces, as did Lord Clifford in Devon. Sir John Friend, a wealthy London brewer, MP for Great Yarmouth in 1685, undertook to raise a regiment of cavalry and two of militia around the Tower of London. The earl of Bath, who had gone into opposition, promised to surrender Plymouth to James as he had surrendered it to William in 1688.11 Because James II had been the founder of the Royal Navy and many of the serving naval officers had been his proteges, it had been expected that much of the English fleet would not fight but would come over to James instead. Its commander, Admiral Russell, had proposed 'going out of the way with the English fleet, to give the king an opportunity of landing, or else by making choice of ships for a winter squadron, whose officers he could influence'. This was provided the Dutch did not join the English fleet and provided he did not meet the French fleet head on in which case he made clear he would have to fight. James II, with a somewhat uncharacteristic sense of humour, remarked 'this resolution of fighting even against the King himself, was an odd method of restoring him'. The Dutch fleet did join the English navy, while independent action was made more difficult in any case by the mixing of Whigs and Tories in the English crews, so that one could keep an eye on the other. The result was that, whether Admiral Russell had been sincere 11

Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS 181, fos. 559, 563, 662; T.C. Porteous, 'New Light on the Lancashire Plot, 1692-24', Transactions of Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 1 (1934-35), pp. 1-62; Paul Hopkins, 'Aspects of Jacobite Conspiracy in England in the Reign of William III (unpublished University of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1981), pp. 69 n.6, pp. 423-52, 478-79.

6

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

or not, James who was ready and waiting on the coasts of Normandy, had to watch while French ships were sunk or disabled by the English fleet. The battle of La Hogue of May 1692 put an end to the best chance of a Stuart restoration during the reign of Louis XIV. 12 English Jacobites, however, did not give up hope. At Easter 1693 Lord Ailesbury went on a secret mission to Saint-Germain and Versailles with proposals from Sir Ralph Delaval and Henry Killigrew, two English admirals who had Jacobite sympathies but had given no promises before La Hogue and who had succeeded Russell in command of the fleet. Delaval and Killigrew offered that they would sail 200 or 300 leagues out of their way to allow an expedition with James on board a free passage to Portsmouth. The two admirals had been trained by and owed their fortunes to James and were said to believe that at this time better terms could be had for the nation from King James than King William and to have resented the 'insolence' of William towards the English. Lord Ailesbury was given an audience with Louis XIV, whom he thought had a greater 'air of Majesty' than any monarch he had ever seen. Louis, however, had been disillusioned by the promises of English admirals and had in any case, settled his plans for the next campaign, so that he refused assistance at this time.13 The regiments raised before 1692 were still in place to take part in a subsequent attempt. Jacobites and Roman Catholics, however, were always at the mercy of the disciples of Titus Gates, informers and perjurers who sought a share in the estates of those they denounced. This happened with the socalled Lancashire Plot of 1694. There was no specific plot at 12

James //, ii, pp. 489-92; Ailesbury, Memoirs pp. 291-3; Sir John Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (3 vols, 1771-88), part ii, book vi, pp. 232-33, 247-56; Memoires de Saint-Simon, ed. A. de Boislisle (41 vols, Paris, 1923-30), i, app. viii, pp. 328-38; John Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 392-98. 13 Ailesbury, Memoirs pp. 313-460; Macpherson, Original Papers, ii, pp. 457-62; Hopkins, 'Aspects of Jacobite Conspiracy', pp. 344-6; BN, MS n.ac.fr. 7,487, fo. 83; BL, MS Add. 47,608, fo. 134.

Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689-96

7

that time but James Lunt, an informer, accused known Jacobites and Roman Catholics of plotting. The arrests, made by Dutch guards, of Lord Molyneux, Peter Legh of Lyme (a wealthy Nonjuror and patron of the borough of Newton), Sir Thomas Stanley (MP for Preston 1695-98), Blundell of Crosby, William Dicconson and many others, subsequently taken to London and imprisoned in the Tower, aroused considerable local anger and sympathy. Roger Kenyon, hereditary clerk of the peace for Lancashire and MP for Clitheroe from 1690 to 1695, who had been anti-Catholic in the past, helped to secure the acquittal of the accused tried at Manchester by giving them details of the charges against them (prisoners accused of treason were not supposed to be told what they were accused of, which made it difficult for them to prepare a defence). Kenyon was able to discredit Lunt by showing that he had been a convicted perjurer and a bigamist.14 The case did real harm, however, as the arrests, searches for arms and greater vigilance on the part of the government severely damaged, though it did not end, the organisation of the Jacobite regiments. 1696 was the last time in Louis XIV's reign when supporters of the Stuarts had any chance of military support from France. In preparation for a rising to coincide with a landing from France, one of the most skilful pieces of Jacobite propaganda was published in December 1695: A Brief Account of Some of the Late Incroachments and Depredations of the Dutch upon the English by Robert Ferguson, which angered King William and his ministers. Saying that the Dutch were renowned for 'treachery and fraud', it accused them of stripping the country of coin, leaving English merchant ships unprotected, attempting to seize the wealth of Englishmen through 'sham plots', snubbing English army officers while praising and rewarding the Dutch 14

Hopkins, 'Aspects of Jacobite Conspiracy', pp. 310-20, 450, 475; Bonet, 717 September 1694; The Jacobite Trials at Manchester, ed. W. Beaumont (Chetham Society, 1853); Porteous 'New Light on the Lancashire Plot'; E. Lonsdale, John Lunt and the Lancashire Plot', Transactions of Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 115 (1963), pp. 91-106; HMC Kenyon, pp. 310-20.

8

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

and concluding that the Prince of Orange had 'no title to be King'. Unfortunately, Louis XIV insisted that the English should rise in rebellion before a landing took place, whereas they asserted, logically enough, that William had enough regular troops in England to crush them before the French could come to their rescue. The duke of Berwick went over to England in secret and he reported that though persons of the highest rank had engaged themselves to support a restoration, they declared themselves unable to 'take off the mask' and act until a body of troops had landed from France, which Berwick thought was realistic. In the course of his visit he was imprudent enough to visit his mother, Arabella Churchill, Marlborough's sister now Mrs Godfrey, and was recognised, but he managed to escape.15 James II did not reveal the state of things in England to Louis, but went on hoping that the expedition would go ahead. He sent over Sir George Barclay, an experienced army officer, now lieutenant-general in his guards at Saint-Germain, to mastermind the rising, with commissions to 'wage war' on the Prince of Orange.16 A British government spy noted that Jacobite 'Abdicated officers are planted very thick, and by their being very often on horseback seem to be very big with some great design'.17 Finding preparations less advanced than he would have wished, Barclay, on the advice of George Porter, another officer sent from Saint-Germain, formed a plan to speed matters along, first of all by kidnapping and then, as they did not know what to do with him, to kill William III as he went hunting in Richmond Park. Once William was out of the way, a rising would be easier and the French might be persuaded to land. The scheme was very similar to the Rye House Plot of 1683 to kill Charles II and even had the same location, Turnham Green. The would-be assassins, about forty in 15

Memoires du Marechal de Berwick, pp. 391-92; Archives de la Bastille, ed. F. Ravaisson (19 vols, Paris, 1866-1904), x, p. 467. 16 James II, ii, pp. 544-7, 597; HMC Kenyan, p. 408. 17 HMC Downshire, i, p. 510.

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9

number, were mainly military men and persons of lower social status, including two foreigners, a Frenchman and a Walloon, with the exception of Sir William Parkyns, a Warwickshire squire.18 Sir John Fenwick, who was principally involved in organising a rising and had differences with Barclay over seniority, and Sir John Friend, the commander and paymaster of the proposed London regiment, disapproved of the assassination plot and would have nothing to do with it. Berwick learned of it in London but decided to remain silent.19 Before his execution, Brigadier Rookwood, one of the would-be assassins, declared 'I never knew, saw or heard of any order or commission from King James for assassinating the Prince of Orange and attacking his Guards',20 while a contemporary Whig historian of the conspiracy absolved King James of complicity in an attempt on King William's life.21 Lord Bath's nephews Bevill, George and Thomas Higgons, were asked to take part but 'refused to be concerned in an attempt on the King's person'.22 The assassination plot was revealed to the earl of Portland. William's Dutch favourite, by Thomas Prendergast, one of the forty people recruited by Porter. He was a Roman Catholic from Newcastle, County Tipperary, who, according to Swift, had narrowly escaped the gallows for stealing cows. Though some historians have praised him for his public spirit, Swift castigated him years later as 'him who sham'd our Isle, traitor, That Traitor, Assassin, Informer vile'. Prendergast was richly rewarded, with a grant of £5,000 of land, £500 a year out of the forfeited estates of the earl of Barrymore, a baronetcy and the 18

See Jane Garrett, The Triumphs of Providence: The Assassination Plot of 1696 (Cambridge, 1980). 19 Howell, State Trials, xiii, p. 40; BL, MS Add. 11,258, fos 15-16; Memoires du Marechal de Berwick, p. 393. 20 BL, MS Add. 47608, fo. 199. 21 Sir Richard Blackmore, A True and Impartial History of the Conspiracy against the Person and Government of King William III (London, 1723). 22 Ibid., p. 85.

10

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

rank of lieutenant-colonel in the army.23 His revelations were confirmed by George Porter, who turned king's evidence. This plot so strengthened the hand of William III that contemporaries at first believed it had been invented by the court. After the death of his wife Mary in 1694, William had been regarded increasingly as an usurper, his open preference for the Dutch and coldness towards his English subjects had made him unpopular. The current recoinage had produced a financial crisis in the course of which people had no money with which to buy the necessities of life, much as in Russia today. Public revulsion at the discovery of the assassination plot, however, produced the Association, whereby all persons in office, national or local, had to swear that William was 'rightful and lawful' king and to renounce the 'pretended' Prince of Wales. This was the kind of oath the high Tories had managed to avoid since the revolution. Although many refused the Association at first, in the end, most took it until William's death, when it lapsed. When the assassination plot was revealed to parliament, William Norris, MP for Liverpool and a strong Whig, moved for an address denouncing Louis XIV and James 11 as its instigators, but he was stopped by the court managers.24 News of the discovery of the assassination plot reached Calais, where James II and the duke of Berwick were getting ready with an expedition consisting of forty battalions and eight regiments of dragoons, with 150 transport ships and twenty men-of-war.25 It was a plot within a plot. The larger scheme for a rising to coincide with a French landing involved many wealthy and influential persons. The success and credibility of a change of regime depended (as in 1660 or 1688) on people of substance supporting it. Arrests on a charge of high treason multiplied. The only people executed, however, apart 23

DNB, sub Thomas Prendergast; Swift, Poems, ed. H. Williams, iii, p. 826. I am grateful to Howard Erskine-Hill for information on this point. 24 HMC Kenyan, p. 405. 25 Dangeau, Journal, ed. Soulie (19 vols, Paris, 1854-60), v, pp. 372, 373, 375; HMC Downshire, i, pp. 627-28.

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from those involved in the assassination plot, were Sir John Friend and Sir John Fenwick. Warrants for arrests on charges of high treason were issued against the duke of Beaufort and the earl of Lichfield, who were placed under house arrest. Lord Ailesbury, against whom Cardell Goodman, a well-known actor with a dubious background involved in the assassination plot, had given evidence, contrived Goodman's escape to France, thus depriving the government of the second witness essential for the prosecution under the newly-passed Treason Trials Act. Also imprisoned were Lord Brudenell, Lord Arran, Lord Arundel de Wardour, Lord Gerard of Bromley, Lord Montgomery, Sir John Friend, Sir John Fenwick, Sir John Knight, Sir Richard Hart, James Grahme, Sir William Clutterbuck, Bishop Turner of Ely, Bishop Frampton of Gloucester, Sir Roger TEstrange, Robert Ferguson and about a hundred others. After spending a year in the Tower, Lord Ailesbury was granted bail for £10,000, his sureties being Lords Thanet, Chesterfield, Weymouth and Ferrars.26 Sir John Friend, a wealthy London brewer and MP for Great Yarmouth in 1685, had commanded the Tower Hamlets militia until the Revolution. He had depleted his fortune in funding and raising a London regiment for James and he was accused by George Porter of having attended a meeting with Lord Ailesbury, Lord Montgomery and Sir John Fenwick, at which some of the persons involved in the assassination plot were present. Tried at the Old Bailey for accepting a commission signed by King James and countersigned by Lord Melfort for raising a regiment of horse and planning a rising to coincide with a French invasion, he was denied the benefits of a defence under the Treason Trials Act by the attorney-general. In his dying speech at Tyburn on 3 April 1696, he declared: 'that, as no foreign power, so neither any domestic power can alienate 26

Narcissus Luttrell, Brief Relation of State Affairs (6 vols, Oxford, 1859), iv, pp. 24, 25,27,31,32,33, 34, 38,40,47,50,327,574; HMCDownshire, i, pp. 64446, 714, 718; CSP Dom. 1696, pp. 83, 95.

12

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

our allegiance. For it is altogether new and unintelligible to me that the King's subjects can depose or dethrone him on any account.'27 A member of one of the oldest families in Northumberland, Sir John Fenwick had represented the county in the Cavalier Parliament, in the three Exclusion Parliaments and in 1685, and commanded a regiment of horse until the Revolution. He was to command a regiment of horse at the rising of 1696. As colonel of foot in the Dutch army in 1675, he had clashed with the prince of Orange over the payment of his troops, saying his difficulty in raising troops was because the French paid so much better than the Dutch. According to an account left by his wife, Lady Mary Fenwick, the prince replied he would not go to the door to oblige an Englishman. Fenwick further defended the bravery of English officers at the siege of Maastricht, when he fought with distinction and was wounded, claiming afterwards that the Dutch had run away. Subsequently, as he wrote, he was pursued for the rest of his life by the 'malice' of the prince of Orange. One of the most active Jacobites after 1689 he was to be in charge of the proposed rising of 1696 in which he was to command a regiment of 2,000 horses. He was not involved in and disapproved of the assassination plot, writing: 'This attempt of the Assassination then broke out with which we were all surprised and found ourselves exposed without having the least notice given us, so much as to take care of ourselves.'28 Fenwick was captured at New Romney as he tried to escape. The government had George Porter's evidence against him but lacked a second witness because Goodman had absconded. Unable to prosecute him in a court of law, he was tried by

27

BL, MS Add. 11,258, fo. 17; The House of Commons, 1660-90, ii, pp. 369-70; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv, p. 34; Howell, State Trials, xiii, pp. 1-64. 28 BL, MS Add. 47,608, fos 10, 12, 15-16, 94, 131, 180-82; The House of Commons, 1660-90, ii, pp. 307-9.

Attempts to Restore the Stuarts, 1689-96

13

parliament by bill of attainder in a highly political trial.29 Refusing to save himself by giving evidence against fellow conspirators, he made a confession to the duke of Devonshire, a prominent Whig, of the dealings of the Whig Junto with James II at Saint-Germain.30 This infuriated parliamentarians who hurried his execution to avoid his substantiating these accusations. In his dying speech he declared: 1 pray to God to bless my true and lawful sovereign King James, the Queen and the Prince of Wales and restore him and his posterity to this nation, which is impossible to prosper till the Government is settled upon a right foot.' It was customary at public executions for the crowd to jeer and shout acclamations, but Fenwick, attended on the scaffold by Nonjuring clergy and John Granville, MP, Lord Bath's brother, died in complete silence.31 1696 marked the end of any hope of military assistance from Louis XIV to effect a Stuart restoration and of the first phase of Jacobitism.

29

See Robert J. Frankle, 'Parliament's Right to Do Wrong; The Parliamentary Debate on the Bill of Attainder against Sir John Fenwick 1696', Parliamentary History, 4 (1985), pp. 71-85. 30 Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and others believed that Fenwick had told the truth; Burnet, History of My Own Time, ed. M J. Routh (6 vols, Oxford, 1823), iv, pp. 321-22. 31 BL, MS Add. 47608, fo. 94; Howell, State Trials, xiii, pp. 537-749; Poems on Affairs of State (7 vols, New Haven, 1963-75), v, p. 484.

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2 Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac

On 10 June 1688 Mary Beatrice of Este, the second wife of James II, gave birth to a son named James Francis Edward. Although the birth was a public event, as was the custom of the time, few births gave rise to such bitter controversies or had such momentous consequences. Within six months a successful Dutch invasion had secured the throne for James's son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, and his daughter Mary and ensured that Britain would be in the Protestant camp against Louis XIV. James II, those near him and his supporters, the Jacobites', made their journey into exile in France, constituting the 'other refuge' of the time, to use Bernard Cottret's expression. Louis XIV placed at their disposal the Chateau of Saint-Germain-enLaye, near Versailles, where the British court settled. Until 1715 Saint-Germain became one of the centres of intrigue in British political life. The first exiles, comprising mainly English and Scottish courtiers, were joined by the Irish who fought with James II from 1689 to 1692 in Ireland. Even before William of Orange promulgated the very severe anti-Catholic legislation in Ireland, they chose to follow their master into exile and continued to serve him by fighting in the army of his staunchest ally, the king of France. Although they were paid by Louis, the

16

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

Irish regiments always rejected any assimilation with mercenaries by stressing the political and religious nature of their allegiance: 'Our duty to our King will make us serve the French King with all the zeal and faithfulness that he can expect', as Captain Rutherford asserted.1 The Irish regiments formed as early as 1692 (the three regiments of the Mountcashel brigade commissioned directly by Louis XIV and the fourteen regiments, two troops of bodyguards and three independent companies commissioned by James II) offered to France and to the support of the Stuart cause a weapon whose efficiency and loyalty was never found wanting in the course of the eighteenth century. They were also the spearhead in the process of assimilation and in the success of exiled families in French society. For example, Arthur Dillon, who commanded the regiment that bore his name. He had come over to France after several of his estates had been confiscated (2,800 acres in Mayo, 825 in Roscommon and 1,042 in Westmeath), was made a brigadier after the victory of Cremona in 1702, became lieutenant-general in 1706 and distinguished himself at the side of the duke of Berwick in the campaign of 1714, which was his last. When he retired from active service in 1730, he handed his regiment over to his eldest son, thus establishing the Dillons permanently as one of the great officer families of France. His youngest son, Arthur, became abbot of St Etienne de Caen, then archbishop of Evreux, archbishop of Toulouse and finally archbishop of Narbonne, which made him a leading cleric in the French church. General Dillon's brilliant career at the heart of the Mountcashel brigade, however, never lessened his links with the court of Saint-Germain where his wife Catherine Sheldon was maid of honour to Mary of Modena. Since the Jacobites who took the road to exile were motivated by fidelity and a sense of duty towards James II, those who were not on active 1

BL, Ms Add. 37662, fo. 224, letter of 21 Aug. 1691 to Henry Browne, secretary to Mary of Modena. Quotations have been translated into English in this essay.

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

17

military service (and including a large number of army families), as well as those with no family ties in the country, clustered by a natural process round their sovereigns. Paris and Saint-Germain were thus peopled with Jacobites. The number of the exiles has given rise to several learned controversies among historians, particularly in Ireland. The work of Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret has enabled us to assess their numbers at between 30,000-40,000, who left the British Isles for France in the years 1688-92.2 In fact we have only partial information for the three national groups. In the case of the 'Wild Geese', that is to say the Irish soldiers who went to France with their families after the capitulation of Limerick, the number of 14,000 hitherto agreed among historians has been revised to that of 19,000.3 Not all of them resided in Paris and Saint-Germain of course. For any study of the exiled Jacobite community, the parochial registers of Saint-Germain-en-Laye form the principal source,4 although only a partial one since Protestants are not included and since a sizeable number of refugees lived in Paris. From 1692 to 1713 over 1,000 British names figure each year in the registers, rising to a maximum of 1,729 names in 1700, at a time when the peace had probably brought back the soldiers to the main exiled community. From 1688 to 1714 SaintGermain witnessed 1,250 Jacobite' baptisms, 814 burials and 318 marriages. These very figures are conclusive evidence of the importance of the British presence in the town. The first wave of arrivals from 1688 to 1691, a fairly considerable one, consisted almost exclusively of English people and was the immediate consequence of political events in England. In 1692 there was a spectacular increase in the number of exiles, easily 2

Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, 'La diaspora Jacobite' in La court des Stuarts a Saint-Germain-en-Laye au temps de Louis XIV, exhibition catalogue. Reunion des Musees Nationaux (1992), pp. 232-34. * Chaussinand-Nogaret, 'Les Jacobites au XVIHe siecle' in Annales ESC (1973), p. 1098. He agrees with the conclusions of John O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade in the Service of France (Dublin, 1854). The Jacobites in the Parochial Records of Saint-Germain, ed. E. Lart (London, 1912).

18

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

traced to the arrival of the 'Wild Geese'. The numbers swelled until 1698, particularly in the years 1696-97, slowed down and continued at a steady rate until 1701. This phenomenon was particularly noticeable among the Irish and may be explained by the regrouping of army families in the vicinity of SaintGermain after the peace and the disbandment of troops. After 1701 the population decreased. The process was identical for the English and the Irish and was accompanied by a decrease in the number of marriages and baptisms, a sign that the population which came between 1688-92 was getting older and that it 'escaped', mainly because the disbanded soldiers were allowed to enter the service of other Catholic powers, principally Spain, and left for those countries with their families. The composition of the exiled community stabilised after 1692 and retained the same character until 1715, a date which saw the second wave of arrivals which coincided with the second generation of exiles. The Irish formed the majority, about 60 per cent of the exiles, as against 35 per cent who were English, with only 5 per cent of Scots, even though the political influence of this last group was in inverse proportion to its numbers. About 40 per cent of the exiles were of noble birth, a considerable number when the French nobility were only 1 per cent of the population and even less in England. In stark contrast to the Huguenot refugees, Jacobite refugees were aristocratic exiles. Moreover, the English and Scottish exiles were essentially courtiers, members of the king's household, so that it is not surprising that so many of them were nobles. The case of the Irish is even more revealing. William of Orange proceeded with large-scale confiscations of land. Parliament had wanted to vest the forfeitures in trustees to pay for the war, but William gave them away to Portland, Elizabeth Villiers and other favourites, or had them sold. About a quarter of fertile lands in Ireland fell into the hands of Protestants. The vast majority of forfeited Irish were not large landowners. Simms has documented 176, out of whom at least forty-seven (27 per

Jacobites in Pans and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

19

cent) made for Saint-Germain, owning between them 72 per cent of confiscated lands.5 The average size of their estates was twice as great as the average size of confiscated estates. Thus those who had sought refuge at Saint-Germain were major landowners, which confirms the essentially aristocratic nature of the Jacobite exile. The number of women fluctuated at around 42 per cent, which shows that the Jacobite exile was a familial one.6 The very fact that wives and widows of Jacobites, of soldiers especially, figure so prominently reflects their numerical importance. At Saint-Germain the exiled community organised itself solely round James II and his court. In 1701 one Richard Cavanagh even took out a lease for 36 livres of 'the shop shaped like a hut' butting on to the guard room of the capitainerie, next to the fountain.7 The town was too small for the settlements to follow distinct geographical patterns. The assessment rolls for the collection of waste from 1701 to 1715,8 and the leases granted through Delanges, the usual solicitor of the Jacobites, allow us to obtain fifty-one addresses, though, in the end, they yield few details, because the Hotel de Forges and the Hotel des Quatre Formes in the rue de Lorraine were merely said to be occupied by 'some English'. Furthermore, a list of persons who are in the two houses in Saint-Germain and in a very poor state'9 reveals that the first sheltered seventy-one persons and the second thirty-five! It is, therefore, impossible to try and establish an average number of occupants for these fifty-one addresses. 5

J.G. Simms, The Williamite Confiscation in Ireland, 1690-1703 (London 1956), appendix B, summary of trustees sales in 1702-3. 6 One must remember that these family groups appear in the registers only in relationship with individual members. 7 Lease of 8 September 1701, archives of Delange, notaire at Saint-Germain, kept by Maitre Michel, notaire, who gave me permission to consult them. 8 Archives Departementales des Yvelines, B 451 to 473. Only the names of the owners and of the main tenants are given, not the total number of residents. 9 BN, MS frangais 20,866, fos 106-7, quoted by Yves Poutet, 'Jacques II, MacMahon et la France', Revue d'histoire de VAmerique fran^aise, 21, p. 433.

20

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

The Jacobites who settled in Paris did so in very different conditions and their settlements were determined by different criteria. Ever since the triumph of the English and Scottish Reformation, the religious houses which accounted for over 400 persons were the principal points of anchor and the oldest kind of the British presence in Paris.10 With the exception of the Blue Nuns of the Immaculate Conception convent in the rue de Charenton, most were concentrated in the University quarter: the English Benedictines in the rue Saint-Jacques, the English Benedictine nuns in the rue du Champ-de-l'alouette, the English seminary in the rue des Postes, the Irish College in the rue des Carmes, and the English Augustinians, like the Scots College, in the rue des Fosses-Saint-Victor. The members of these religious communities belonged to the same British Catholic families as the Jacobites. Catholics were in the majority in Ireland, but they never represented more than a small minority in England and there was said to have been no more than 50,000 papists in Scotland.11 Given such a small number of people, family connections were likely to be close and straightfoward. For instance, John Martinash, one of James IFs servants in SaintGermain, had three daughters, Mary Monica, Barbara Xaviera and Anne Joseph, all of whom became nuns in the English Augustinian convent, in 1696, 1701 and 1706 respectively.12 In the same convent lived Theresa Carter, niece to John Ingleton, second tutor to the Prince of Wales.13 A Mr Pope's illegitimate 10

See G. Daumet, Les etablissements religieux anglais, ecossais et irlandais fondes a Paris avant la Revolution (Paris, 1912). 11 J. Danagh, 'The Catholic Population of Scotland since 1680', Innes Review, 4, p. 51. He draws his figures from J. Walsh, History of the Catholic Church in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1899). The number of Scottish Catholics fell in the eighteenth century to 30,000 in 1770. 12 When his youngest daughter entered the convent, he settled 240 livres p.a. with a capital of 1,840 livres on the house, Archives Nationales, Paris, minutier central, ET LXV/162, 22 April 1706. 13 In his will he left them 100 livres tournois 'with the consent of her superior and as far as the holy vows of poverty and obedience will allow', Archives Nationales, S 6845, fo. 25.

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

21

daughter, Anne Smith, entered the Blue Nuns community in 1694.14 This applied at every level of the Jacobite community. Jacobites also provided convents and colleges with money, as some of them had already done before 1688, mostly to the religious houses of their own countrymen. The money given was often in the form of private gifts as well as public collections.15 Very often, however, and especially in the case of the higher aristocracy, the exiles preferred to buy annuities on the Hotel de Ville and to settle them on such or such a community. On 3 March 1701, Florent O'Donaghue, a Scot, who commanded the English constables, settled an annuity of 150 livres a year on the Scots College.16 Following his example, in 1714 his uncle's widow, Anne Gordon (who was the stepdaughter of the duke of Perth) gave an annuity of 300 livres a year to the Scots College.17 Between 1688 and 1715 British convents were also given legacies, all except the Visitation of Chaillot which seems to have been dearer to the queen than to the Jacobites. On the other hand, the Irish Jesuits in Poitiers, the Benedictine nuns at Pontoise and at Dunkirk, the English Reformed Franciscans, the English Poor Clares at Gravelines and the Carthusians at Newport all received some legacies. The most generous of all benefactors was William Dicconson, controller of James II's household, who bequeathed six annuities to the English seminary (yielding a yearly income of 3,702 livres)ils and Lord Caryll who gave 27,000 livres to the English Benedictine monks and the Scots College. To these legacies, he added an annuity of 550 livres for the bishop and vicar apostolic 14

The Diary of the 'Blue Nuns' or Order of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady at Paris, 1658-1810, ed. Joseph Gillow, Catholic Record Society (1910), p. 42. 15 In 1691 a collection by Lady Kingsland for the Blue Nuns came to 80 livres, that of Lady Jersey in 1714 to 800 livres, The Diary of the 'Blue Nuns', pp. 39, 68. 16 Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LIII/124. 17 Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LIII/152. Anne Gordon was the daughter of the duchess of Perth by a first marriage. 18 Will of 1 September 1703, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXIX/508. The rest of his estate went to his wife Juliana Walmsley.

22

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

for London at the time of his death.19 Some Irish Jacobites preferred to set up grants. Toby Walsh made provision for a student from his family or bearing his name to stay three years at the Irish College,20 while John Molony, bishop of Limerick, created six grants for six Irish students to stay at the College Louis le Grand in Paris.21 In their wills, Jacobites often wished to stress their fondness for their national college. For instance, George Barklay, brigadier-general, asked for his heart to be embalmed and deposited in the chapel of the Scots College, to which he left 500 livres as well as an annuity of 300 livres.22 Like Anne Gordon, Barklay chose Lewis Innes, principal of the college, as his executor. This shows that priests, principals of colleges and attorneys could advise on and manage the affairs of fellow countrymen. Acting as advisers and managers of affairs for the English were Edward Lutton, Charles Whytford or John Witham; for the Irish Charles Magennis, John Farley and Felix Cavanagh; and for the Scots Lewis Innes. For their countrymen these intermediaries provided an element of stability and a source of local knowledge to people who did not know French usages, could not always speak French and sometimes had to leave Paris for active military service. This role was similar to that played by some Irish bankers, some of whom managed the business affairs of religious communities as well as those of the Jacobites. These bankers formed the link between members of the same families in France and in Britain. Since the same bankers handled the affairs, monies and investments of Catholics in France and Britain as well as those of religious communities on the continent of Europe, funds could easily be transferred from one account to another without arousing any suspicion. 19

Will of 9 June 1707, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXV/175 and BL MS Add. 28250, fo. 200. 20 15 June 1704, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXV/173. 21 Will of 23 September 1701, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET XXIII/584. 22 15 June 1704, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXV/173.

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

23

A first area of Jacobite settlement in Paris was situated in the University quarter between the rue Saint-Jacques and the rue de la Boucherie to the west of the Seine, the rue des Bernardins, the rue Saint-Victor, the Fosses Saint-Victor, and the rue des Fosses-Saint-Jacques.23 Similarly, a second nucleus established itself in the Saint-Sulpice quarter (where numerous Irish priests had livings), especially rue de Buci, rue Jacob and even more in the rue des Ciseaux and the rue des Canettes. Mathorez, the historian of Paris,24 noted that the Danemarck, York and Prince-de-Galles hotels in the rue Jacob were filled with English Jacobites and the whole of the Saint-Germain-desPres quarter enjoyed the patronage of the British in the eighteenth century. 'The managers of these hotels spoke English and their customers could refresh themselves in the nearby cafes where they were served in the English way.' In this instance, the Jacobite settlements followed the tradition of the British 'Grand Tour',25 which expanded in the eighteenth century. The Stuart mausoleums became essential places to visit for British travellers on the Continent.26 There are few mentions of private houses belonging to or even let to Jacobites. The most common method of housing was in hotels, furnished rooms or boarding houses. A list of Irish families in the parish of Saint-Sulpice27 at this time shows that four out of eleven lodged in a hotel bedroom, while five lodged in French private houses, which was probably cheaper and was nearer to furnished rooms. It would seem that not only did the British rent furnished rooms but often did so from their compatriots. An Irish attorney called Neil Conway granted a lease to Francis Ritton and Mary Fermat 'keepers of furnished 23

This Parisian geographical survey was compiled from 212 addresses found in notarial archives etc. 24 Jules Mathorez, Histoire de la formation de la population fran^aise: les etrangers en France sous VAncien Regime (2 vols, Paris, 1919), i, p. 109. 25 See Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour (London 1985). 26 See Geoffrey Scott, Sacredness of Majesty: The English Benedictines and the Cult of James //, in Royal Stuart Papers, 23 (1984). 27 See n. 9.

24

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

rooms' by which he let out to them 'house no. 16 in the town of Paris at the corner of the rue des Carmes and the rue de Judas at the sign of St Patrick, consisting of a shop, a back room, four floors above consisting of two bedrooms each, such as the said house comprises and offers'.28 What is more these houses seem to have been 'kept' by British people, as is shown by a case in 1742 when seals were affixed after the death of Edward Wachop, a Scotsman, captain in the Roth regiment and a knight of the order of Saint-Louis: he lodged in the fourth floor of a house situated in the faubourg and porte Saint-Jacques-duHaut in a furnished room he rented from Rebecca Menzies, widow of Dominique Dufour 'usher to the late Queen of England'.29 In fact, the way of life of Jacobite exiles remained securely based on British traditions and habits. The exiles always sought, by all means at their disposal, to remain in contact with the country of their origin. They had frequent opportunities to meet their compatriots travelling on the Continent. Among them, there were many who came to Saint-Germain to demonstrate their allegiance to James II. In the main, these were highly placed persons who committed a crime thereby in the eyes of the English government. Lord Ailesbury, when he came to France, had to take elaborate precautions to reach the heart of the chateau de Saint-Germain without being seen or recognised. Nevertheless, in February 1696, after his return, he was arrested as a Jacobite suspect and was sent to the Tower. Subsequently William of Orange allowed him to retire to Brussels, where he lived until his death in 1741. He never joined the exiled court, but he always refused to recognise any king but James II and his son.30 It would be difficult and indeed futile to try and draw up a list of all visitors to Saint-Germain 28

Lease dated 23 April 1699, Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET XVII/465. 29 Seals dated 19 September 1742, Archives Nationales, Y 11 304. 30 See his Memoirs ed. W.E. Buckley (2 vols, Roxburgh Club, London, 1890); and C. Oman, Mary of Modena (London, 1962), pp. 177-81.

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

25

when many tried to keep their visit a secret. But the despatches of Matthew Prior and the earl of Manchester, William's representatives in Paris, allow us a survey of the years 16991701 and to define the nature of these regular contacts. To look at it logically, the two diplomats concentrated their surveillance on important people, which reinforces a picture of persons of high social status, many of them parliamentarians: out of thirty visitors, there were eight MPs, one of whom brought letters from fourteen other MPs.31 Jacobites in both Houses of parliament received electoral and political instructions from Saint-Germain and they obeyed them even when these went against the grain. When in 1711-12 they were told to support Oxford's government, Jacobite MPs agreed to serve as 'creatures and slaves to the ministry', however unpopular such a stance was in the Commons.32 Unlike the Huguenots, the Jacobites represented an important political force in their country of origin and presented a real threat to the established system. On 30 September 1699 Manchester, writing to Lord Jersey, took particular notice of the arrival of one Cockburn 'commissioned by the whole party of the South of Scotland'. The flood of visitors was such that on 4 November Manchester complained that the British 'daily come over to Saint-Germain'. In the summer he reported the presence of William Cecil, MP, son of the earl of Exeter, just returned from Rome. He was to visit Versailles and 'it is expected he will go elsewhere', i.e. Saint-Germain. The death of the duke of Gloucester, son of Princess Anne, made James Francis Edward the potential heir to his sister as successor of William of Orange. These new possibilities of a restoration increased the flood of visitors and those who sought to obtain guarantees for the Church of England and the constitution. 'It is observed at Saint-Germain', Manchester 31

See Christian Cole, Historical and Political Memoirs (London 1735); and Duke of Manchester, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne (2 vols, London, 1864), ii, pp. 186-87 and 189. For Prior's reports see HMC Bath, iii. 32 D. Szechijacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710-1714 (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 93.

26

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

wrote, 'that they see every day more faces who come to make their court there. I find there are some who come to see me and go there also.' The last visitor for 1700 was a gentleman named Audley 'that is going over with horses and dogs, which they say are intended as a present for Saint-Germains'. Again from the month of March 1701, Manchester had to report 'they begin to come again from England'.33 His despatches cease in the autumn when he left Paris after the death of James II and Louis XIV's recognition of James III. Among these visitors, some were probably motivated by simple curiosity, but most of them were committed Jacobites, many of them highly-placed people, who did not hesitate to serve as couriers. This makes it difficult to decide whether or not they can properly be called Jacobite agents. Much depends on the degree of organisation required to be able to call it an actual network for correspondence and Jacobite intrigues. It was this network of agents and supporters directed by the exiled court in Saint-Germain which made James II's position quite different from that of other exiled clients of France, such as the elector of Bavaria and the prince de Vaudemont. A Stuart king in exile could hope to claim a relative independence in his relations with Louis XIV and to try and turn information into hard cash. The Jacobite exile was, therefore, a political as well as a social phenomenon and as such presented a greater threat to the powers that be than the Huguenots ever did to France. The setting up of the first correspondence network was the work of a Frenchman, the abbe Eusebe Renaudot,34 chosen by Seignelay, the French navy minister, as an intermediary because of his knowledge of English. The years 1691-94 saw a struggle for power between Renaudot and Lord Melfort, secretary of state to James II, to gain control of the intelligence system and thereby limit the control of the court of Versailles 33

Cole, Historical and Political Memoirs, pp. 53, 67, 183, 195, 290, 324. See P. Burger, 'Spymaster to Louis XIV: A Study of the Papers of the Abbe Renaudot', Ideology and Conspiracy, ed. E. Cruickshanks (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 111-37. 34

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

27

over that of Saint-Germain. A joint campaign orchestrated by English Jacobites and Versailles compelled James II to exile Melfort in June 1694 and allowed Renaudot for a time to make use of Saint-Germain as an instrument of policy for Versailles. The influence of Lord Middleton, who succeeded Melfort, and his considerable political abilities, however, led Renaudot, who had never hidden the fact that he preferred manuscripts and scholarship to dealing with British spies, to distance himself from English affairs. The exiles, on their side, remained in contact with relations and friends in Britain and could be useful in gaining information and establishing channels of communication. In 1700 Manchester informed the English government that the brother of Ingleton, sub-tutor to the Prince of Wales, held frequent Jacobite meetings at the Three Crowns in Holborn; in 1701 he wrote that Hatcher, gentleman usher to James II, was in correspondence with his brother in England.35 The principal secretary of state at the Stuart court, however, managed a much more sophisticated and widespread network which covered the whole of Britain. This rested on a few salaried officials selected for this task. There were three in 1710-14. The Jacobite allegiance of James St Amand (16431728), the king's apothecary from 1685 to December 1688 and MP for St Ives in 1685, was known to all. He refused the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary and was implicated with John Ashton in the Jacobite plot of 1691, which was planned in England. From 1710 to 1714, he seems to have played a minor role only. John Menzies, who figures in the correspondence under the code name of'Abraham', replaced him for the whole of England, specialising in English parliamentary circles. Lastly, Henry Straton, alias 'ScougaF, operated mainly in Scotland. Each of them sent regular reports to Saint-Germain and served as a means of communication between Jacobites in Britain and the exiled court. 35

Manchester MSS in Beinecke Library, Yale, microfilm RP 3764 (by kind permission of Stephen Parkes).

28

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

On their part, non-official agents sent reports which were more or less frequent or reliable. The chief of these were Robert Ferguson, the plotter, who tried to form his own network in 1713, as well as James Plunkett, John Netterville and Charles Leslie.36 Lastly, members of the court of SaintGermain themselves could act as agents for special missions. In 1696 the duke of Berwick went over to England himself in secret to gauge the strength of the Jacobites. From 1707 Colonel Nathaniel Hooke, Torcy's agent for Scottish affairs, was entrusted with the preparations for the 1708 attempt. Their use to double up with regular channels was a means of confusion and proved an open door to excesses provoked by internal rivalries at the court of Saint-Germain. Renaudot complained of the court's lack of judgement in the choice of its men: 'the court of Saint-Germain', he wrote, 'has proved so often wrong about the faithfulness or some of the dishonesty of others that we take no risk by not trusting it blindly'. As the normal network was based on one correspondent who recruited men of similar political sympathies to provide information, the personality of each was an important factor and gave rise to numerous rivalries. The passage of agents and letters was through Holland and Dunkirk and local merchants served as letter boxes. From 1689 Renaudot followed this system: 'letters will be sealed after the fashion of merchants and sent to England addressed to Mr Jean Cossart, merchant in Rotterdam and under this address to Mr Andre Hebert in Paris'.37 From other addresses letters sent to Amsterdam reached St Malo and La Rochelle, those from Rotterdam went to Paris. On average, it took ten days for a letter to get from Saint-Germain to England. Through French channels, used frequently by Berwick, delays could be cut to four or five days. Security was primitive, based essentially on the use of codes and false names. In London, the government used the skills of the mathematician John Wallis, a specialist in the cracking of 36 37

See Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, ch.l. BN, nouvelles acquisitions franchises, MS 7,491, fo. 214.

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

29

codes.38 In the case of correspondence, as well as in the realm of politics, the Stuart cause suffered from the touchiness of the exiled court and its distrust of views and agents coming from England. The latter, according to Renaudot, 'complain also that the persons they send are not listened to or else are treated as suspects' and that 'everything which goes through this channel [Saint-Germain] becomes known sooner or later'.39 Another aspect of relations between the exiles and their country of origin was economic. Some members of the higher aristocracy at Saint-Germain still received income from their estates in Britain. William Herbert, Lord Powis, had been one of James II's advisers before 1688 and had left for France with Mary of Modena. Although while at Saint-Germain he was made a duke, given the Garter in 1692 and had been appointed lord chamberlain by James, Powis enjoyed an income of £10,000 a year from his estates until his death in July 1696. Only then were his estates granted to Lords Rochford and Portland, William's favourites. In 1697 Rochford left England for Holland, where he died in 1708. His heirs continued to receive the income from the Powis estates, even though the second marquess of Powis was allowed to return and live there as early as 1696, but it was not until 1722, when Powis made his peace with the government, that his estates were restored to him.40 In the case of these aristocratic families, only rarely did all members go to France. The result was that those who had stayed could provide for those who had gone, often giving them a pension. Sir Edward Herbert, lord chief justice of Common Pleas before the Glorious Revolution and James II's lord chancellor at Saint-Germain, received a pension from his brother, Arthur Herbert, the admiral, who had commanded 38

BL, MS Add. 32499. BN, nouvelles acquisitions franchises, MS 7,487, fo. 27. 40 N. Luttrell, Brief Relation of State Affairs (6 vols, Oxford, 1859), ii, p. 434. Powis Castle, National Trust Guide (1989), pp. 55-6. G.E. Cockayne, Complete Peerage, sub Powys. 39

30

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

William's invasion fleet in 1688.41 Lord CarylPs estates were made over to his brother and to his nephew, so that when he died in September 1711 his legal income in France, 12,966 livres a year, came from annuities on the Hotel de Ville. Family letters show that the hierarchy survived unquestioned and that he was still regarded as head of the family.42 After the failure of the Fifteen in Scotland, a practice which had been used by the first exiles at Saint-Germain spread. This process was described by Allardyce: 'the forfeited estates were often saved by means of settlements or fictitious debts, which were not violently contested by the Crown lawyers, and in other cases the friends and relations of the family were allowed to purchase the lands at very low prices'.43 It was thanks to these 'trusts' that Sir Thomas Strickland and Lord Middleton managed to keep their estates. Lady Strickland had gone to France with Mary of Modena, soon to be followed by Sir Thomas. Before he left and to avoid potential confiscation, he made over his estates in trust to two of his Protestant retainers, Thomas Shepherd and Robert Crane, who held Sizergh, the Strickland estate, until his death in 1694. Walter Strickland, the heir, was then allowed to recover the family estate. The Strickland children had joined their parents in Saint-Germain, first Walter in February 1689 and two others in April, brought over by Thomas Shepherd himself. Sir Thomas and Lady Strickland remained at the Stuart court until 1692, when they moved to Rouen where Sir Thomas died on 8 January 1694.44 Middleton's circumstances are well known thanks to G.H. Jones's biography of him.45 Like Melfort, Middleton was outlawed in 1694 and his Scottish estates forfeited. His estates in England were forfeited early in 1696 and granted to Charles 41

M. Trevor, The Shadow of a Crown (London 1988), p. 278. BL, MS Add. 28,244, fo. 156. His silver and species came to 18,815 livres. 43 Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ed. A. Allardyce (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1878), ii, p. 477. 44 H. Hornyold-Strickland, Strickland of Sizergh (privately printed, London, 1929). 45 G.H.Jones, Charles Middleton (London, 1967). 42

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

31

Straton by William of Orange. Surprisingly enough, Straton was a friend of Middleton who still received the income from his estates, which made Saint-Simon comment that Lord and Lady Middleton were 'the only ones of those at Saint-Germain who enjoyed the whole of their income from England'.46 However, 'such fictitious holding of property in "trust" for a friend or a relative who had got into trouble was not rare in Scotland'. It is interesting to note that this system was very similar to that used by the French Huguenots. Although we know that in 1713 Middleton expressed concern about possible consequences should the trust be discovered: 'it is quite possible that Caryll's, Melfort's, Middleton's property transactions were completely unknown to William or any of his sincere supporters. No act of betrayal has yet been traced to either Caryll or Middleton.'47 The complexities of their financial situation, and the close relations which existed between the exiles and their relations in Britain, made it necessary for them to turn to bankers who could manage their affairs or could easily transfer funds from one country to another. Such bankers were well integrated in the Jacobite community in exile and often acted as intermediaries for them with different sections of French society. The most influential was Sir Daniel Arthur. However successful Arthur had been before 1688, it was the Jacobite exile which gave his career a new impetus and a real importance. The Revolution resulted in a sudden and massive influx of capital towards Paris. What we may call the 'flight of capital' had reached such a scale in 1690 as to worry the authorities and the French sought means of safeguarding Irish funds. The marquis d'Albeville complained to Bonrepaus (c. 29 October/8 November 1690) that it seems to me, Sir, reflecting on this matter that the King of France would do an act of great justice to have details drawn up of the 46

417. 47

Saint-Simon, Memoires ed. A. de Boislisle (41 vols, Paris, 1923-30), xv, p. Jones, Charles Middleton pp. 258-59.

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property of all those who left Ireland for France, which could be done by a declaration, under pain of death or confiscation of property, that all those whether merchants or bankers, Irish or French, who had property belonging to the Irish in their hands should have to declare them and to use a third or a half for the defence of the country. Considerable sums could be found and a great proportion of them stolen from the King. Sir Daniel Arthur, banker in Paris, will be found to have over two millions worth of their property in his hands.48

In his biography of Richard Cantillon, A. Murphy49 asserts that the whole currency of seventeenth-century Ireland can be estimated at between £200,000-£300,000 sterling; and as two million French livres or £150,000 of it was in the hands of Sir Daniel Arthur, this would mean that half the money from Ireland was held by him. He managed to create a network, a kind of 'Kerry mafia', between the members of his own family (his two sons in London and his cousin in Spain) and some of his countrymen such as Richard Cantillon the elder, which made him able to trade, to transfer funds and to transmit information all over Europe. His clients included some of the most prestigious people at the court of Saint-Germain, the dukes of Berwick and Albemarle, the Strickland, Skelton and Stafford families, for instance. Between the years 1699 and 1702, they turned to him to solve their financial problems and sold jewels or plate through him. In 1699 the duchess of Portsmouth, who was at Saint-Germain, sold some of her jewels and tapestries to the tune of 32,000 livres to him, but they were still in his possession when he died in 1705, which shows he was rich enough not to act as a mere intermediary but to build collections of his own. His links with the Jacobite court were so close that he married his two daughters Marie and Elizabeth to Jacobite officers there. Both of them were in receipt of pensions from James II (£200 and £400 respectively), and his other daughter, who 48 49

HMC Finch, iii, p. 482. A. Murphy, Richard Cantillon: Entrepreneur and Economist (Oxford, 1988).

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became a nun, also had a pension. Elizabeth's dowry amounted to 24,000 livres. Lord Middleton, said to be the wealthiest man in Saint-Germain, had given his daughter 60,000 livres as a dowry. Sir Daniel Arthur had no landed property in France, he did not own his house in the rue du Petit Lion in Paris. However, he owned Whitefriars near Dublin, which was worth £4,000,50 and his second wife brought him Charleswood, which was worth as much again. From the duchess of Portsmouth he had purchased the rights to some of her lands near Brest in France without buying the land itself. The inventory made after Sir Daniel Arthur's death gives an estimate of the value of his jewels and furniture: the jewels were worth slightly less than £2,000 (27,000 livres} and the whole came to almost £4,000 (53,182 livres}?1 Not surprisingly, the division of such a wealthy inheritance between children of three different marriages turned out to be a source of major conflict between them. The very existence in Paris and its surrounding districts of a population originating from a country with which France was on an almost permanent war footing from 1688 to 1715 - even though the Jacobite exile arose out of a refusal to recognise the government of that country — was a source of worry to the French authorities. It was for this reason that La Reynie, the lieutenant of police, exercised constant surveillance on the British in France, in co-operation with the ministers at SaintGermain. On 30 June 1690 he enquired of Lord Waldegrave, James II's former ambassador to Louis XIV, about 'one Joseph Bander, an Englishman, who was arrested in Paris on 16 April and still being held in a house in Paris. I would be grateful if you could be kind enough to let me know if this man is suspected by the King of England, so as to know what action to take'.52 50

Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXIX/495 and 502, ET LXV/ 154. According to the 'petition de sir Daniel Arthur pour la levee des mesures pesant sur ses biens en Irlande', Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson. A 253, fo. 125. 51 Archives Nationales, minutier central, ET LXIX/502 and 516. 52 Letter of 30 June 1689, Archives Nationales, O1 33, fo. 175. Bander was taken to Calais and put on board for England on 20 September.

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Collaboration was even closer between Middleton and Torcy, both of whom were anxious to keep an eye on the presence and activities of these Britons. In 1707 they organised a kind of 'census'. Middleton wrote to the French minister I received here the letter you did me the honour of writing to me of the 8th of this month on the subject of the English who go over to England frequently and return as if it was in peace-time, and the King my master, to whom I communicated it, has ordered me to let you know that he highly approves of the measure you have agreed with Monsieur d'Argenson [the lieutenant of police] for the discovery of all the English in Paris who might be suspects. Accordingly, this magistrate will only have to notify the commissaries in each district that all subjects of HBM, who are not so well known that there is nothing to fear from them, that they should proceed or send to Saint-Germain to identify themselves as faithful subjects and to provide themselves with certificates as such, giving them enough time to do so. For my part, Sir, I can assure you that I will be very thorough in having them examined to make sure no one gets a certificate without being well known and vouched for here and none who had not provided good sureties for their conduct and in point of loyalty.53

Besides potential spies, the Jacobite community included a number of less savoury characters, such as the actor Cardell Goodman, once a highwayman and the former lover of the duchess of Cleveland, whose children he was accused of trying to poison, though he was acquitted of that particular crime. Fleeing to France after the assassination plot of 1696 in which he was involved, he was in contact at the same time with Portland, William of Orange's ambassador, and with the court of Saint-Germain, before being, according to Lord Manchester, 'secured where he never has been heard since'.54 Paul Monod has recently studied Jacobite culture in England, particularly that of Jacobite conspirators and former military 53

Letter from Middleton to Torcy, 14 June 1707, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 238, fo. 186. 54 Manchester, MSS, p. 96. For Goodman see Jane Garrett, The Triumphs of Providence: The Assassination Plot of 1696 (Cambridge, 1980).

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

35

officers who were inclined to display a flamboyant zeal.55 Some of them could be found in Paris, such as Hughes Hamilton, who was interrogated in the Bastille in June 1703. He admitted arriving in France in May 1695 after spending three years in London 'where he spent his time concerting with his friends the surest ways of restoring the King' and in the last seven years he had come to and gone from Saint-Germain, where he remained fifteen months. 'He lived out of money which his relations and friends sent out to him from London and Dublin.'56 As well as potential spies and never-do-wells, the Jacobite population included a considerable number of destitute persons for whom public charity could not provide. The principal hospital admitted a number, usually those arrested in 'waves'. The largest number was in June 1704, followed by a second in May 1705 and a third from February to June 1709.57 In Saint-Germain the Jacobite presence caused particularly acute problems as the town was small, partly depopulated since the departure of the French court, and as the proportion of British inhabitants was much higher than in Paris. The description of Irish misdeeds at Saint-Germain by proWilliamite contemporaries was a form of propaganda, for instance Dr Doran was hardly impartial when he wrote that the town had become virtually un-inhabitable owing to the sanguinary violence of Jacobite bandits.58 The judicial archives show a climate of endemic violence there. Even in the chateau itself, thefts were frequent and the royal family was not spared. In September 1700, silver was stolen from the apartments of the duke of Albemarle, when the culprit, a Thomas Butler, was hanged.59 In July 1703, it was jewels to the value of £15,000 which were taken from the apartments of Mary of Modena.60 55

Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 96-100. 56 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 238, fo. 19. 57 Archives Nationales: O 1 48, fos 99, 105; O 1 49, fo. 77 and 101. 58 Quoted by J. O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigade, p. 189. 59 Archives Departementales des Yvelines, B 537. 60 Archives Departementales des Yvelines, B 348.

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In the town it was the taverns, 'a stage on which Jacobite fantasies could become reality', according to Monod's definition, which played a significant part in the life of Jacobites, as shown by testimonies in criminal cases. During the night of 7-8 July 1698, two of Lord Galmoy's servants tried to assassinate a surgeon named Beauvais (an Irishman despite his name). The chief witness was Joseph Fline (? Flynn), an eleven-year-old Irish boy born in Saint-Germain. Going out to the fountain at one in the morning, he came upon Thomas Welsh (? Walsh) and Thomas Murnahan in the course of 'tidying their hair and adjusting their waistcoats a bloody sword in hand'. In the course of this cross-examination (10 July) he testified that he was Irish, aged between eighteen and twenty, was Lord Galmoy's valet and lived at court with his master. On the night of the murder, he was with his wife in the Hotel de Conti in front of the chateau, when at a quarter past five Thomas Murnahan, Galmoy's servant, asked for the key to his apartment as he was returning to Paris with Galmoy. Walsh threw it out of the window for him and then went down to serve his master. After putting him to bed, he went with Murnahan to Vevill's, a coffee shop opposite the fountain, to 'drink jugs of beer'. Thomas Murnahan, aged twenty-two, Galmoy's servant, had left for Paris at seven o'clock on Monday with his master and Lord Nugent in a chaise belonging to the stage-coaches' office. Arriving in Nanterre at eleven o'clock at night, they went to the Chasse Royale inn and drank until half past four in the morning. After coming back and putting Galmoy to bed, he returned to the inn with Walsh where he said he learned of the murder while 'drinking bumpers' with Walsh until six in the morning. This was by no means unusual behaviour. This affair is interesting also because it involves valets and a surgeon, the two professions most often implicated in criminal cases in Saint-Germain. The victim, Beauvais, had himself murdered Daniel Day, the king's physician, in the course of a

Jacobites in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye

37

street brawl in May 1692. All those involved were British, including the witnesses John Ferraghty, aged nineteen from 'Newkastel' in County Limerick; William Lonnin, son of a servant to the prince of Wales, who both tried to separate Day and Beauvais; Catherine Cuert [sic] who was present at the scene, and testified to the efforts of Beauvais' wife to get him away from Day; lastly 'Guillaume Leclerc' (William Clark), born in London and son of one of Mary of Modena's valets, who had joined the crowd round Day's body, and had heard it said that Beauvais was the murderer. Servants were the most troublesome of all the exiles. On 7 June 1700 'a poor man having gone to Lord Klarc (Clare) to ask for four livres due to him from a servant of the house as the price of an old jacket, the servant who owed this sum, supported by his fellows, refused to pay. He complained to the master of the house who would not listen, so that the servants, becoming bolder and more insolent, thought themselves entitled to deal him blows with a stick and the flat blade of a sword, whereupon a neighbouring butcher moved by the unjust treatment of the unfortunate man, tried to take his side, but the lord's brother followed by a bevy of liveried men fell upon the butcher with such violence that his head was fractured and that one of his arms is thought to be maimed.'61 Scuffles broke out regularly between Frenchmen and Britons. On 5 December 1694, Michael Middleton, brother to the king's apothecary (but no relation to Lord Middleton), was killed in the course of such a tumult. A few Frenchmen having called out to the Middletons to enlist with the French troops, they replied sharply that they were already in the service of the King of England. A fight ensued in the course of which Michael Middleton was mortally wounded.62 The lives of the Jacobite community in Paris and SaintGermain-en-Laye revolved around two points of anchor. Foremost, and at the very origin of the exile, it was the 61

Letter to Barbesieux of 10 June 1700, Archives Nationales, O 1 44, fo. 250. The spelling of Irish names was sometimes altered by French clerks. 62 Archives Departementales des Yvelines, B 350.

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proximity of the king and the court. Secondly, for those who had settled in Paris, it was to be in the vicinity of the religious houses to which their compatriots belonged. The Jacobite exile was, it is true, a new phenomenon, with little in common with the exodus which ensued after the first English Revolution, but it had a more profound effect on relations between France and England in continuing on a much larger scale settlements which had existed since the seventeenth century at least. Despite the ever-present example of a king regarded as a saint, there were murders, thefts, rapes and treasons. It was a community living in an atmosphere of violence, triggered off by economic difficulties, internal rivalries and disappointed hopes.

3 Sir James Montgomerie of Skelmorlie P.A. Hopkins Probably the most controversial area in Jacobite studies is the examination of leading figures in overt politics who were also deeply involved in Jacobite intrigues. The task is easier, however, in those rare cases where a politician was actually exposed and driven into open Jacobitism. One such was the Scottish Whig parliamentarian Sir James Montgomerie (c. 1654-94), whose activities fortunately inspired outbursts of correspondence surviving in several archives for a period, the 1690s, for which Jacobite evidence is very fragmentary. 'Fortunately' partly because this allows cross-checking; for he and his circle could be unscrupulous liars. This essay owes much to James Halliday's thesis and article on Montgomerie and his parliamentary party, the 'Club'.1 However, further evidence throws fresh light not only on Montgomerie's Jacobite activities but (even in this compressed form) on the Scottish Revolution Settlement. 'Scotland is not as England. Measures need not be too nicely keept with this people' wrote Lord Chancellor Perth, who with 1

J.A. Halliday, The Career and Political Influence of Sir James Montgomerie of Skelmorlie, c. 1654-1694' (unpublished B. Litt. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1962); idem. 'The Club and the Revolution in Scotland', Scottish Historical Review, 45 (1966).

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his corrupt brother Secretary Melfort dominated the Scottish government from 1686 to 1688, to James II and VII.2 The monarch's powers in Scotland were greater, and the absentee Stuart kings since 1603 had exploited them ruthlessly - in particular, after the Restoration, to crush Presbyterian opposition to the revived Episcopalian church government. The Scottish parliament was less developed than its English counterpart. The different estates - nobles, bishops (until 1689), two members (barons) from each shire and one from each royal burgh, besides the monarch's leading officers of state - sat in one chamber. A committee, called the Articles, had the sole right to introduce business. It consisted of thirty-two members besides officers of state: the bishops elected eight nobles, the nobles eight bishops, and these sixteen elected reliable shire and burgh Members. The Lord Commissioner, the king's representative, manipulated the fluid procedure. Yet the past had produced startling reversals. Charles Fs 1633 parliament had been forced to pass all its 168 acts by one single vote; the 1640-41 one had forced him to accept a triennial act, another abolishing the Articles and a third obliging him to choose his ministers only with parliament's advice and approbation.3 By the 1680s, the parliaments again seemed servile: the 1681 one passed a self-contradictory Test Act, the 1685 one referred to 'the Kings sacred supream absolute Power', a claim James was quick to seize on.4 Yet the 1686 one defied his wish to repeal the laws against Catholics. Sir James Montgomerie, fourth baronet of Skelmorlie (at the northern tip of Ayrshire), had prepared himself by study for the public career which, until he was about thirty-five, seemed unlikely to come.5 His family was Presbyterian and, while 2

HMC Laing, i, p. 443, Perth to James, 29 Dec. 1685. A.I. Macinnes, Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 88; R.S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), pp. 65-70. 4 Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson et al. (12 vols, Edinburgh, 1814-75), viii, p. 459. 5 National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 34.3.8 (G. Crawford's notes), p. 72. 3

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avoiding involvement in risings and plots, had undergone the usual penalties in the south-west, plunder by the Highland Host and fines for attending illegal conventicles. In 1684, with several other lairds, he was convicted of having concealed a request from the fugitive earl of Argyll to send him money, and, to avoid a ruinous fine, had to take the humiliating Test Oath.6 Then, after James's startling volte-face towards toleration and alliance with the Presbyterians, by 1688 Montgomerie was a JP — even though his main links were with the fanatical Cameronians who rejected the toleration.7 His family had a close friendship with the house of Argyll, their cousins, and he himself strongly influenced the future tenth earl. He collected money to send him across to William that autumn; but his own later claim to have been in the secret of the Revolution was a typical lie.8 As the Presbyterians turned against the regime on William's invasion, Montgomerie organised the interception of letters between the privy council and court, with considerable success. On 10 December, he took part in the attack on Holyrood, which the council allowed as a symbolic warning to James.9 Then, at the news of William's success, almost every political figure in Scotland, including Montgomerie, hurried to London to seek his favour, leaving the Cameronians to drive out Episcopalian clergy in the south west; and then in March, mostly still hopeful, they hurried back to hold a Convention.10 6

Halliday, 'Sir James Montgomerie', pp. 11-12, 23-25, 27. Sir W. Fraser, Memorials of the Montgomeries, Earls of Eglinton (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1859), i, p. 324, Sir G. Mackenzie to Sir J. Montgomerie, 5 Sept. 1688; Colin, earl of Balcarres, Memoirs Touching the Revolution in Scotland, ed. Lord Lindsay (Bannatyne Club, 1841), p. 8. 8 Balcarres, Memoirs, p. 8; [D. Forbes], 'State of Things in 1696' [1689-90], Culloden Papers . . .from the Year 1625 to 1748, ed. H.B. Duff (London, 1815), p. 320. 9 Balcarres, Memoirs, pp. 12-13, 15-16; P.A. Hopkins, Glencoe and the End of the Highland War (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 120. 10 Hopkins, Glencoe, p. 121; for Montgomerie's journey, Scottish Record Office, CS 230/MISC 8/529, fo. 1. (I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr Tristram Clarke.) 7

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In the convention, Montgomerie as 'baron' (MP) for Ayrshire, spoke 'with great force and eloquence, although a country gentleman, not used to great affairs', rivalling the turncoat ex-Lord Advocate Sir John Dalrymple: together, they urged on the vote that James had forfeited his crown.11 Hatred of episcopacy was one of Montgomerie's strongest feelings; and when Scotland's complaints were divided between a Claim of Right (declaring existing laws) and Grievances (needing new ones), it was he who had an article denouncing it as 'a great and unsupportable grievance' inserted illogically into the Claim of Right, on the (untrue) ground that Scotland had 'reformed from popery by presbyteries'.12 Meanwhile, other members, including Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth and Duncan Forbes of Culloden, were proposing constitutional changes to secure Scotland's rights, on the model of the 1640-41 settlement. They decided not to demand a triennial act, hoping that the English could obtain something still better; but they prepared an Act on the 1641 model, that William should appoint to places of trust only with parliament's consent. Forbes proposed, Hume seconded and Montgomerie supported it. But the duke of Hamilton, the magnate presiding over the Convention, opposed it violently, as infringing the king's right to choose his own servants. He and others proclaimed their trust that William would never employ any of the guilty men from the last government — a dangerous misunderstanding of his character, bound to produce a reaction the other way. When Hume tried again, even Montgomerie opposed him, explaining privately that those who carried up the offer of the crown could persuade William face to face — he had evidently decided who one of them would be. In this way 11

H.C. Foxcroft, A Supplement to Bishop Burners History of His Own Time (Oxford, 1902), p. 323. 12 G. Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. M. Routh (6 vols, Oxford, 1833), iv, pp. 39-40; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ix, p. 40; [T. Comber], The Protestant Mask Taken off the Jesuited Englishman (Wing, C5484) (London, 1692), pp. 33-34; implicitly confirmed by National Library of Scotland, Wodrow MSS, Oct. xxx, fo. 60, Montgomerie, 'Representation and Vindication . . . '.

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the chance of a major constitutional change was lost: many of the struggles later were attempts to make it indirectly - an 'aftergame', as Forbes called them.13 Nine persons were to carry the offer of the crown - until Montgomerie spread the rumour that if there were more than three Hamilton would join them. He evidently hoped that this would make his own abilities more visible. If so, it proved a disastrous manoeuvre; for when the three reached London, Dalrymple, a last-minute choice, tried to alter the order in which documents were read, to remove the implication that the offer was conditional: Montgomerie and Argyll could not oppose him as effectively as a full deputation would have done.14 Montgomerie had hoped to be made secretary for his services in the Convention; but he was seen as too antiEpiscopalian, and was merely promised, without actually receiving, the post of Lord Justice Clerk. William appointed as secretary the dwarfish Lord Melville, a former exile in Holland - a terrible blow to the pride of Montgomerie, who despised him.15 Worse followed. Dalrymple was reappointed Lord Advocate, a post he had held under James. And his father Stair, a brilliant but notoriously unjust judge, was restored as President of the Session (civil court), with a bench of handpicked nonentities to confirm his decisions.16 In his policies also, William ignored the Convention's wishes. Hamilton, appointed commissioner to its first formal session as parliament in June 1689, was instructed, for instance, not to abolish the 13

Culloden Papers, pp. 318-19, [Forbes], 'State of Things in 1696' [1689-90]. It is presumably the misdating which has led to this vital document being ignored. 14 Culloden Papers, pp. 319-21; Halliday, The Club', Scottish Historical Review, 45, pp. 149-50. 15 Burnet, History of His Own Time, iv, p. 43; Leven and Melville Papers, ed. W.L. Melville (Bannatyne Club, 1843), p. 190, Montgomerie to Melville, 23 July 1689. Montgomerie's contempt for Melville, by then obsessive, is clear from Sir W. Fraser, ed., The Melvilles, Earls of Melville and the Leslies Earls of Leven (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1890), iii, pp. 229-30, Montgomerie's report to James (c. 1693). 16 Culloden Papers, pp. 322-23, [Forbes]; Halliday, 'The Club', pp. 144-45.

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Articles as the Grievances demanded, but to reform them thoroughly. This provoked the response Halliday has described: the 'Club', a sophisticated opposition group which seized the initiative from the baffled Hamilton and prevented almost anything from being voted but their own demands: abolition of the Articles and royal supremacy in the Kirk; an act incapacitating the guilty from government service, etc. Meeting at a tavern beforehand, Club members were well-drilled and ready, and sprang their plans on an unprepared government: the Articles in reverse. They shifted abruptly from one subject to another, taking particular care to give no time for the church to be settled, for fear that primarily Presbyterian members would then lose interest in the civil grievances. Montgomerie, the Club's central figure, took the lead in fiery debates against Dairymple. On the few occasions when the Club was defeated, delays in getting new instructions or Hamilton's reluctance to establish an exclusive Presbyterian church destroyed the effect. Halliday estimates that about seventy of an attendance in parliament of 125 were Club supporters (though not all simultaneously): twenty-eight of forty shire barons, thirty-four of fifty-three burgesses, but only twelve of thirty-two peers. Two of these were Montgomerie's closest followers, his young brother-in-law the earl of Annandale and Lord Ross: both avoided taking up their army commands to continue supporting the Club. The Club generally was hostile to the army, despite the civil war in the kingdom: it was after the defeat at Killiecrankie had made little impression on them that Hamilton adjourned in August.17 An address to the king was drawn up containing the votes Hamilton had refused, and gained seventy-two signatures. That autumn, the leaders of both wings of the Club Montgomerie, Annandale and Ross, and Hume and Forbes met in London over it. The experienced Hume advised 17

Halliday, The Club', pp. 146-54; Leven and Melville Papers, p. 195, Dalrymple to Melville, 25 July 1689.

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caution, to avoid driving William back into his bad advisers' arms. Montgomerie, however, was in no mood for moderation. A brilliant Jacobite double agent, John Simpson alias Jones, had persuaded William's Dutch favourite Portland to employ him as a spy on Montgomerie, claiming that he was plotting; then told Montgomerie that Portland had ordered him to concoct evidence of treason against him; and so continued whipping up both sides. Montgomerie, increasingly destabilised by the fear, common among Whigs, of being judicially murdered, was driven towards actual Jacobite plotting.18 Just as Forbes had reached a compromise with William over the address and his response, Montgomerie had Annandale present it publicly on 15 October, breaking off relations.19 He then had another Scottish Whig-turned-Jacobite, Robert Ferguson 'the Plotter', write and publish a justification of the address for an English audience.20 If his boasts to a naive admirer are true, William sent to his faction offering that if they would avoid denouncing and prosecuting for past mistakes, he would for the future act so as to satisfy them and the Club. Montgomerie, Annandale and Ross self-righteously refused. It was a bad mistake: William very seldom admitted he was wrong or gave so open an enemy a second chance.21 Montgomerie was urging the English Whig parliamentary malcontents not to vote William money;22 he was vainly trying to convince doctrinaire republican MPs that a Scottish republic was impossible (presumably for fear it would mean merely magnates like Hamilton gobbling up lesser men - it was the 18

Halliday, 'The Club', pp. 154-55; Burnet, History of His Own Time, iv, pp. 6061; Foxcroft, Burnet, pp. 334-35; Culloden Papers, pp. 325-26 [Forbes]. 19 Culloden Papers, pp. 326-27. 20 [R. Ferguson], The Late Proceedings and Votes of the Parliament of Scotland, Contained in an Address Delivered to the King, Signed by the Plurality of Members Thereof, Stated and Vindicated (Wing, F746) ('Glasgow' [London], 1689); Dr Williams's Library, London, Roger Morrice Ent'ring Book, ii (Morrice MS Q), p. 656;iii (Morrice MS R), pp. 15, 18, 67. 21 Morrice Ent'ring Book, iii (Morrice MS R), p. 15; ii (Morrice MS Q) p. 676. 22 Foxcroft, Burnet, p. 334.

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tragedy of Montgomerie's career that this should be so)23; he was suggesting to Anglicans and Episcopalians that if the latter would support the Club's civil programme, Presbyterianism might be abandoned.24 He was plotting with the Jacobites, some of them his equals in duplicity. He abruptly drew in Annandale and Ross; English Whigs involved included the earl of Monmouth, first lord of the treasury, and postmastergeneral John Wildman, the former Leveller.25 The plan originated in hostility against William rather than any certainty about James, presupposing that exile must have taught the latter wisdom and moderation (Monmouth's uneasiness over this may finally have made him betray the plot anonymously).26 A messenger was to take to James in Ireland (via the queen at Saint-Germain) Montgomerie's demands: confirmation of instructions for a parliament with Annandale as commissioner, to pass the reforms William had refused; a Whig-dominated ruling council to contain themselves, Hamilton's Jacobite son Arran, and Argyll, whom Montgomerie hoped to convert; and high office and rewards - he himself was to be secretary and earl of Ayr.27 Simpson, whose mendacity made him a natural agent for Montgomerie, set off. When he finally reached Ireland in March, it was awaiting William's onslaught. James's chief minister Tyrconnell therefore urged him to grant almost everything, hoping that a Scottish rebellion would distract 23

Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspondance Politique, Angleterre, vol. 171, fos. 275-77, spy's report, 12/22 Dec. 1689. Maddeningly, no other reference to these literal republican MPs is known: 'republicains in French sources usually means ordinary Whigs. 24 Culloden Papers, pp. 328-29 [Forbes]. 25 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 506-9, Annandale's confession, 14 Aug. 1690; Foxcroft, Burnet, pp. 335-37; Burnet, History of His Own Time, iv, pp. 61-63. 26 Burnet, History of His Own Time, iv, p. 63; Halliday, 'Sir James Montgomerie', pp. 106, 136. 27 Leven and Melville Papers, p. 509, Annandale's confession, 14 Aug. 1690; Scottish Record Office, GD 26/8/93a/l, 3, 5, James's instructions etc. for proposed parliament, Apr. 1690; James Macpherson (ed.), Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain . . . (2 vols, London, 1775), i, pp. 38183, Melfort to Mary of Modena, 18 Apr. 1690 (NS).

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William; and James concurred - even giving a secret promise never again to employ Melfort (then in honourable exile as ambassador at Rome).28 Several times, before and afterwards, James without visible struggle abruptly adopted the policies and attitudes of Whig former enemies in this way, a startling contrast to his usual obstinacy. Non-loyalist Jacobites publicised them, as Montgomerie later did this one, as proofs of his basic beneficence and constitutionalism;29 privately, however, they feared that such an owr-easy conversion might not be sincere. In fact, James was not deliberately insincere; but, having failed to grasp the full implications of his new policies, he could easily drift unconsciously back towards his old ones; or, when those he negotiated with failed to perform their main promises, feel himself absolved from his own — as here. For by the time Simpson left Ireland, the Montgomerie plot was already running into trouble at home. Returning to Scotland, the plotters had urged Jacobite Episcopalian peers to take the oaths and their parliamentary seats in order to serve James: about twenty did so. Meanwhile, they continued to rouse the Club's other members with accusations against the government. Montgomerie intended to provoke a dissolution, which would drive the Cameronians into revolt. Parliament could then reassemble under their protection in James's interest and restore him on terms.30 When Melville was made commissioner, Montgomerie evidently thought he would be easily terrorised: three years later, he was still trying to explain away Melville's having, for just once in his 28

P. A. Hopkins, 'Aspects of Jacobite Conspiracy in England in the Reign of William III' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1981), pp. 250-51. 29 Montgomerie, Great Britain's Just Complaint, in Sir Walter Scott (ed.), A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts . . . Somers Tracts (13 vols, London, 180915), x, p. 463. 30 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 507-8, Annandale's confession, 14 Aug. 1690; ibid., p. xxv n., Melville's 'Vindication'; Balcarres, Memoirs, pp. 54-56; Hopkins, 'Aspects', p. 251; Halliday, 'The Club', pp. 156-57.

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career, risen to the occasion.31 As his instructions allowed the satisfying of most grievances, Montgomerie had to play the part of lago, constantly raising groundless rumours and insults against William himself, which were encouraged by some unwise adjournments. He concentrated on pressing extreme demands in a few causes; and most of the non-Jacobite Club vigorously pursued this wrecking policy without noticing that anything was wrong. However, Hume and Forbes, alienated in London by Montgomerie's negotiations with Episcopalians and won over by William, did their best to rally Club members to Melville.32 Parliament met on 15 April 1690. During several sessions, the result was touch-and-go. Annandale, for instance, pressed for an Act for Free Speech which would have made it virtually impossible to arrest any member for suspected treasons. But once Melville had begun to pass acts refused the previous year, abolishing the Articles and the ecclesiastical royal supremacy, the crisis grew less acute, though there were still bad days.33 Simpson's return from Ireland did not produce the expected encouragement. The Jacobite loyalists were alienated by Montgomerie's having obtained the grants of office for his own supporters, not them; and by his reliance on parliamentary manoeuvring rather than fighting.34 Increasingly, he had to rely on pure extremism to rally a following. The results permanently distorted the Scottish Revolution Settlement. The Opposition abolished the Articles; but, by rejecting a compromise on the judges, they failed to secure 31

Fraser, Melvilles, iii, pp. 229-30, Montgomerie's report. Halliday, The Club', pp. 155-57; Culloden Papers, pp. 328-31 [Forbes]. Overlooking this account has led Halliday and those following him to blacken Hume and Forbes unduly by seeing only the self-interested motives (which did exist) for their 'change of sides'. 33 Account of the Proceedings of the Estates in Scotland, ed. E.W.M. BalfourMelville (2 vols, Scottish History Society, 1954-55), ii, pp. 141-42, 156-57; Halliday, The Club', pp. 157-58. 34 Balcarres, Memoirs, pp. 61-63; Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 509-11, Annandale's confession, 14 Aug. 1690. 32

Sir James Montgomerie of Skelmorlie

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even their selection for the future; 35 and they never even reached the lesser grievances, which Melville would have reformed if asked, but not voluntarily. They established Presbyterian church government with none of the reasonable limitations William wanted. In particular, a clause allowing Episcopalian ministers who sincerely conformed a share in the church's government might have been a partial barrier to the ruthless campaign over the next few years to expel former Episcopalian ministers entirely. His corrected draft did not arrive in time; Melville may have been forced into rapidly restoring the 1592 model of the Kirk by Montgomerie's calling for the most extreme model of all, 1649, which claimed divine right, as 'the government not only most agreeable to the word of God, but best fitted to curb the extravagant power of kings and arbitrary government, under which they had groaned for many years'. Presumably his arguments might still have attracted enough support to be dangerous.36 Finally, after the church, parliament turned to supply, and Montgomerie's Jacobite allies left him, not daring to resist the king further. In his desperation, he, with Arran, sent Simpson back to France to ask for a small-scale invasion.37 By now, lesser conspirators were being captured, by a government which had the power to use torture in its interrogations — and, some months later, used it. Montgomerie, Ross and Annandale began edging towards the possibility of confessing in return for pardon. Ross broke first, and went to confess to the queen. Throughout July 1690, Montgomerie negotiated with the willing Melville for a pardon whose terms would even include secrecy to preserve his credit with the 35

Leven and Melville Papers, p. 415, Melville's private instructions, 25 Feb. 1690, no. 10; Culloden Papers, pp. 330-31 [Forbes]. 36 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 436-38, William's comments on Church Act, 22 May 1690; ibid., p. xxv n. Melville's 'Vindication'; Balcarres, Memoirs, p. 60. 37 Balcarres, Memoirs, p. 63; Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 508, 511, Annandale's confession, 14 Aug. 1690; Fraser, Melvilles, iii, pp. 230-31, Montgomerie's report.

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The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

Presbyterians. If he had met the conditions, orthodox historians today would be ignoring the evidence for the Montgomerie plot as Jacobite material and therefore worthless.38 However, though all three were sent individually to the queen in London, Ross prevaricated and was sent to the Tower; and Montgomerie arrived but did not surrender himself, partly from the risk that it would become his word against Monmouth's. Annandale confessed in detail and was by degrees rehabilitated, after putting some energy into Jacobite-hunting. Montgomerie saw Mary briefly in September, but mumbled and prevaricated. His pardon was destroyed, but he was allowed to slip away into a limbo of people on the run though with no definite charge against them. 'So fatally did ambition and discontent hurry a man to ruin who seemed capable of greater things', wrote the historian Burnet.39 Montgomerie, though, was not dead yet. In spring 1691 in London, he formed a second plot among Scottish politicians neglected in recent reshuffles, notably the highland magnates Argyll and Atholl. These two rivals shared one common interest, preventing the earl of Breadalbane from gaining major influence in the Highlands by success in his peace negotiations with the Jacobite clan chiefs that June. Montgomerie, still a Presbyterian, also shared it, since that success would bring an Episcopalian faction to power. He and his circle wrote to James urging him to refuse permission for the clans to surrender. More decisively, Atholl's highland intrigues persuaded several chiefs to break their agreements with Breadalbane and hold out for illusory better terms. Thus Montgomerie 38

Fraser, Melvilles, iii pp. 225-26; Balcarres, Memoirs, pp. 64-65; Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 456-57, Melville to queen, 2 July 1690; ibid., pp. 479-80, Melville to queen, 29 July 1690. 39 Leven and Melville Papers, pp. 484-87, notes on Ross, July 1690; ibid., pp. 523-25, account of Montgomerie, 6 Sept. 1690; Balcarres, Memoirs, pp. 66-67; Burnet, History of His Own Time, iv, p. 110. Bruce Lenman, in his recent The Poverty of Political Theory in the Scottish Revolution of 1688-1690', The Revolution of 1688-9; Changing Perspectives, ed. L.G. Schwoerer (Cambridge, 1992), p. 259, idealises Montgomerie excessively, by making the obtaining of the

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51

had his indirect share of responsibility for the eventual outcome, the Massacre of Glencoe.40 Montgomerie was again briefly in great favour with James that summer; but, in a last desperate attempt to regain his more natural place on the Williamite side, he was secretly betraying some at least of his fellow-conspirators to Queen Mary and asking for an official post. Once again, his position collapsed rapidly. His Jacobite ex-colleague Ferguson gave warning of his treachery; his English Whig followers fell away, and James convinced himself that they were crypto-republicans anyway. Montgomerie lost his influence over Argyll that autumn by trying to prevent his offering William his regiment for the war in Flanders.41 Nevertheless, that winter he began a third intrigue in London. His perennial fellow-conspirator the earl of Monmouth was involved; and a list of code-names suggests that he was already trying to negotiate with Sweden and Denmark, neutrals frequently infuriated by allied treatment of their shipping — the first Jacobite to have the idea.42 However, in December 1691 Melfort became chief minister of Saint-Germain: Montgomerie knew he would never forgive his attempt to exclude him. Therefore, like other Jacobites, he tried to bypass Saint-Germain and appeal directly to the French court. Simpson, sent over again in January 1692, applied to the navy minister Pontchartrain, with the backing of the official translator the Abbe Renaudot, whose almost unique knowledge at court of that barbarous tongue English gave him exceptional influence. Melfort, however, scenting danger, manoeuvred Club's demands the main motive for his Jacobite plotting, and blackens William unduly, by alleging that at the time he granted the 1690 concessions he hoped to take them back through an incorporating union. 40 Hopkins, Glencoe, pp. 273-74, 298-99. He later exploited the massacre in his main propaganda pamphlet, ibid., p. 367. 41 Ibid., pp. 298, 312; Macpherson, i, p. 390, Major Holmes's paper, Oct. 1691. 42 BN, nouvelles acquisitions fran^aises (n.ac.fr.), MS 7487, fos 155-56, Simpson to Renaudot, n.d.; Hopkins, 'Aspects', p. 283.

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The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

Simpson into giving King James the lie; had foreign minister Croissy commit him to the Bastille in March, and left him to rot while he confidently prepared for the invasion of England.43 Rejected by the Jacobite court but trapped within Jacobitism by lack of alternative, Montgomerie in 1692 ironically became a major Jacobite propagandist. His first large work, however, apparently never published, was written in Williamite guise, 'A Representation and Vindication of the Presbyterians Anent their Carriage at the Dissolution of the General Assembly', intended to justify to a safely ignorant England the 1692 assembly's refusal of William's request that the Kirk should accept into it some former Episcopalian clergy - which had led to a stormy dissolution on the same day as Glencoe.44 He took up his pen again in the wake of the La Hogue disaster and James's catastrophically harsh declaration to reduce the damage by discrediting two crude but influential pamphlets on the crisis by Williamite Anglican clerics, Bishop Lloyd and Dr Sherlock, in his Great Britain's Just Complaint for her Late Measures, Present Sufferings, and the Future Miseries she is Exposed to, a massive sixty-one pages double-column quarto. With many very effective passages, particularly on William's actions at and since the revolution, its overall effect is somewhat disjointed, partly because it is answering other works, but more, perhaps, because Montgomerie did not sincerely believe in his cause and exploited genuine and bogus arguments without much discrimination for the immediate effect.45 That effect, however, was formidable enough, when the pamphlet was first published in September 1692, to provoke a proclamation against seditious libellers and a government crackdown on Jacobite presses -

43

Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 282-85. National Library of Scotland, MS Wodrow, Oct. xxx, fos 56-59; Montgomerie, 'Representation and Vindication'. 45 Great Britain's Just Complaint (Wing M2504; 2nd edn, M2505); Lloyd's and Sherlock's pamphlets (Wing L2690, S3295). Answered in turn by Wing C5484. 44

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which did not prevent a second edition. James, however, though sent a presentation copy, showed no appreciation.46 Melfort's responsibility for La Hogue drove him to turn constitutionalist in search of support. Yet, though he set Great Britain's Just Complaint as a model for propagandists, behind a screen of fair words he remained implacable towards its author.47 Montgomerie therefore joined the intrigues of the 'Compounders', the faction who believed that James to return must offer constitutional concessions to his subjects. Besides some politicians merely anxious to protect themselves in case of a restoration, they included Whig leaders such as the earl of Shrewsbury and Admiral Russell, turning cautiously towards James for the reforms and guarantees which William, as the 1692-93 parliamentary session showed, was determined not to give.48 Meanwhile, Simpson in the Bastille by degrees that autumn convinced Renaudot, and through him Pontchartrain and Croissy, that Melfort was not only unreliable but a traitor — which it was easy for Frenchmen to believe after La Hogue.49 Montgomerie, though hunted by messengers and creditors, wrote one or two short pieces to influence MPs during the 1692-3 session, until illness (perhaps the tuberculosis which ultimately killed him) drove him into the country.50 In October, he sent the French the draft of a conciliatory letter for James to 46

Hopkins, 'Aspects', p. 309. HMC Stuart, vi, p. 65, T. Sheridan's narrative; BL, MS Add. 37,661, p. 42, Melfort to 'Lati' [C. Lawton], 15 Aug. 1692 (NS); ibid., pp. 43-44, same to 'Craig' [Montgomerie], 15 Aug. 1692 (NS). 48 Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 311-19, 326-27, 335. Pace D. Szechi, The Jacobite Revolution Settlement, 1689-1696', English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 613-14, there was an increasing hostility in this period between Protestant 'NonCompounders', who were against James offering major concessions for a restoration, and 'Compounders', as the rest of this essay will indicate. 49 Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 325-26. 50 Ibid., pp. 329, 334. One of these short pieces, Wing P1444, The People of England's Grievances Offered to . . . their Representatives in Parliament, is identified as his in Somers Tracts, x, p. 542. 47

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send to parliament, declaring that it would gain him widespread support. The French pressed it upon James; but SaintGermain insisted cogently that its alternative strategy, of having crypto-Jacobites join in an increasingly violent 'Country' opposition, which overt Jacobitism would have torn apart, was doing William far greater damage.51 This merely infuriated the French ministers against Melfort. In an extraordinary move, they secretly smuggled Simpson out of the Bastille on 1 December (NS), spreading the rumour that he had gone mad, and dispatched him to England to assist Montgomerie and, if possible, to bribe MPs into supporting a restoration. He remained there until May, intriguing against Melfort and sending back misinformation. Returning in May, he claimed, as ordered, to have escaped from the Bastille (provoking howls of protest from the governor) but to have returned to prove his loyalty: James, typically, was deceived.52 The 'Compounders' were preparing to send over Lord Middleton to become James's senior secretary and chief minister; from December he was negotiating the terms of the liberal declaration he was to issue. One proposition Montgomerie contributed was instantly vetoed, though the French liked it: that the Prince of Wales should be reared as a Protestant by the Nonjuring bishops.53 Most of the other terms James and Melfort accepted surprisingly easily, and Middleton crossed over in April 1693 to make the last adjustments to the declaration. Montgomerie, meanwhile made the Cornpounders' negotiations international. In February 1693 he visited Holland for secret talks with the Dutch peace party, whom he encouraged with a string of lies. He persuaded the Swedish ambassador to forward a memorial to King Charles XI, warning him that William was secretly organising an antiSwedish coalition; and Charles was impressed enough to ask 51 52

53

Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 327-28, 330-32. Ibid., pp. 332-35, 346-48. Ibid., p. 336.

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for a Jacobite envoy to be sent him.54 However, Montgomerie's constant endeavour had not gained him sufficient favour to be welcome in France. When he applied to cross over, Middleton replied in May that the French disapproved, and that he would be unable to live at Saint-Germain or Paris.55 In the first euphoria of the declaration (published in England in May), Middleton also informed Montgomerie that he could drop his Scandinavian negotiations. Fortunately, he was too astute to do so, and by the autumn his Swedish connections were strong enough to survive a change of ambassador.56 By then the leading English Compounders had displayed a disillusioning failure to act. The very extent of James's concessions to them made them suspect his sincerity; they had made no solid plans for active plotting; and, increasingly, as military and naval disasters indicated that William would be forced to dismiss his Tory ministers, the Whig Compounders hoped that he would both give them office and accept their principles. When Shrewsbury in November refused the secretaryship unless William would pass a Triennial Bill, Montgomerie, though unable to get him to resume active plotting, persuaded him to retire temporarily into the country.57 At Saint-Germain, the failure of Middleton's scheme obliged him pre-emptively to set out to overthrow Melfort (who had now reverted to his old authoritarian principles), as Montgomerie had always wished to do.58 Ironically, Montgomerie's own private principles may by now have been nearer Melfort's, if we take literally a report on Scotland in which he sneered at his old allies the Cameronians 54

Ibid., pp. 322-24; RN, n.ac.fr., MS 7487, fo. 449, memorial on negotiations with Sweden [1693]; ibid, fos 450-53, extract of the memorial given to Oxenstierna, Swedish envoy [1693]. 55 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 256, fo. 12, [Middleton] to [Montgomerie], 21 May 1693 (NS). 56 Ibid.; Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 322-23. 57 Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 354-57, 360-61, 372; BL, MS Add. 51,511, fo. 59, Montgomerie as Mfontgomerie,] J[ames, of] S[kelmorlie], as at fo. 62v. 58 Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 361-63.

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as 'a most bigott people . . . a mob without a head'.59 He was increasingly connected, via Arran, with a group of Jacobite peers and Anglican bishops stirred into activity by the prospect of the Whigs gaining power under William. In December, seventeen of these - the Not-So-Immortal Seventeen, since no actual invasion occurred as in 1688 - wrote directly to Louis XIV, asking him to invade immediately while William's unpopularity was at its height.60 Montgomerie, poor, critically ill with tuberculosis and increasingly anxious for quick success, was eager to carry over the invasion plan. For the first time, Renaudot warned that he might be dangerous if thwarted. He and Major-General Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, a loyalist but anti-Melfordian Jacobite, were chosen to take it; but on 9 January 1694, when about to leave, Montgomerie was arrested by the government.61 Knowing William's hatred for him, Montgomerie offered to confess all he knew provided he was not made a witness in court, describing as a sample the fairly harmless scene with Shrewsbury. William, however, was resolved to send him to Scotland for examination under torture, and therefore kept him in a king's messenger's private house (outside Habeas Corpus), guarded by sentries. Oglethorpe resolved to rescue or silence him. They won over the sentries, and the whole party sought shelter in the Swedish ambassador's house. A few days later, Montgomerie and Oglethorpe successfully crossed from Kent.62 Though the arrest had apparently been accidental, Melfort was generally blamed for it, a fatal blow to his reputation; and Oglethorpe boldly warned James that he was a liability at Versailles as well as everywhere else.63 Montgomerie and he 59

Fraser, Melvilles, iii, pp. 230, 233, Montgomerie's report. BN, n.ac.fr., MS 7487, fos 276-79, the Seventeen Lords to Louis, 21/31 Dec. 1693; Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 363-64, 369-71. 61 Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 364, 371, 374. 62 Ibid., pp. 323, 374. 63 Ibid., pp. 378. 60

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presented their invasion plan to the French. It was for 20,000 troops to land at Dover, receive the castle from its Tory governor, and march on London via Chatham. There were glimpses and hints of senior Tory politicians involved. Admiral Lord Torrington, still furious at having been made the scapegoat for Beachy Head in 1690, was supposedly willing to cross and command the invasion fleet, as he had the Dutch one in 1688 - which would have made a unique 'double'.64 Despite Renaudot's support, the ministers (with French plans for the year's campaign well advanced) were unenthusiastic: as so often, the Jacobites had taken their risks in vain.65 Meanwhile, William continued his turn to the Whigs. In March Shrewsbury became secretary, using William's knowledge of his meeting with Montgomerie as his excuse for this with the Jacobites. The leading Whig Compounders increasingly withdrew from serious contact, under a smokescreen of protestations.66 Whig successes drove the 'Seventeen Lords' to further action: in April (NS) they sent over Lord Griffin, the most impecunious of their number, largely to declare that most Tories would not do business with Melfort. Finally, a French refusal to do so either forced James in June 1694 to dismiss Melfort and send him away from court.67 Montgomerie evidently hoped to replace him as secretary, the post James had promised him in the 1690 plot. However, even setting aside James's and Middleto-n's distrust of him,68 his appeal would have been too much to those already satisfied with Middleton: the second secretary should have a 'constituency' among rival factions. Even Griffin, whom the group 64

BN, n.ac.fr., MS 7492, fos 391-97, Montgomerie's and Oglethorpe's Memorial [Feb. 1694] - for Torrington, fo. 392v. There is less risk than usual of the claims being among Montgomerie's falsehoods, since they were confirmed by Oglethorpe and, partly, by Lord Griffin's mission shortly afterwards. 65 Hopkins, 'Aspects', p. 377. 66 Ibid., pp. 379-81. 67 Ibid., pp. 379, 384. 68 BL, MS Add. 51,511, fo. 59.

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sending him had intended for the post, missed it. Some of them had lapsed into inactivity when the Whigs failed to embark on an immediate purge of Tories; others (including a few who had themselves once demanded securities from James) broke out into violent non-compounding hostility to the declaration and the 'Republicans' behind it, a clear attack on Middleton. The moderate Catholic John Caryll became junior secretary.69 Montgomerie's policy had triumphed, but he had no personal prospects at Saint-Germain, not even a Jacobite pension. In August, he applied via Shrewsbury to William for permission to return home and live quietly, but in vain. In the autumn, James obtained for him a French pension, but three days later, 6 October 1694 (NS), he died of consumption. A recentlydiscovered document shows him, already on his sickbed, still determined to blacken Melfort even if it meant falsely blaming King James for the French refusal to allow Protestant worship at Saint-Germain.70 Montgomerie's influence on the Jacobite cause, like that on the Scottish constitutional settlement, had a lopsided effect: he drew the French deeper into Jacobite affairs, but encouraged them to feel a contempt for SaintGermain's own Jacobite activities which was often unjustified or exaggerated. The year after Montgomerie's death, 1695, his wife's distant cousin Secretary James Johnston held a session of the Scottish parliament. Exploiting William's absence on campaign and the enquiry into Glencoe, he tried to increase its powers and break the aristocratic stranglehold on politics. He came close to success, but English anger over the founding of a Scottish East India Company brought him down and allowed the aroused 69

Hopkins, 'Aspects', pp. 385-87. Ibid., p. 385; Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 256, fo. 70, Middleton to Temple', 17 Nov. 1694 (NS); National Library of Wales, Celynog 24 Add. MS 550 B, [?Dr Ralph Taylor], 'An account of w[ha]t passed in ye obtaining ye libertie from ye King of France to use ye Liturgie of ye Church of England at St Germains en Leye, in Publick for ye King of Englands subjects'. (I owe this reference to the kindness of Dr Corp.) 70

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aristocrats to grab power again - the loss of the best chance for further reform since the Club.71 Parliament, unfettered by the abolition of the Articles, but with no influence over the monarch's appointment of ministers, and - after Johnston's fall - no secret sympathiser among them willing to strengthen it, was able only to make itself so much of a nuisance to the English court that the latter eventually got it abolished by the union of 1707.

71

Hopkins, Glencoe, pp. 399-423.

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4 The Abortive Invasion of 1692 John Childs

Military operations are more prone to bungling and incompetence than perhaps any other form of institutional or corporate enterprise. Lack of intelligence and uncertain information, the unpredictable reactions of the enemy, the fragility of soldiers' morale and the incalculable commodities of courage, endurance, fortitude and weakness, plus such variables as the weather, all render the military art impervious to the guaranteed achievement of the desired aim. Military operations are essentially risks, usually calculated, and professional soldiers are gamblers who do their best to ensure that as many variables as possible are under control but who know very well that the most vital elements affecting success or failure are beyond their direct influence. Any country or interest which has recourse to the organised violence of formal warfare places its affairs at extreme hazard. War is frequently the resort of the overconfident or the desperate. The invasion of England by the armed forces of the Dutch Republic in 1688 was a misleading yet beguiling event. It was that rarity; a military operation in which everything went in favour of one side including 100 per cent of the luck. William III of Orange managed to land an army on an open beach towards the western end of the English Channel in November

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having avoided contact with the English fleet. When it seemed as though the force seven easterly wind would blow him to the Isles of Scilly or beyond, it suddenly backed and propelled his fleet into Torbay. Although enjoying numerical superiority, James II dithered, dallied, lost his nerve and collapsed under the nervous strain as his troops began to desert to the invader. With James II in a state of virtual mental paralysis, William forced his way to London and bulldozed his path towards the crown of England. He then treated England as an occupied country whilst he organised its population and resources to fight on behalf of the United provinces against France. The number of amphibious operations, traditionally the most daunting of all military endeavours, which have succeeded let alone succeeded so totally, is few and far between. In English history, the Norman landing at Pevensey in 1066 is probably the only rival. Not until the massed firepower and specialist equipment of the Second World War did amphibious operations become somewhat less uncertain. Even then there were grave fears in June 1944 that Operation Overlord would fail and be pushed back into the sea. However, both the Norman expedition in 1066 and the Dutch landing in 1688 were unopposed; they met no opposition on the beach and were permitted a considerable period of peace and quiet in which the soldiers and horses recovered from the voyage and other preparations were made.1 1

For modern accounts of the Glorious Revolution see, W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988); The Revolution of 1688-1689: Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois G. Schwoerer (Cambridge, 1992); The Revolutions of 1688, ed. Robert Beddard (Oxford, 1991); The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its World Impact, ed. Jonathan I. Israel (Cambridge, 1991); John Childs, '1688', History, 73 (1988), pp. 398-424. For the specifically military events see, John Childs, The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester, 1980); John Carswell, The Descent on England (London, 1969); D.H. Hosford, Nottingham, Nobles and the North (Hamden, CT, 1976); Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Role in the Glorious Revolution', Anglo-Dutch Moment, pp. 105-62; Jonathan I. Israel and Geoffrey Parker, 'Of Providence and Protestant Winds: The Spanish Armada of 1588 and the Dutch Armada of 1688', ibid., pp. 335-63.

The Abortive Invasion of 1692

63

Misled by the ease of William's triumph in 1688, during the Nine Years' War the English planned or executed a number of operations against the French coast: Saint-Malo in 1692, Brest and Dieppe in 1694, Calais in 1695 and Dunkirk in 1696. In turn, the French made gestures against the English coast in 1690, 1692 and 1696. With the exception of Brest in 1694, all of the English operations consisted of naval bombardments rather than the landing of troops. Thomas Talmash's (Tollemache) attack on Brest in 1694 was the sole attempt at landing an army with the aim of attacking either the French fleet in Brest harbour or the town and dockyard. Partly because both the political and the military objectives were unclear, it resulted in total disaster, few of the soldiers managing to set foot on the beach.2 Measured against the Dutch invasion of England, and after Jonathan Israel's recent revelations it can be so described,3 and Talmash's failure at Brest, what realistic chance of positive achievement was possessed by the Franco-Jacobite invasion expedition of 1692? Was it really intended to succeed to the extent of replacing William III by James II; or was it merely a highly convenient means by which the French could divert British and Dutch troops away from Flanders during the siege of Namur? Before turning to what Geoffrey Parker has termed 'counter-factual history', which used to be known as speculation, it is worth recalling that the essential command of the sea was not obtained: the whole scheme was dropped after Edward Russell defeated Tourville's fleet off Cape Barfleur (La Hogue) between 19/29 May and 24 May/4 June. However, what might have happened had Tourville defeated Russell and the French invasion corps of 24,000 men had succeeded in crossing the Channel? It is interesting to note a series of remarkable similarities between William's invasion of 1688 and the FrancoJacobite plans of 1692. 2

On Brest see, John Childs, The British Army ofWilliamlll (Manchester, 1987), pp. 209-39; J. Kent Clark, Goodwin Wharton (Oxford, 1984), pp. 289-93. 3 Israel, 'The Dutch Role in the Glorious Revolution'.

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The expeditionary force consisted of King James's private Irish army, the 'Wild Geese' who had sailed for France after the treaty of Limerick in 1691 and had been billeted in Britanny. Here, the soldiers had been organised into fifteen battalions of infantry, two regiments of dismounted dragoons, two regiments of horse and two companies of Life Guards, a paper strength of 12,326 men. Until 1697, when these troops were either disbanded or amalgamated into the French army, Louis XIV paid their wages and costs. Some 12,000 French troops, plus some English and Scottish volunteers, completed the expeditionary corps. In all probability, its actual strength was probably closer to 14,000, rather than the official total of 24,000. (Lord Mountcashel's separate Irish Brigade, which had crossed to France in the spring of 1690, consisted of nine battalions of foot, a total of 6,039 men. It had been incorporated into the French army and was deployed in Roussillon and Piedmont.) The French and James planned to embark the cavalry at Le Havre and the infantry at La Hogue in the Cotentin peninsula. Marshal Bellefonds was appointed to command and King James was dispatched from Saint-Germain-en-Laye ready to cross to England to resume his interrupted reign. The intention was for the invading corps to land somewhere in Torbay — further evidence of the legacy of 1688.4 In England, after some initial and somewhat blase assumptions that the build-up of French forces and shipping in the Cotentin was aimed at a conquest of the Channel Isles had been dispelled, it was feared that the invading force would head for the sensitive Portsmouth-Isle of Wight area. Indeed, a naval and land attack on the principal English naval base had been promoted until Tourville rejected the proposal. In response, 10,000 British troops were gathered within a forty-mile radius 4

Geoffrey Symcox, The Crisis of French Sea Power, 1688-1697 (The Hague, 1974), pp. 117-19; Philip Aubrey, The Defeat of James Stuart's Armada, 1692 (Leicester, 1979), pp. 78-80; J.C. O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France (Glasgow, 1870; repr. Shannon, 1969), pp. 27-31, 61.

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of Portsmouth with a further 4,000 infantry on stand-by in Flanders ready to sail. Plymouth was garrisoned by 1,500 men although, as in 1688, the loyalty of its governor, the earl of Bath, was suspect. In terms of numerical superiority, the French would probably not have achieved a successful opposed landing but as they intended to attack Torbay rather than the Solent-Spithead, it is most unlikely that their landing would have encountered opposition on the beaches. No doubt the local militias and volunteers would have been called out as they had been during the French burning of Teignmouth in 1690, 40,000 men by all accounts, but these forces would have been little more than nuisances to the professional French and Irish soldiers. It seems improbable that the British army mustering in the Portsmouth region could have marched sufficiently rapidly to Torbay to interrupt the landing, although it would be reasonable to suggest that they could have arrived close to the French within two to three days. The French would probably not have benefited from the long undisturbed convalescence from their sea voyage which William's army had enjoyed in 1688. Throughout this period, William was surprisingly confident; he thought the 10,000 men under Talmash in Hampshire were quite sufficient to deter any invasion. In reality, as he watched Vauban reduce Namur, he had no more troops to spare. No doubt, the English Jacobites would have risen when they received news of a French landing. Colonel John Parker and others managed to convince both the exiled court at SaintGermain and Louis XIV that England was seething with Jacobite discontent and all James had to do was reappear with some French troops and the country would fall at his feet. Louvois, it should be noted, had been more sceptical about playing the Irish and Jacobite cards but his counsels of caution had ended on 6/16 July 1691. As far as Louis was concerned, after the final failure of the Irish diversion at Limerick in 1691, the invasion of England, the placing of James on the throne and the removal of William would, at best, so weaken the Grand

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Alliance that he would stand a good chance of driving through a peace based on the Truce of Regensburg. At worst, a civil war would commence in England which might well achieve a similar diplomatic and military result. In a curious way, the French aims in 1692 were remarkably similar to their attitudes towards the Dutch invasion of England in 1688; the Dutch and English diverted by potential civil war enabling France to conduct successful sieges in Europe - Philippsburg in 1688, Namur in 1692. To an extent, the question of whether a simultaneous Jacobite rising in England would have occurred is irrelevant. In 1688, when amateur risings had occurred in York, Nottingham and Lancashire, they had proved peripheral to the main contest which had been decided by professional armies in the south of England. Had the Franco-Irish landed in 1692, the issue would again have been resolved between the rival armies south of the Thames. What really mattered in 1692, and this must have been a major factor in Jacobite calculations, was the political state of the English army. Was it pro-Jacobite, proWilliam or sullenly indifferent? Certainly, there was discontent and potential disloyalty in the officer corps of the English army. The court at Saint-Germain was confident that elements of the English army would desert to James in the same way that small sections had fled to William in 1688. They had especial hopes of the 2nd Troop of the Life Guard, some members of the Queen's Regiment of Horse, the First Foot Guards, Lord Bath's Foot and William Selwyn's Foot.5 William III knew that certain of his senior army and naval officers were in correspondence with the Jacobite court. Marlborough, that ambitious, amoral and avaricious man, demonstrated that he was quite prepared to sell state secrets in order to keep his political options open with James II. The plan to attack Dunkirk in January 1692 was probably betrayed to the French by a British officer and the fact 5

Sir James Macpherson, Original Papers Containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover (London, 1775), i, pp. 460, 484.

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that the only surviving copy of the plans is to be found in the Blenheim Manuscripts may be more than simply coincidence. Marlborough was dismissed from all his offices on 20/30 January 1692.6 Certainly, two years later, Marlborough betrayed the plans and timing of Talmash's Brest expedition to Saint-Germain and Louis XIV. There were rumours that other army officers had Jacobite sympathies and, if James II was to set foot in England, they would bring over their commands but no hard evidence was ever produced. The army purges of 1689 and the new military oaths were pretty thorough, resulting in a flight of the genuinely Jacobite officers to fight for their old sovereign in Ireland and Scotland. Richard Ingoldsby came under suspicion of Jacobitism in 1689 but nothing could be proved against him. An anonymous letter to the earl of Portland on 1 May 1692 suggested that a considerable number of officers were already 'engaged' on James II's side and had been vouched for by Marlborough. The list included Sir John Lanier, Thomas Langston, Charles Trelawney, John Coy, John Hales, Zachariah Tiffin, Richard Brewer, Charles Churchill and Lewis and Rupert Billingsley. This was a catalogue of the old professional clique who had served in the French army during the 1670s, an extension of the Rose Tavern plotters and the Association of Protestant Officers who had been primarily responsible for the army desertions in 1688 which had allowed William III into England. If they were involved in plotting in 1692, and there is no solid evidence to support this notion, then it had little to do with affection for James II. Their concern, and both Marlborough and Talmash were closely associated with this group, was with the undue favour shown by William to Dutch and German general officers and the corresponding lack of opportunities extended to aspiring British candidates. The reasoning behind their complaints was identical to that which had inspired their animus against James II in 1688: they were career officers and 6

John Childs, The Nine Years' War and the British Army: The Operations in the Low Countries, 1688-97 (Manchester, 1991), p. 178.

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they saw their progress blocked, this time by the Dutch rather than the Irish and the Catholics. The ministers in London received information from Admiral Edward Russell on 5 May as the fleet lay off Portsmouth in the St Helens anchorage. Thomas Langston's regiment was billeted at Canterbury and several troopers had drunk the health of James II 'upon their knees'. Russell thought that the infection may have gone deeper into the army as a whole. He certainly thought that Jacobite agents provocateurs had been busy amongst the soldiery in England. Major William Mathews of the Coldstream Guards was suspected of being in favour of the French descent and his brother, Colonel Edward Mathews, thought him quite capable of treachery. Faced with this information, Queen Mary and the lords justices were obliged to act. She showed the 'evidence' to the duke of Leinster, Portland, Lord Sidney and the Board of General Officers all of whom advised her to arrest the supposed collaborators. John Hales, John Langston, William Culliford, Thomas Pownall, William Brereton, Edmund Mayne, Anthony Rodney and Charles Williams were sent to Newgate but they were all released after a short period of detention and resumed their army careers. No substantive evidence could be cited against them. This is not to suggest that these officers, and probably others, were anything other than dishonest and untrustworthy and, indeed, having deserted one sovereign in 1688 there was no reason to suppose that they would not desert another in 1692. However, it is worth stressing that the supposed Jacobitism of some English army officers in 1692 was probably caused more by professional and career concerns than by affection for James II. If the French had landed in 1692, the huge majority of the English army would have fought the invader, who was after all Franco-Irish, just as the majority of the army would have fought the Dutch invader in 1688 if a decent and competent leadership had been provided. Even worse, only a fraction of the 1692 invasion force was French - the majority was Catholic-

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Irish. In 1688 the importation of an Irish corps into England had caused, first, the episode of the Portsmouth Captains and, then, the Irish Alarms which followed in the wake of James's retreat from Salisbury and Feversham's decision to disband the royal army. Moreover, the army in 1692 was not commanded by a man on the verge of nervous collapse whilst the government had arrested and detained suspected officers. In 1688, James II had refused to act even when the names of Orangist conspirators had been presented to him. Whilst regiments from James's old army had mutinied when ordered to serve in Flanders in 1689, and certain commanders had demonstrated less than total commitment to the Williamite cause in Ireland in the same year, these problems were largely over by 1692. The British troops had fought well in Ireland in 1690 and 1691 whilst the battalions involved at Steenkirk in 1692 earned the grudging admiration of both Dutch and German general officers.7 There were indeed reports of disloyalty amongst the British corps in Flanders, although most reports relate to 1689 and 1690 rather than 1692. In 1689, although to a far lesser extent in the following year, hundreds, possibly even two or three thousand British soldiers had deserted from the confederate army to the French service where they had been grouped into special battalions. Some might have fled from their colours to serve their old master; some feared that they were to be transferred to the Dutch establishment and there endure a lower rate of pay; some fell for the blandishments of French agents provocateurs and propaganda, some mutinied through lack of pay, whilst others were simply billardeurs who bounced from army to army collecting bounty money.8 D'Humieres, the 7

Childs, British Army of William III, pp. 64-66, 174-78. Ibid., pp. 121-24; Childs, Nine Years' War, pp. 105-28; H.R. Knight, Historical Records of the Buffs, East Kent Regiment, 3rd Foot (London, 1905), i, pp. 283, 293; Wilhelm HI von Oranien und Georg Friedrich von Waldeck: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kampfes fur das Europdische Gleichgewicht, ed. P.L. Muller (The Hague, 1880), ii, pp. 163-64, 166-67, 185; BL, MS Add. 34518, fo. 46. 8

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French commander in the Low Countries, believed that the morale of the British corps in Waldeck's confederate army was so low that they would not fight. It was on the basis of this calculation that he risked the action at Walcourt on 15/25 August 1689.9 However, by 1692 most of the Jacobite sympathisers within the Flanders army had been purged or had deserted. In reality, many of the reported plots and rumours of plots emanating from amongst the British contingent in the Low Countries can be attributed to irregular pay. Whether the soldiers genuinely turned to Jacobitism in their hour of despair or whether the Jacobite agents and spies decided to represent the grievances of the soldiers as Jacobitism cannot be ascertained. There was a tendency to attribute any discontent amongst the British soldiery in the confederate army to Jacobitism, whatever its real cause. Seventeenth-century soldiers did not need the impetus or excuse of Jacobitism in order to desert; desertion was a regular aspect of military life. In any event, by 1692 the evidence of Jacobitism in the Flanders army was small. Chaplain Alexander Shields of the Cameronians reported in 1691 that many of the old officers from James II's army were still serving in the Royal Scots and the battalion of Francis Fergus O'Farrell. A number of these had already deserted to the French and 'we wish they were all gone, the less treachery were to be feared when action is required'. If there was any substance in this particular allegation, it forms an interesting sidelight on the surrender of Deynze in 1695, where O'Farrell was the governor and his regiment in garrison. A Jacobite agent under the alias of 'Mr Hornby' reported to Henry Browne at Saint-Germain on 13 May 1691 that Major Charles Fox of Robert Hodges's foot had agreed 'to come over to the King on the first occasion'. Nothing came of the promise. 9

Muller, Wilhelmlll, ii, pp. 171-92.

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Similarly, Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Billingsley told the Jacobite intriguer Captain David Floyd in 1691 that he undertook 'to return to his duty whenever a fair occasion is offered'. Needless to say, a 'fair occasion' did not materialise. The vague promises and half-baked commitments of a few officers in England and Flanders scarcely amounted to the instability of the whole army. Just as some army and navy officers, politicians and clerics had played the 'Orange Card' in 1688 and badly miscalculated the result, so some army and navy officers and some politicians were prepared to play the Jacobite Card' in 1692. Yet it seems almost inconceivable that the likes of Russell, Godolphin, Sidney, Shrewsbury and Marlborough were prepared to countenance the return of the Catholic James II, unreformed, unconverted and unreconstructed. If the object of the exercise was to put pressure on William to take more notice of the English and abandon government through Dutch favourites, it was a failure because William, unlike James, did not collapse under pressure. In 1688, only a fraction of the British officer corps had deserted to the invader and an even smaller proportion of the men, far fewer than the conspirators had promised and William expected. If James had stood firm at Salisbury, his army would, in all probability, have fought with a fair prospect of success. Unfortunately, the desertions were sufficient to convince an already irresolute and wavering James that all was lost; it was the king who let down his army rather than viceversa. In 1692, if the Jacobites were reliant upon disloyalty within the British army, then desertions would have needed to be both extensive and concentrated in key positions and ranks because, when faced with a Franco-Irish Catholic invasion force, the bulk of the army would probably have rallied to the national cause. It is extremely unlikely that the Jacobites possessed such assurances, if only for the very simple reason that the passage of regiments and battalions from Ireland into England and then on to Flanders and from Flanders into England was so rapid during the spring of 1692 that it would

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have proved very difficult for a widespread conspiracy to develop. In purely military terms, the English army, when reinforced from Flanders, Scotland, Ireland and garrisons in the north and east of England, could have outnumbered the invaders in battle after the landing. However, the expected Jacobite risings would have required the attentions of regular troops as well as the militias but these risings, for which there is no evidence of any advanced organisation, would not have amounted to much of a threat. As in 1688, the main contest would have been between two professional armies in the south of England but, this time, with the invading army at a disadvantage. Unless Tourville's victory over Russell had been massive, and very few naval victories during this period were decisive, the French invasion force would probably have been isolated in Devon with its supply lines cut. From the French point of view, given the strategic situation in the European war, it was worth risking a small corps, most of whom were expendable Irish, on the venture. It might have helped the siege of Namur, it might have fomented civil war in England, it might just have detained sufficient troops in England to affect materially the balance of military force in Flanders. If James could have been restored as well then that would have represented a huge bonus but Louis XIV was prepared to settle for a great deal less. Whatever the end result, any landing in England would have greatly affected the confederate war effort in the Low Countries and Germany. Namur was far more important than England.

5

John, First Lord Caryll ofDurford, Papers

and the Caryll

Howard Erskine-Hill

It is to a French historian that we owe our first and fullest account of the Caryll family. In his two-volume study, WestGrinstead et les Carylls (Paris and West Grinstead, 1893) Max de Trenqualeon drew attention not only to the religious and political interest of the family, but to the large archive of Caryll papers discovered by C.W. Dilke in the mid nineteenth century and deposited in the British Museum in London. Nineteen years ago I produced a somewhat fuller portrait of the Carylls in their Jacobite phase. I was then as much concerned with the social and financial aspects of their life as their religious and political commitments and, because that work was part of a study of the circle of the poet Alexander Pope, I was then inclined to focus on Pope's patron and friend, John, second Lord Caryll in the Jacobite peerage, the nephew of the man who is my subject in this essay.1 It was the first Lord Caryll, I wish to record my gratitude to Dr Eveline Cruickshanks, Dr Paul Hopkins and Mr Peter Meadows; also to Pembroke College, Cambridge, for a travel grant and the archbishop of Westminster for allowing me to see the Archives of the Archbishopric of Westminster; also to Mr Brian Lang and the staff of the British Library Department of Manuscripts. 1

Howard Erskine-Hill, The Social Millieu of Alexander Pope: Lives, Example and the Poetic Response (New Haven and London, 1975), pp. 42-102.

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Master of Requests to Queen Mary Beatrice 1685-88, and one of the secretaries of state to James II at Saint-Germain-en-Laye after 1694, who was the crucial figure in the history of his family, pointing it towards the service of an exiled dynasty by his decision to follow James and Mary to France after 1688. Yet, as we shall see, the Carylls were already something of an international family, owing to their Roman Catholicism, and Caryll may also have seen his decision as similar to that of Edward Hyde when, earlier in the century, he accompanied the young Charles II into exile. Like Hyde, Caryll hoped for an eventual restoration.2 The great difference between their two situations was of course the different churches to which each belonged. At some point, perhaps, Caryll believed that the Stuart kingdoms could be reclaimed for the Roman Catholic church, but it is improbable. His experience and arguments as a younger man seem likely to have limited his hopes. From the point where the Caryll Papers in the British Library begin to preserve documents relevant to Caryll, the dominating issue is that of how Catholics and Protestants could and should live together. In discussing these documents I do not assume that they are all composed by Caryll. Much in the volume of religious and political treatises (BL, MS Add. 28,252) evidently relates to his great-nephew, John-Baptist Caryll, and one cannot even demonstrate that all the items contemporary with the first Lord Caryll were known to him.3 One has the problem here of how 2

By November 1694 he seems to have given up hope of seeing his English home again, Social Milieu p. 50. 3 The problem for the modern scholar is that he does not know how much arrangement and addition was made to the family collections after the death of the first Lord Caryll. Then one would like to know more about the ordering of the papers after their nineteenth-century discovery in England by C.W. Dilke: see his Papers of a Critic (London, 1875). It seems probable that papers originating in France, for example, the letters of James II and Mary to Caryll at Saint-Germain, or the letters to him from Abbess Mary Caryll at Dunkirk, were brought to England by John-Baptist Caryll, and left in Sussex on his final departure for the Continent. Other papers again, for example those relating to John Caryll's post as Master of Requests to Mary Beatrice in 1685-88, originated

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to interpret an archive. Nevertheless, the presence of most of the items contemporary with Caryll is more plausibly explained by his concern with the issues they raise than by any other hypothesis. They constitute, I suggest, not a body of work of which he was necessarily author, but the religious and political arena of his mind. This explanation having been given, I shall proceed to outline Caryll's chief religious and political concerns during the reigns of Charles II and James II. 'Not Guilty, or the Plea of the Roman Catholick in England' (BL, MS Add. 28, 252, fos. 140-8) is plausibly attributed to Caryll by De Trenqualeon.4 Emphasising the generally loyal record of Catholics to the Crown in the Civil War period, the Tlea' declares roundly 'That no Power on Earth can absolue us from our Naturall Allegiance to Charles the 2nd our trew, and lawfull Soueraign' and 'That it is damnable to beleeve, that lawfull Kings (though excomunicated by ye Church) may be deposed, or murthered by their Subiects . . .' (fo. 146). Roman Catholics, it claims, can be charged with 'no Crime, but that of adhering to the Relligion of their Ancestors' (fo. 149v). The 'Plea' seems likely to belong to the early 1660s, when the memory of the Civil War was still fresh and before the religious policies of Charles II and Hyde, now Earl of Clarendon, were settled. At this time Caryll may have felt more hope when he considered the king than when he thought about parliament. It was in 1662 that Caryll's sister Mary, a Benedictine nun from an English Catholic monastery at Ghent, visited the restored monarch to remind him of his promise in exile to endow a new house of English Benedictine nuns, to be established in Dunkirk. The records of this religious house tell us that the

in England and are likely to have travelled to France and then finally been brought back. The great bulk of the Caryll Papers in the British Library are estate papers and correspondence, which probably never left England. 4 West-Grinstead et les Carylls: etude historique et religieuse sur le comte de Sussex en Angleterre, 2 vols (Paris and West Grinstead, 1893), ii, p. 53.

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king honoured his promise, giving £3,000 for the new foundation, of which Clarendon managed to procure £1,000 immediately. Clarendon's daughter, the duchess of York, added a pair of 'fayre guilded silver candlesticks'.5 Thus Dame Mary Caryll became the founding abbess of the monastery of the Immaculate Conception at Dunkirk.6 Such an incident suggested that the king was a discreet sympathiser with the Catholic community and we know that Christians of a very different complexion, such as Richard Baxter, had a similar impression at this time.7 In 1666 CarylPs tragedy The English Princess; or, The Death of Richard HI was composed, and by 1667 performed by the Duke's Company. The Epilogue makes clear the politics of the drama.8 Elizabeth of York stands for England and its true royal line. Richard represents the tyranny of the Rump Parliament and the Commonwealth. Richmond is the saviour of legitimacy, and his eventual triumph somewhat resembles the Restoration of Charles II, whose happy reign (and not of course that of Henry VIII) is explicitly prophesied within Caryll's text.9 Caryll may have recalled the Catholic Thomas More's assault upon the memory of Richard III: certainly this play endorses the explicit loyalty to Charles II affirmed in the treatise 'Not Guilty.' The volume of treatises does not, however, reveal any Catholic contentment with the Restoration Settlement in this era. 'A Discourse concerning the Punishment of Roman 5

Lady Abbess Neville, 'Annals of the English Houses at Ypres, Ghent and Dunkirk', pp. 194-202, 195 for the quoted words. The MS volume is part of the Archive of St Scholastica's, Teignmouth, now at St Mary's Convent, Buckfast, Devon. It has been printed, edited by Dame Mary Justicia Rumsey, in the Catholic Records Society, 6 (London, 1909), pp. 1-7. 6 Abbess Neville, Annals, p. 202; see also the Necrologies, under 21 Aug. 1712 (Archive of St Scholastica's, St Mary's Convent, Buckfast, Devon). 7 See, for example, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. N.H. Keeble (London, 1974; rev. edn, 1985), p. 153. The Autobiography is based onJ.M. Lloyd Thomas's 1925 selection from Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696). 8 The English Princess (London, 1667), p. 65v. 9 The English Princess, p. 33 (Act 3, Scene 6).

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Catholicks in the yeere 1666' (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fos 34-44) is to be followed by 'A Postscript' dated 'April 30 1679' defending Catholics at the time of the Popish Plot (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fos 45r, 52v). It is also interesting to note an English translation of Tertullian's Apology for Christians, against religious persecution (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fo. 159). These documents certainly form a suggestive background to the publication of Caryll's poem, Naboth's Vineyard: or, The Innocent Traytor . . . (1679). This work, recognised as a significant precursor of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681), is no simple political parallel with historical events. Multiple allusion appears to operate, as is so often the case. Just as in The English Princess, one figure represents all the forces of illegitimacy and rebellion, here two figures, Ahab and Jesebel, represent unjust power in the state, and certainly cannot stand for Charles II and his queen, though the text may possibly have been designed to prompt readers to try out this (in fact) impossible application. Naboth represents the Catholic community, including the peers and others arrested and imprisoned in the Tower like Caryll himself, and, very probably, the Duke of York, recently exiled and challenged in his right of succession to the crown. On the other hand, three simple identifications seem to be intended: Malchus is Titus Gates, Python Bedloe, another informer, and Arod Sir William Scroggs, the lord chief justice who, prior to his change of policy in July 1679, must have appeared to Catholics as an out-and-out persecuting judge.10 Designated by Narcissus Luttrell as 'a Popish Libel design'd agt. the Judge and the witnesses in the late plot', the poem says nothing about the desirability of converting Protestants to Catholicism: it is itself a protest on behalf of tradition and justice. King, parliament and bench are urged to remember the example and fate of Ahab. The revolution in the kingdoms, which brought James to the throne after all, sent Caryll on a mission to the Pope, before 10

George de F. Lord (ed.), Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, ii, 1678-81, ed. Elias F. Mengel, Jr (New Haven and London, 1965), pp. 82-83, 88.

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Lord Castlemain, and made him a servant of the queen, have been recently described and need not be rehearsed here.11 That many of the Catholic community hoped for more than a brief Catholic parenthesis before a Protestant Mary II should succeed to her father's throne is emphasised by another document from the house of the Benedictine nuns at Dunkirk. Here I gratefully acknowledge the permission and assistance to publish of Dame Mildred Murray-Sinclair, OSB, the senior of the four present nuns professed in the community founded by Abbess Mary Caryll. The document is a Promise of Prayer, addressed to the king and queen, Tor the obtayning a PRINCE of Wales, who after your long and happy Reigns may inherit your Vertues as well as Kingdomes vpon earth, whilst both your Majestys inioy Everlasting Crownes in Heaven . . . .' (See Appendix). The Promise concludes: 'By command of the Chapter this 13 September 1685' and bears the signatures of the two secretaries of the chapter, as well as that of'Mary Caryll Abbess'.12 Of course what the nuns of Dunkirk desired was not necessarily what John Caryll in England hoped for, but in my view even the most conciliatory Roman Catholic must have felt that the king's influence would be enhanced by the birth of a male heir. Ironically, yet logically, it was the fulfilment of the nuns' prayers, on 10 June 1688, which occasioned the invitation to the Prince of Orange, and William's final decision to invade England. Returning to the Caryll volume of treatises and political papers (BL, MS Add. 28,252) we find the next significant document is a copy of the greater part of'His matles Reasons for wth drawing himself from Rochester, written by his own hand & 11

G.H. Jones, The Mainstream ofjacobitism (Cambridge, MA, 1954); Howard Erskine-Hill, Social Milieu, ch. 2; John Miller, James II: A Study in Kingship (Hove, 1978), ch. 13, and Troto-Jacobitism: The Tories and the Revolution of 1688-89', in Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black (ed.), The Jacobite Challenge (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 7-23. 12 Archive of St Scholastica's Convent, Teignmouth, Devon; see Appendix for the whole text.

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ordered by him to be published'.13 This was the important declaration which the second earl of Clarendon said James left upon the table for my Lord Middleton; of which I took a copy . . . ',14 and which seems first to have been published from Saint-Germain on 4/14 January 1688/89, together with an additional statement 'By His Majesties Command' issued by Melfort.15 It was then published in Edmund Bohun's History of the Desertion (licensed 10 April 1689), and subsequently incorporated in Dicconson's Life of James //, based on the king's memoirs and papers, as finally published by J.S. Clarke in 1816.16 The three printed versions are almost identical with the Caryll MS (so far as the latter goes) save for punctuation, the expansion of abbreviations, four small verbal corrections - and the fact that the manuscript trails off with the words 'it will please God that' while all the printed versions delete these five words and proceed to add a final section beginning 'the Nations Eyes shall be opened . . . ' in which James recommends the calling of a legal parliament and advocates 'Liberty of Conscience' for 'all Protestant Dissenters, and . . . those of my own Persuasion' (History of the Desertion, p. 106). The smaller verbal discrepancies between the manuscript and the printed versions suggest that the manuscript came first, while the displacement in the printed versions of the words 'it will please God that' argues that the Caryll MS was not a copy from any complete 13

BL, MS Add. 28252, fo. 55. The manuscript is curious in being written on one side of a page of Caryll estate accounts of Michaelmas 1631: apparently trustee's accounts for Sir John Leeds (see MS Add. 28241, fo. 82ff.). The king's declaration is not hastily written, but 'breaks off in mid sentence with no indication that it might have continued on a second sheet'. I am grateful to Mr Peter Meadows, of Cambridge University Library, for the words just quoted, and for his advice on the MS generally. 14 The Clarendon Correspondence, ed. S.W. Singer (London, 1928), ii, p. 236. 15 His Majesties Reasons for Withdrawing Himself from Rochester (PParis, 1689); Cambridge University Library pressmark: Syn. 4.69.2. 16 J.S. Clarke, ed., The Life of King James II. . . Collected Out of The Memoirs Writ of His Own Hand (London, 1816), ii, pp. 273-75. For Edmund Bohun, see Mark Goldie, The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument', Bulletin of Research in the Humanities (1980), p. 532.

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version of the final document. The Caryll MS, which is neither in Caryll's nor the king's hand, thus appears to represent an early state of the document: either before this document had been fully drafted, or before it had been decided to extend it by appealing for a legal parliament and liberty of conscience for Catholics and Protestant dissenters. I am not, I am afraid, aware of any discussion of manuscripts of 'His Majesties Reasons', but this last question is of some interest. It raises the possibility that James, in the final crisis of his decision to escape to France, did not think of reaffirming the religious policy he had seemed to abandon just before the invasion of William. The declaration itself has received little attention in recent histories of the Revolution,17 though it is surely of crucial importance. The tone of outrage in which James complains of William's conduct has perhaps distracted historians from its most telling passage: I was born free, & desire to continue so, and tho I have adventured my life very frankly on severall occasions for the good & honor of my Country, & am as free to do it again (and wch I hope I shall do as old as I am to redeem it from [the] slavery it is like to fall under) yet I think it not convenient to expose my self to be secured as not to be at liberty to effect it. and for that reason do wthdraw, but so as to be wthin call whenever it will please God . . . (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fo. 55)

Though incorporated into a History of the Desertion, this makes it clear that James was not deserting, not abdicating, but withdrawing to fight again whenever the opportunity should offer. The point to emphasise is that James and his advisers recognised what interpretation would be put upon his withdrawal.

17

It is not, for example, mentioned in J.R. Jones, The Revolution of 1688 in England (London, 1972); John Miller just makes reference to it in his James //, ch. 13, n. 50, and alludes to it in his Troto-Jacobitism' in The Jacobite Challenge, p. 17.

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They thus sought to refute that construction even before the event. The argument that James abdicated in 1688 has never had any foundation. An emphatically Catholic and Jacobite view of the state of Europe after the Williamite revolution is expressed in 'Reflections Upon the League of Ausburg', dated, at the end, 1691 (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fos 26-31). The aim of this tract, perhaps prepared for diplomatic purposes, is to argue that the emperor and Spain should withdraw from the League and, lending 'a favourable Eare to ye Remonstrance of our holy father', conclude 'a Speedy peace as ye only remedy for our Evills' (fo. 30v). It contends that the encroachments of France were only a pretext for a revival of military Protestantism that was especially mighty in sea-power - here the author conducts an almost Mahon-like analysis of the naval resources of the United Provinces, England and Spain (fo. 26r). According to this tract, Protestants are the strongest party in the confederacy, and must therefore ultimately prevail: 'all the favour that the House of Austria ought reasonably to expect from it, is to be the last that will be swallowed up' (fo. 26v). Far better that the emperor should pursue his providential Christian defence against the Turk. How does 1688 fit into this pan-European picture? In the author's view not only has 'A Catholic King been deposed and dispossess'd of three Crowns, to make room for an Hereticall Usurper' (fo. 26r), but the Habsburg powers, and especially Spain, were complicit in the deposition, whatever their protestations to the contrary (fo. 27r and v). Such, in the author's view, was the prime cause of the Revolution. Nothing is said here of James's own measures during his short reign, but the issue of his Roman Catholicism is raised in two ways. First, it is roundly and no doubt truly stated: 'that if this King would but have consented to the bringing up of the p: of Wa: in the protestant Religion Committing him to ye Care of the Archbishop of Canterbury, most of the Nobility and Gentry of England . . . would have stood true to him . . . ' (fo. 28v); secondly the

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author sees James as having ventured the sacrifice of 'his all' rather than disobey his conscience and, in that the Prince of Wales was involved in this venture of'Sacrifice', thinks them not unlike Abraham and Isaac (28v). Could this tract have been the work of Caryll? The manuscript was probably produced by a scriptorium, and the few alterations, in another hand, tell one little about authorship. The two individuals particularly attacked in it are Sunderland, and Don Pedro de Ronquillo, the Spanish ambassador to England in 1688. Taking the tract as a whole, it has high-flying, Melfort-like features, whereas Caryll, hitherto, has been considered a Compounder,18 ready for a satisfactory compromise with Protestantism. For the present the question of the authorship of this tract must remain unsettled, but the writer's confident and powerful analysis of the international situation, and above all his fear of a newly militant Protestantism, may have remained long in Caryll's mind. Established at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Caryll soon shows himself a decisive and mordant commentator on the military and diplomatic situation of Europe. Firm to his religious and political faith, his assessments of the future are hard-headed and independent. In this respect there seems to be a continuity in manner of political thought between the 'Reflections upon the League of Augsburg' (1691) and the later, and attributable, judgements of Caryll on the state of Europe. He never appears the slave of unrealistic hope, or of disappointment. Thus on 5 June 1692, the time of the naval invasion project of La Hogue, he writes to Sir Edward Hales at Le Havre: I have made but a bad returne of ye favour of yrs from Havre, we were heir made believe at that time that for an answer to come to your hands, it must have been sent to London, & in this fools paradise we continued some time as we thought very happy; but ye Enemys cannon have waked us out of that dream, & therefore has frighted us into our witts . . . 18

Erskine-Hill, Social Milieu, pp. 51-52. The term, which goes back to James MacPherson's Original Papers (London, 1775), may need refinement.

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He seeks to raise his correspondent's spirits by talking of Louis XIV's campaigns against Namur: still when ye K. of ffrance is in person fortune neuer failes to smile, ffor in one of his attaques at Namurs he has not only gaind ye counterscarp but ye half moon faced with stone . . . In ye mean time ye P. of Orange, & I take this to be ye story, according to ye relations from all parts, is resolved to releive ye place whatever it costs him; so that we have one hitt still for ye recovery of a lost game . . . 19

As it happens further letters of Caryll have survived, for example of 19 September and 3 October 1695, to the duke of Perth in Rome, in which the linked significance of the possession of Namur and of a further invasion attempt lead him to a still more severe yet faithful and hopeful assessment of King James's situation: I doubt not but yl in a place where ye Austrian faction reigns so much as it does in Rome, if ye taking of ye town of Namur wch was a larger f[?s]orte of out work to ye Castle transported them so much, they will now be mad with excesse of joy at ye taking of ye Castle, and even forget yl it was taken from them but three year since in half ye time, however it can not be denyed, but yl ye P. of Or. has gaind ye reputation of a good Generall even amongst his enemys . . . . But after all as to our own concerns, if ye retardment of a peace be better for us, who were likely to be ye greatest loosers by it, certain it is, yc had Namur been releaved, a pace would have immediately insued, because then ye allies would have been modest and reasonable on their demands, and france longs for nothing more yn a peace, but now ye case is altered.

Now, Caryll argues, the allies will demand such terms as France will find intolerable, and 'Out of all this providence may worke something for our good' and King James's restoration may be achieved 'by some ex[t]r[aordinar]y stroke of divine providence'.20 The later letter develops the theme. While reason of 19

Archbishop of Westminster's Archive, Kensington: AWW; Old Brotherhood MSS, iii (3), fo. 254. 20 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 181, fo. 626.

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state suggests that France must now abandon the Jacobite interest, Louis XIV is still the best friend the Jacobites have, and the 'insolent demands' of the allies may 'awaken' the French government and 'put them at last upon a resolution of making a vigorous attempt upon England, where one victory gaind would most certainly make a glorious end of this war . . . '21 When, however, this strategy has developed into the final stages of the 1696 invasion attempt, Caryll is full of scepticism and doubt. On 27 February 1696, the day before King James, on Louis XIV's advice, has set out for Calais, Caryll confesses to Perth that 'I have labourd to ye utmost of my power to hinder his Maty from exposing his person upon too great hazards & uncertaintys, to wch he & some about him are in my opinion too much inclin'd . . .' While Caryll believes the French troops are capably commanded, he does not believe that the encouragements James has had from England, 'even from those who are in places of principall trust about ye P. of Or:' will come to anything: I confess 'tis my opinion yl nothing at all will be done, and that these encouragments wch are expected from England, without an actuall appearance wherof his Maty will not nor can not cross ye sea will fall short of what is promised & expected, so yl ye worst yl can happen is but a journy to Calais taken in vain.22

As noted above, Caryll has hitherto been considered as inclining to the Compounder faction among the exiled Jacobites. The above letters show him in a somewhat different light: however much he might have desired a peaceful restoration of his master, he scarcely believes it possible. All his emphasis is upon armed invasion, invasion in strength. This aspect of his political thinking is contiguous with his religious thought; his conviction that James II had lost his kingdoms chiefly through his loyalty to the true faith; and his belief in divine providence 21 22

MS Carte 181, fo. 627. MS Carte 181, fos 635v-636r.

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working through the decisions and deeds of men. Religious reflections are more likely to occur in letters to a sympathetic correspondent such as the duke of Perth, than they are in formal 'position papers' on current political circumstances. With that proviso, the three position papers Garyll seems to have drawn up between 1697 and the earliest years of James III,23 continue his sceptical and severe analysis of the political situation. To sum up the three documents, together with his comments to the duke of Perth, it appears true to say that Caryll sees England as the mainstay of the League (the allies against France), but believes it to be exhausted, at least in the years shortly before the treaty of Ryswick. He thinks that the Roman Catholic members of the League are, first, short-sighted in their own interests, and secondly hypocritical. He puts no trust in the court of Rome, or the Italians, but some, in the good intentions at least, of the pope. He thinks England to be hopelessly divided in religion and church, and has little hope that what he thinks of as the Presbyterian interest will be overcome by the episcopal. England, he believes, will never be stable without the restoration of its legitimate king with continuing support from France. On the basis of these documents, whatever else he may have said, he seems to have no notion that James II or James III ('le jeune Roy d'Angleterre') could be restored in peace again: rather such a return of events could be achieved only by arms, or by the fear of arms. He is against the king attempting to return to England with a mere 10,000 men in 1695-96, because he is afraid that William III will speedily return from the Continent and expel James II once more. After the death of James II, he sees an England under its legitimate king as the best guarantee of France's international security. Equally, he sees France as James Ill's only true friend, and thus he concludes that it is in the best 23

MS Carte 181, fo. 666 (item 139, headed 'Mr Caryll 1697'); fo. 673 (item 143, 10 Nov. 1697); and fo. 704 (item 153, attributed to Caryll in the contents list of the volume, and referring to 'lejeune Roy d'Angleterre').

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interest of both England and France that Louis XIV should restore James by force of arms.24 Once the wider wars are over, j'ose dire que rien ne sera plus inebranlable que 1'union de 1'Angleterre avec la France'.25 No letter from James II, Queen Mary Beatrice or James III, in the various Caryll sources, equals the interest of Caryll's own writings as political commentary and analysis. The royal letters in the Caryll Papers (BL, MS Add. 28,224) do however reflect movement in the affairs of state, and the development of Caryll's relation with the exiled king and queen. At some crisis in an October before 1696 Mary Beatrice begged Caryll to 'beseeche god to inspire the King and me what to do for the good of our children in this unhappy conjuncture . . . i shall be at St Germains by Wednesday night. . . i shall tell you that i long to be ther, tho it is impossible to be used with a greater regarde, and kyndnesse then we are by this King [Louis XIV], but a little retirement, and the sight of my children is a greater comfort to me'.26 In March 1696 the queen refers to the 'Abbe Renaudaut to whom I have given the declaration . . . ' (fo. 7); on 20 April 1696, hearing that Admiral Rooke is cruising off Kinsale, she writes: 'it shall be of this, as of all other things, what god pleases, but it is always good to prepare for the worst. . .' (fo. 11). On 29 April 1696, when the invasion project was abandoned, James wrote to Caryll from Boulogne to say: I see no manner of reason for my staying here any longer, now that the world must find the decent is layd a side for the present, but before I start from hence must expect an anser to E: Mid: [the earl of Middleton] letter went yesterday to M. de Pontchartrain . . . J.R. (fo. 15v)

Thus James puts behind him what Caryll had recently described to the duke of Perth as, at the worst, 'a journy to Calais taken in vain'. 24 25 26

MS Carte 181, fo. 706r v. Carte MSS. 181, fo. 706r. BL, MS Add. 28224, fo. 6 ('dated Oct. the 4').

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In 1975 I briefly considered the allegation of Luttrell and others that in 1696 Caryll gave Sir George Barclay £800 to buy horses and arms to assassinate William. My later exploration of the evidence has unfortunately thrown no new light on the allegation. On 15 October 1696 the queen notes that 'the Emperor and King of Spaine have accepted the neutrality in Italy, so that the peace is quiet made of that syde, and i have reason to believe it will soon be made every wher, gods will be don he knows what is best for us, and for all the world . . . '. (BL, MS Add. 28,224, 23v). Two days later James wrote that 'the paper . . . for the Cath: Princes, is given unto M. de Torcy, with some necessary alterations to be read to this King [Louis XIV], so that in a day or two I shall know how he approves it' (fo. 25). The last letter from the queen to Caryll during her husband's lifetime, on 19 May 1701, betokened some ironical familiarity of relationship, as well as disclosing a stage in the history of the memoirs of James II: I have put off writing to you in hopes still every post to receive a Ire from you, but I find what I thought impossible, that you hate writing yett more than i do, since you can hold out longer without writting to me, for without any manner of compliment i may tell you that it has realy been uneasy to me . . . The King would have had me som time ago have writt on purpose to you, to putt you in mind of his memoirs but Mr Innese has assured us that you are hard at worke about them' (fo. 36).

In his book, The Revolution of 1688 in England (1972), J.R. Jones describes the 'country Catholics' of the time as 'inert, defensively minded, and intellectually negligible' (p. 80). This is the alleged background of landed Catholic gentry from which John and Mary Caryll came. If Caryll the minor 27

Erskine-Hill, Social Milieu, pp. 52-53. Further references to this matter are to be found in HMC Buccleugh (London, 1903), ii, 1 and 2 (pp. 295, 321, 395 and 411).

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dramatist and poet, the religious and political controversialist, the diplomat, courtier, and secretary of state, prompts us to question Jones's dismissal of the country Catholics, or at least recognise a striking exception to his rule, we may want to ask what were the ideological sources and principles which shaped Caryll's life. Politically the answer may be found in a letter Caryll wrote to his sister, abbess Mary Caryll, on 13 July (?)1695: 'The duty we owe our Prince [PParent], is indispensable, so that what they command (in things not unlawfull) we must take to be the will of God; to which motive ther is allso added this satisfaction that my service is not ill accepted . . . '.28 Such a reference of political duty to religion seems as orthodox an Anglican as a Catholic doctrine, and we must turn to theology to complete this sketch of Caryll's principles. BL, MS Add. 28,252 (the volume of treatises and papers) includes 'A Summary of Reveal'd Religion Contain'd in a letter to a Person of Quality' (fos 333-40). It is signed 'J.C.' and is probably of Caryll's composition. Dated 12 May (P1690), it may have some relation to the 'Character of Father Malebranche's Search after truth. From Mr Norris's book entitled Spiritual Councils or the Father's Advice to his Children', c. 1690 (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fo. 56). The 'Summary' is cast in an austerely rationalistic method and is as far as possible from a proselytising tone. Caryll's account of his church does however emerge strongly at the end: 1st She is from her primitive institution all ways one and the same; the reason is, because ye adequat object of her faith and belief being all divine Revelations, and these Revelations allways the same, and the assistance of God to preserve her in the integrity of her faith being in like manner allways the same, She cannot be otherwise than always one and the same, and by consequence unchangeable and accordingly allso unreformable in her belief and worship. 2dly She is the only Legitimat and secure Proponent, and Attestant of Divine Revelation disposited in her: she, and she alone, being (as tis said before) by Christ ye Revealer commissioned to teach them and 28

BL, MS Add. 28226, fo. 106; quoted more fully in Erskine-Hill, Social Milieu, pp. 55-56.

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assisted not to deceive or be deceived in them . . . 3dly in her bosome and comunion alone is to be found the true worship of God, and in that worship an assured happiness. (BL, MS Add. 28,252, fos 338v-339r; pp. 12-13)

My aim in this short essay has been, first to draw attention to the interest of the Caryll Papers as a source, especially the main collection in the British Library; and, secondly, to use them and some of the printed works, such as The English Princess, to throw further light on the principles and thought of a man who was not only decisive in the history of his family but is a significant and neglected figure in the history of England. The documents I have drawn on are no more than a brief selection from the mass of evidence available. Many problems of attribution might be solved by more sustained study. I have no doubt that Caryll deserves a full-length biography, not only because of his central position in the diplomacy of the Jacobite court, but also his intellectual interests and, last but not least, the high literary quality of his writings.

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The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites Appendix The Promise of Prayer for a Prince of Wales, 1685

TO THE KING AND QUEENS MOST EXCELLENT MA'.tyS

May it please you Maiestys gratiously to accept a participation of all the sacrifices offer'd dayly in our Church, our recitall of the Diuine office, mentall & vocall prayers, fastings, mortifications, Regular obseruances, & all other meritorious actions of our whole Hues; for the obtayning a PRINCE of Wales, who after your long and happy Reigns may inherit your Vertues as well as Kingdomes vpon earth, whilst both your Maiestys inioy Everlasting Crownes in Heauen, as allsoe for the repose of your Royall Brothers soule, to whose Bounty we owe our Establishment; & your Maiestys will infinitly oblige your Dutyful & Loyall Subiects the Religious of the Order of Saint Bennet at Dunkirke By command of the Chapter this 13 of September 1685 Marie Knightley Scholastica Culcheth secretarys Mary Caryll Abbess (Archives of St Scholastica's Convent, Teignmouth; now at St Mary's Convent, Buckfast, Devon. The members of the house founded by Dame Mary Caryll at Dunkirk came to England as refugees at the time of the French Revolution. They settled first at Hammersmith, then at Teignmouth, where they have recently had to abandon their large monastery. The document reprinted above has no classification. It is small but elaborate, and presumably is the copy, or a later record of the copy, retained by the nuns at Dunkirk, of the original Promise sent to King James and Queen Mary. The faded signature of 'Mary Caryll' (attached apparently on a separate piece of paper) appears to me - a provisional judgement - to be original.)

6 The Innes Brothers and the Scots College, Paris James F. McMillan According to the Nairne Papers 'List of who lodg'd in ye Castle of Saint-Germain' there resided on the fourth 'paire of Stairs' one 'Mr Inese ye priest'.1 This was Lewis Innes, eldest son of James Innes of Drumgask, a Catholic laird from the north east of Scotland, and Jane Robertson, daughter of an Aberdeen merchant. In addition to Lewis, James and Jane Innes had five other sons and one daughter: Thomas, Charles (successor to James as laird of Drumgask), Walter, Francis, John and Elizabeth. Like their elder brother Lewis, Thomas, Walter and John Innes all became priests; as did George Innes, son of Charles Innes, in the next generation; and Alexander Innes and Henry Innes, Charles's grandsons, in the following generation; and William Innes, Charles's great-grandson, in the generation after that. The Inneses, in short, were a remarkable old Scots Catholic family who from the time of James II through to the reign of Queen Victoria furnished the Scottish Catholic Mission with some of its most distinguished clergymen.2 The present short essay highlights the role of two of 1

E. and M.S. Grew, The English Court in Exile (London, 1911), p. 267. T. Innes, A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain or Scotland (Edinburgh, 1879; original edn, Edinburgh, 1729), with 'Memoir' by George Grub. 2

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these priests, the aforementioned Lewis, who was a notable figure at the court of Saint-Germain, and his brother Thomas, the towering intellectual influence at the Scots College at Paris, an institution with which the exiled Stuarts were intimately connected. The College des Ecossais had a history which went back to medieval times, namely to David, bishop of Moray's purchase in 1325 of the farm of Grisy in Normandy with a view to supporting from its revenues the education for the priesthood of four Scots scholars at the university of Paris.3 Initially, the boursiers were lodged at the College du Cardinal Lemoine, but after 1333 they were without fixed abode and had to make do as best they could. Only in 1569, through the generosity of James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow and ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots in Paris, did the Scottish scholars acquire a house of their own, situated in the rue des Amandiers, close to the College des Grassins. Mary herself was another benefactor of the college, while in 1603 Archbishop Beaton effectively refounded the college by bequeathing it his residual property and placing it under the supervision of the Paris Carthusians, who were given full powers to nominate the superiors and bursars, and had responsibility for the auditing of the college's accounts.4 For a time, though the Murray and Beaton scholars lived under the same roof at the rue des Amandiers, the two scholarship funds were kept separate. In 1639, however, they were amalgamated by order of Jean de Gondi, archbishop of Paris, an arrangement confirmed by Louis XIII and then by the parlement in September, 1640. In that form the college survived until 1662, when principal Robert Barclay, finding the premises excessively cramped, decided to erect a new building on the Contrescarpe du Fosse Saint-Victor, which three years later became (apart from the north wing) the extremely handsome building which still stands 3

A. Mirot, Souvenirs du College des Ecossais (Paris, 1962): J.-L. Carr, Le College des Ecossais a Paris (1662-1962) (Paris, 1962). 4 Beaton's will is printed in Diocesan Letters of Glasgow, p. 229 (Grampian Club).

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today on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine. Persuaded by James II, who took a close interest in the fortunes of the college, Louis XIV granted new letters patent in 1688, by which all previous bequests were confirmed, and all the college's debts discharged. The purpose of the college was defined as the education of Scottish boys for the priesthood and the education of Catholic youth generally. The college was formally united to the university of Paris and made eligible for all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other colleges of the university. The college's superior was to be the prior of the Carthusians, to whom the principal and the procurator of the college were responsible for its sound administration. The Scots College at Paris thus differed from the three other Scots colleges on the continent (at Douai, Rome and Valladolid) in a number of respects. For one thing, the college was never a Jesuit establishment, remaining always in the hands of Scottish secular priests, who tended to view members of the Society of Jesus with a good deal of suspicion. Tensions and rivalries between seculars and regulars on the Scottish Catholic mission were to play no small part in the development of the so-called Jansenist' quarrels which divided the Scottish clergy in the 1730s and 1740s.5 Secondly, the college was the only one of the Scots establishments abroad not designated exclusively as a seminary. While all the other colleges occasionally accepted lay boarders, the Scots College at Paris was obliged by its constitution to do so. Thirdly, and of most relevance to our conference, because of its obligation to take in non-ecclesiastical students and because of its strong connections with the Stuart court in exile at Saint-Germain, the Scots College was an important centre for nurturing and diffusing Jacobite sentiments and an attachment to Jacobite politics. In this respect, it is worth noting that in 1701, when James II died, his faithful servant James, duke of Perth raised a monument to his sovereign in the chapel, 5

On this, see J.F. McMillan, 'Jansenists and Anti-Jansenists in EighteenthCentury Scotland: The Unigenitus Quarrels on the Scottish Catholic Mission, 1732-1746', Innes Review, 39 (1988), pp. 12-45.

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while the late king bequeathed his own memoirs to the college where he had so often been a visitor. The Innes brothers Lewis and Thomas were the chief luminaries of the college in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Lewis, born in 1651, went to Paris to study and, on the death of Principal Barclay in 1682, himself became principal in that year. Like his brother Thomas, he was keenly interested in Scottish history and in the preservation and classification of the college's own archives (which were extremely rich, since James Beaton had carried into exile with him many of the records of the archdiocese of Glasgow). In 1694 Lewis was actively involved in the proceedings which vindicated the authenticity of a famous charter held by the college which established the legitimacy of King Robert III. The principal brought it to Saint-Germain, where it was shown to King James and his gentry and court. Thereafter it was submitted to inspection by the most celebrated antiquaries of the time, including Renaudot, Baluze, Mabillon and Ruinart, at a solemn ceremony held at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres on 26 May 1694.6 In addition to his duties as principal of the Scots College, Lewis Innes served as a close confidant of James II. He is said to have been one of five men who acted as a cabinet council to James at Saint-Germain on his return from Ireland in 1690. He was appointed almoner to the queen-consort, Mary of Modena, and confirmed in that position when she became queen-mother in 1701. On 23 December 1713 he became almoner to her son the Chevalier de Saint-Georges and on 17 March 1714 he was made lord almoner. By this time he was effectively acting as a political secretary to the Old Pretender. Political affairs were taking up so much of his time he resigned as principal of the Scots College in 1713. In 1718 he temporarily lost the confidence of his royal master and was discharged from acting in the chevalier's affairs. Within a few years, however, he had been 6

Letter to Thomas Innes to university of Glasgow (1738), reprinted in Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii (Aberdeen, 1842), p. 370.

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restored to favour and was once again in close communication with him, notably in the matter of appointments of Scottish vicars-apostolic (living in Paris, the superiors of the Scots College held Gallican views regarding ecclesiastical administration). In 1733, Lewis wrote to Bishop Gordon reproving him for having given into the faction of his clergy which had demanded that he require all the priests on the mission to sign an anti-Jansenist formulary, since, according to Innes, "tis a known maxim received & practised in all Cath. countries that no Decree can be imposed as an obligation by any spiritual powerful of the sovereign. You may therefore judge how Sir Jo (James III) would take carrying things this length without acquainting him & having his consent'.7 At his death in 1738, the Pretender paid handsome tribute to the services rendered to the Stuart cause by Lewis Innes, writing thus to his brother Thomas from Rome (25 February 1738): The news you give me in yours of the 3d of your brothers death, was a subject of no surprize, but of true concern to me, having lost in him a most faithful servant, who joynd capacity and zeal in my service, which are not always found in the same person. In failleour of so worthy a person, it is a satisfaction that the papers he had in custody belonging to me, should remain under your care and that of your nephew Mr George Innes [the new Principal of the Scots College], because I am persuaded that both of you will have the most exact attention in all that relates to that particular. The just value and kindness I had for Mr Lewis Innes, will always engage me to have a particular consideration for you, as it will be an additional motive to me, to favor and befriend on all occasions The Scots College at Paris.8

If Lewis Innes was the key political figure at the Scots College at Paris (and indeed the eminence grise of Parisian Jacobitism), 7

Scottish Catholic Archives, Blairs Letters, Lewis Innes (Paris) to Bishop Gordon, 14 August 1733. 8 Letter of James III (Rome) to Thomas Innes (Paris), 25 Feb. 1738, printed in Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii, p. 379.

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his brother Thomas was above all the crucial intellectual and spiritual influence of the house. Born in 1662, he was sent to Paris at the age of fifteen, studying first at the College of Navarre before entering the Scots College in 1681. Ordained priest in 1691, he then attended the Oratorian seminary of Notre Dame des Vertus before returning to the Scots College to assist his brother in the work of classifying the college's archives. In 1694 he graduated Master of Arts from the University of Paris and then spent two years working as a priest in the parish of Magny, the parish church of Port-Royal. Between 1698 and 1701 he spent three years working as a missionary priest back in Scotland, based in the diocese of Moray, before being recalled to Paris by his brother to assume the post of Prefect of Studies in the college and mission agent. A director of studies and of consciences at the Scots College Paris, Thomas Innes sought to inculcate in his young charges the doctrines and austere spirituality associated with the school of Port-Royal. His port-royaliste connections are well-established. Ruth Clark, citing a Port-Royal manuscript of 1695, depicted him saying Mass there and attending an anniversary Mass for Arnauld. Lancelot and Saint-Cyran were among his favourite authors, as was Pasquier Quesnel, and in particular the latter's Moral Reflections. He was a friend of M. Le Noir, canon of Notre Dame, who first introduced him to Port-Royal, and of his brother, M. Le Noir de Sainte-Claude, a solitary of Port-Royal who ended up being imprisoned for eight years in the Bastille. Other friends included the future Appellants Duguet and Rollin and Bishop Colbert of Montpellier, whom he had first got to know when Colbert was parish priest of SaintEtienne-du-Mont, to which Innes was also briefly attached. He was also known to and much admired by Cardinal de Noailles.9 From his extensive correspondence, most of which can be read in the Scottish Catholic Archives in Edinburgh where what remains of the Scots College archives is now housed, it is clear 9

R. Clark, Strangers and Sojourners at Port-Royal (Cambridge, 1932), p. 231.

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that, even if Thomas Innes did not himself sign an appeal against Unigenitus, he was an intransigent opponent of that bull.10 As he told Bishop Gordon (also an alumnus of the college), he refused 'to swallow the toast'.11 In his mature and considered judgement (for, as he wrote to Bishops Gordon and Wallace, he had pondered the question deeply and 'gone to the bottom of it') he reckoned Unigenitus a bull 'that cannot bear a lecture of any man that is thoroughly instructed in his religion & on true principles'.12 To his mind, proof that God was on the side of the Appellants was apparent in the miracles which He seemed to be working on their behalf, especially at the tomb of the deacon Paris in the cemetery of Saint-Medard.13 Thomas Innes, in short, was a Scottish Jansenist and was recognised as such by the Nouvelles ecclesiastiques which, on his death in 1744, hailed him as an ami de la verite and one of their own.14 In his person, the history of the Scots College Paris became linked to that of the Unigenitus quarrels in France, which makes him a figure of interest not just in the story of Scottish Catholicism but also of French Catholicism. Education of the young was both his vocation and his special talent. As he, the most modest of men, acknowledged in a letter of 1698, just before he returned to work on the mission: . . . if God has given me any beginning of talent for anything, it is chiefly for that of education of such of the poorer in order to an Ecclesiastick state, and I should not have mentioned it, if after consulting the most spirituall persons I could find in this country they had not, on knowledge of our wants and of my own education 10

J.F. McMillan, Thomas Innes and the Bull Unigenitus', Innes Review, 33 (1982), pp. 23-30. 11 Scottish Catholic Archives, Blairs Letters, Thomas Innes (Paris) to Bishop Smith, 23 November 1736. 12 Ibid., Lewis Innes and Thomas Innes (Paris) to Bishops Wallace and Gordon, 9 December 1732. 13 Ibid., Lewis and Thomas Innes (Paris) to Bishop Gordon, 26 July 1731. 14 Nouvelles ecclesiastiques, 1 May 1745, reprinted in Necrologe des plus celebres defenseurs et confesseurs de la verite du dix-huitieme siecle (Paris 1760), ii, pp. 72-73.

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and inclinations, confirm'd me in it. But I must also add that I am, and alwayes have been of that mind, of which also I find many best of men I know here, that for our highlands the surest way, and most canonicall and natural to establish the Religion among them, is to educate these on the place and instruct and form Churchmen without ever bringing them abroad from their own hardships, to feel the ease and (in regard of the poor and hard life they lead at home I may say) the delicacies of our Colledges abroad.15

Thomas Innes was not only a superb educator but also a historian with an international reputation. Assisted both financially and morally by his brother Lewis, who took a deep interest in his work, Thomas Innes carried on historical research in the tradition of the Maurist congregation, some of whose distinguished members, including Mabillon, were personal friends of his. While back in Scotland on the mission, he managed to make time to visit the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, always fearful for his safety lest he be recognised and denounced as a priest. He also worked at the Cottonian Library in London, as well as the Bodleian, the archbishop of Canterbury's library at Lambeth and the library of the bishop of Norwich. Inevitably, most of his historical work was carried out when back in France, though he did pay another research trip to Britain in the winter of 1724, where he attracted the interest of the Protestant antiquary Wodrow, who described him thus: There is one Father Innes, a priest, brother to Father Innes of the Scots College at Paris, who has been in Edinburgh all this winter, and mostly in the Advocates Library, in the hours when open, looking books and manuscripts. He is not engaged in politics, so far as can be guessed, and is a monkish, bookish person, who meddles with nothing but literature.16 15

Letter of Thomas Innes (Paris) to William Leslie (Rome), 27 January 1698, quoted by A. Ross, 'Some Scottish Catholic Historians', Innes Review, 1 (1950), pp. 15-16. 16 Quoted by Grub, 'Memoir', pp. xv-xvi.

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His long labours eventually resulted in the publication in 1729 of A Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain or Scotland, which was widely hailed as a landmark in Scottish historiography for its demolition of legend, its immense learning and its analytical powers. In a letter to 'the King' (that is, the Old Pretender) joined to a copy of his book, Innes pointed out that he had spent years carrying out the research necessary for his work and had examined all the materials he could possibly find relating to the history and antiquities of Scotland. On the other hand, as he wrote to his sovereign, his motives for writing the Essay were not entirely devoid of political considerations. He wanted, he said, 'under the pretence of inquiring into the true era of the Scottish monarchy', to expose the seditious principles to be found in legends of the forty kings, given much currency by the writings of Buchanan and used to justify opposition to monarchy first against Mary Queen of Scots, then against Charles I and finally against James II by the Scottish Convention in 1689. His purpose, in short, was 'to go to the bottom of the dark contrivances of factious men against the sovereignty of our kings'.17 His ulterior motive notwithstanding, his work was hailed as an impressive piece of historical investigation. Other plans for a complete ecclesiastical history of Scotland never came to fruition, largely because his later years were so disrupted by accusations of Jansenism against him personally and against the Scots College more generally. In 1853, however, George Grub edited for the Spalding Club a single volume Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, which was really only an introduction to the larger-scale work intended. Again, as with the Essay, along with a desire to tell the truth on the basis of his detailed and scrupulous examination of ancient chartularies, he intended his narrative to illustrate two themes: first, the principle of apostolic succession among the bishops of 17

Thomas Innes (Paris) to James III, 17 October 1729, printed in Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii, pp. 353-56.

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the Scottish Church from the earliest times down to his own day; and secondly, the key role of Rome in the Christianisation of Scotland.18 Innes the historian is not easily separated from the Catholic apologist who wished to defend his own church against the attacks of reformers. Like his brother Lewis, he was a devoted servant of the Stuart cause and of the Catholic religion which, through his work at the Scots College at Paris, he helped to keep alive in eighteenth-century Scotland.

18

5-21.

Grub, 'Memoir', p. xxvii: A. Ross, 'Some Scottish Catholic Historians', pp.

7

Roger North, Historian and Attorney-General to Queen Mary ofModena Roger Schmidt It must have seemed so much gesticulation and emptiness to Roger North, the Tory and Jacobite lawyer, as if he were reading a badly written script, which indeed, from his perspective, he was. White Kennett's offensive third volume in The Complete History of England (1706), with its paean to Titus Gates, particularly galled North, as did Lawrence Echard's polite and accessible History of England (1708-18), history presented with a knife, fork and serviette.1 This was Whig history, history to be consumed at leisure by the leisured, with plenty of opportunities for 'pause and rest'; history broken down into 'events', and events sequenced in such a way as to reveal the divine plan; 1

White Kennett, A Complete History of England (London, 1706). An undue concern for a polite style earned Echard several criticisms, some from unlikely corners. The republican Whig historian John Oldmixon, hostile to the moderate Hanoverian Whigs, is contemptuous: 'When the Historian [Echard] brags of his decencies and decorums . . . He will have more manners . . . and, like the butcher in the play, always cuts up his meat with a fork.' See Oldmixon, The Critical History of England (London, 1724; 3rd edn, 1728). This reference appears on some misbound pages occurring between p. 422 and p. 423. It is p. xiv and is apparently from an earlier introduction to the work. For an interesting discussion of the increased attention given at this time on using the fork correctly, see Norbert Elias, The History of Manners (New York, 1978), pp. 84-129.

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Echard and Kennett mere ghost writers, as it were, for the Providential hand itself.2 To North, who had lived through the Revolution, and was the more cynical for it, the script seemed absurd and impertinent, as if to 'understand' the past one needed nothing more than a crudely drawn road map. Forced to retire into the fenlands after the Revolution of 1688-89, North eventually found a raison d'etre in raising carp and other 'virtuoso' pursuits. It was an abrupt end to what had been a meteoric career. After two years at Cambridge, North had entered the Middle Temple in 1669 and been called to the bar in 1674. His subsequent career as a barrister unfolded in the lucrative shadows cast by his older brother Francis North (1637-85), the eventual Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal under Charles II, and for a time under James II. North was appointed Steward to the see of Canterbury in 1679, and in 1682 he became King's Counsel, a position affording him contact with both Charles II and the duke of York. In 1683 he assisted in the prosecution of the Rye House plotters Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney. He served as solicitor-general to the duke of York from January of 1684 until James's accession to the throne, at which point he became solicitor-general to Queen Mary of Modena and then, in January 1686, her attorney-general. With the Revolution and the collapse of the Tory interest, however, North withdrew from public and political life. After a year spent at Sir Peter Lely's house in London, North purchased and renovated an old estate in Norfolk, and in the process wrote what has been called 'probably the most detailed account of the planning and building of a seventeenth-century

2

As Bishop William Nicolson noted of Echard's History: 'This History being chiefly intended for the useful diversion of the Nobility and Gentry, is put in such a Method as appeared to be least irksome to the Reader: every Reign being divided into so many Stages or Periods, as give frequent opportunities of Pause and Rest', The English Historical Library (London, 1696-99; 2nd edn, 1714), p. 61.

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house in English architectural history'.3 He became an inveterate pisciculturist, and wrote what has become a small classic among East Anglian anglers, A Discourse on Fish and Fish Ponds. He devoted much time to playing his beloved bass viol and wrote numerous essays on musicology and the history of music in England, always noting as pernicious the gradual professionalisation of musical performances and their subsequent centralisation in London. He studied optics, collected pictures, researched Anglo-Saxon law and etymology, wrote manuals on farming and accountancy and a book-length treatise on the barometer, planted, diked and felled in the surrounding fenlands, studied astronomy, invented gadgets, and wrote down his thoughts on subjects ranging from the composition of smoke, to the failure of Aristotle, Descartes and Newton, and the difficulties in keeping a large family happy. What has been said of the virtuoso movement in the late seventeenth century that it represents a frustrated political energy seeking outlet in non-political spheres of activity - is in large measure true of Roger North.4 The Popish Plot and the settlement of 1688-89 (which North saw as merely the culmination of the plot) had left North feeling that politics had morally decayed. Shaftsbury's career seemed to demonstrate that politics no longer consisted in the application of moral principles to the problems of government, but in the manipulation of public opinion. Yet North was not completely detached from post-Revolution politics. He provided legal advice to a network of Norfolk Tories, Nonjurors, and Jacobites, always advocating the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. In 1696, in a move that may not have been motivated by political feeling but which nonetheless made a strong political statement, North married into the prominent Jacobite family of Sir Robert Gayer, while Sir Robert was seeking refuge in France after the 3

'Of Building': Roger North's Writings on Architecture, eds Howard Colvin and John Newman (Oxford, 1981), p. xv. 4 See T.A. Birrell, 'Roger North and Political Morality in the Later Stuart Period', Scrutiny, 17 (1950-51), pp. 282-98.

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failed duke of Berwick's plot. Appearances to the contrary, he also did not completely drift out of sight from the exiled court, as can be evidenced from three letters, from Queen Mary of Modena, by her secretary, John Caryll. In the first of these letters, dated 11 June 1689, North was asked to prepare a lease for the benefit of John Ashton; in the second, dated 20 June 1696, to prepare a Bill granting the office of Clerk of the Queen's Council to David Nairne, James's under-secretary; in the third, dated 12 June 1700, to prepare a Bill granting the office of treasurer and receiver-general to all of the queen's revenues to Robert Strickland, vice-chamberlain to Mary of Modena.5 That these requests stretch over a period of eleven years suggests, at the very least, North's continued ability to serve as the queen's solicitor. How exactly these transactions were carried out, however, remains a matter for speculation. Then, in the opening decade of the eighteenth century, the first Whig histories appeared, histories in which the Tories had been denied any significant role. Such annulment of influence was perhaps to be expected at the hands of the Whigs, but the style was peculiar as well, orderly and composed; polite, vain, ceremonious. Historiography, it seemed to North, was undergoing a sea change. In The Lives of the Norths, a multiple biography of three of his brothers, in his autobiography, Notes of Mee, in Examen, a slow, dilatory and massive pondering of White Kennett, and in countless unpublished writings, North questions not only the accuracy of the Whig account, but the nature of historical writing itself. He is among the first to identify what in latter years has become known as the Whig Interpretation of History. A lawyer, at least in principle, is always dedicated to the unique case, and one way of approaching the Lives of the Norths is to see them as individual cases asserted against the first Whig interpretations of history. North believed that historians 5

Stuart Papers, Windsor, Warrant Book 3, RA.M18, nos. 245 and 276. Cited in F.J.M. Korsten, Roger North (1651-1734): Virtuoso and Essayist (Amsterdam 1981), pp. 19, 263.

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should avoid the general and often grandiose sweep characteristic of Kennett and Echard and concern themselves instead with the individual life. Historical events discussed on a general level have an ease and airiness about them; it is only when seen in the individual life that their complexity can be grasped. For North, history is always conceived in terms of human beings in particular if not unique situations. His biographical mode of history implicitly challenged the Whig notion that history progresses with a smooth inevitability, and implicitly questioned the validity of a style of history that measures its past only by its political successes. In what follows I will attempt to clarify North's position as a historical thinker in relation to his contemporaries by looking at a few of the metaphors for historiography which crop up in his work.6 The first, in fact, is an anecdote containing an observation on history made by his brother, Dudley North. A successful merchant in the Levant, Dudley returned to London where, after a term as sheriff during the height of the Popish Plot, he became chief commissioner of the customs and excise. As a consequence of the Revolution of 1688-89, he was forced into retirement. Architecture was a life-long interest North and his brother shared. They spent much time in on-site inspection of buildings going up in London. Once, when they were upon Bow Steeple, the merchant had a speculation not unlike that of a ship, in the bay of Smyrna, seen from the mountains. Here the streets appeared like small trenches, in which the coaches glided along without any unevenness as we could observe. 'Now this', said he, 'is like the world. Who would not be pleased in passing so equably from place to place? It is so when we look upon great men who, in their courses, at our distance seem to glide no less smoothly on; and we do not perceive the many rude jolts, tossings and wallowings they feel; as 5

For a more extensive treatment of North's career as a historian, see Schmidt, 'A Crisis in Historiography: Roger North's Examen, in Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25(1992).

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whoever rides in that coach feels enough to make his bones ache, of which, to our notice, there is no discovery.'7

Just such inevitability had been ascribed to 'great men' such as William of Orange; the 'Glorious Revolution' had glided by without unevenness. Overlooked by Whig historians such as Kennett and Echard, or only given token acknowledgement, were the 'many rude jolts, tossings and wallowings' of 'great men'. The close perspective North's biographical method entailed, however, aptly conveyed how precarious and accident-prone history could be, and how that which in retrospect may appear glorious, was at the time tumultuous and uncertain. The historiographical premise that distance allows one a clearer perspective on events than that available to contemporaries had been well-phrased by Kennett in his Complete History. 'people are for the most part', he wrote, least able to judge of the History of their own Times; they have imperfect Remembrances, they have confused Notions, they have a Partiality to one side, and a Prejudice to another, they have their Presumptions, and their Conjectures, and like some distemper'd Heads have a Sight so uncertain that it deceives them more than Blindness itself could do.8

Implicit here is the notion that history itself can somehow be more than conjectures and presumptions; that it indeed can speak with a clarity and authority beyond the reach of mere confused humans. As if to say there is an essential story which can be told independently of the uncertainties and complexities of human affairs. Yet to put things 'into perspective' is to omit actualities, and thus to distort. One sees inevitability where perhaps was much doubt and confusion. 7

Augustus Jessop, ed., The Life of the Hon. Sir Dudley North, vol. ii of The Lives of the Norths (London, 1890), p. 238. 8 Kennett, A Complete History of England (London, 1706), iii.

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Such an assumption, North observes, is 'a prodigious absurdity', and in Examen he spent several pages refuting Kennett's assertion. History is not an oracle. It can be no more, North argues, than the views of various individuals, and thus the importance of knowing the 'characters' of those individuals, as well as their aims in writing. It is in weighing the discrepancies and inconsistencies between various accounts that the historian moves toward judgement; the closer the historian is to the time described, the more accurately that can be done. The historian who eschews the contradictions and confusions contemporary accounts afford, who does not 'proceed from the remembrances or memoirs of persons living', abridges and oversimplifies the past, and unfairly leaves the reader with no choice but to accept facts as a historian selectively represents them: So how can these latter Times being so unfortunate (if it were so) as to have no other History but this, [i.e., Kennett's] pretend to judge at all of the facts, whether true or false, or take them otherwise than as he relates them? . . . Therefore, here lies a fallacy; the judgement is not to be of his, or any history, but of the times represented; and of those by means of the Characters and Circumstances of persons that write, and of the aims they have in so doing. Now when accounts of any time come abroad, which do not all agree, but differ in description and opinion of the same time, then there is a state formed and ready for judgement; then comes the Oracle and tells us we must not expect a just sentence to pass, till a generation or two is past, for 'most people are least able to judge of the history of their own times'; which is so far from the truth, that most people are most able, &c., for who should judge but those who are living witnesses, and can expressly say that an author lyes or says true, that he judges of the times justly or mistakenly, that he was reputed a good man or a bad man, with many incoherencies or inconsistencies, and conformities and coincidences with what is known to be true? . . . But to close this remark with a prodigious absurdity, let one say that the Romans in their time read Livy, Caesar, and Sallust, but we, after the best part of 2,000 years past, can make a better judgement of those histories than the people then did.9 9

Examen, (London, 1740), p. viii.

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The judicial language is worth noting. In order for a 'just sentence to pass', there must be living witnesses', as well as a knowledge of 'characters and circumstances'. Implicit in the insistence on contemporary accounts is the recognition that the past must stand in an independent relation to the present if it is to be correctly assessed, for historical judgements cannot but be affected by the prejudices of the age in which they are made: 'gentlemen must put off their Anno dom, and all that of their acquaintance, and put on the time and garb of the age they are to deal in'.10 Hence North's concern with etymology and all the 'ancient formes, words & expressions'. North never directly addresses the difficult question whether or not an independent relation is possible. Rather he paradoxically refuses to grant full status as history to anything but primary sources: letters, memoirs, loose papers, etc. Discourses about history, such as his own Examen, do not qualify: 'However [Examen] may seem historical, yet it is (as was said) but controversially such, and may be termed an Invective rather than a History'.11 A second metaphor for historiography, slightly different in emphasis, occurs in the Life of Francis North. North is defending himself against the charge that a focus on minute circumstances trivialises a subject's life, a view given its strongest utterance by the Whig Burnet in his preface to The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale (1682): 10

Hilda Andrews, ed., The Musicall Grammarian (Historical Extract from MS Notes by the Hon. Roger North . . . ) (London, 1925), p. 4. 11 Examen, xii. North further elaborates the point, interestingly enough, in his 'Cursory Notes on Building, Occasion'd by the Repair, or rather Metamorphosis of an Old House in the Country' (1698). North notes the tendency of earlier ages to denigrate the architecture of the age previous, and attributes it to the tendency to judge architecture by current tastes and standards rather than by the standards of contemporaries. He disputes Wren's claim that certain forms have an intrinsic architectural beauty; for North, aesthetic beauty is a function of 'custom', and thus, he wryly notes, 'It. seldom happens that posterity like anything wee doe.' H. Colvin and J. Newman, eds, Of Building: Roger North's Writings on Architecture (Oxford, 1981), p. 52. It is perhaps a given that architecture mirrors in some fashion the age in which it was built; if it is to be at all understood one must not see it in relation to the present but to its own time.

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others have fallen into another extreme in writing Lives too jejunely, swelling them up with trifling accounts of the Childhood and Education, and the domestic or private affairs of those persons of whom they Write, in which the World is little concerned: by these they become so flat, that few care to read them, for certainly those Transactions are only fit to be delivered to Posterity, that may carry with them some useful piece of knowledge to after-times. 12

If there is in the modern academic sense a whiggish tendency here, it is in the suggestion that posterity will be interested in the past only insofar as the past proves useful to the present; a principle of selectivity is created which isolates the significant and hoes out all the weedy complexities and entanglements of human affairs which it is assumed will be of little concern to posterity. Such a process results in a false simplicity; as North noted, it makes for a 'sorry picture': Some may allege that I bring forward circumstances too minute, the greater part of which might be dropped and the relation be more material, and being less incumbered, easier understood and retained. I grant much of that to be true; but I fancy myself a picture drawer and aiming to give the same image to a spectator as I have of the thing itself which I desire here should be represented. As, for instance, a tree, in the picture whereof the leaves and minor branches are very small and confused, and give the artist more pain to describe than the solid trunk and greater branches. But if these things were left out, it would make but a sorry picture of a tree. History is as it were, the portrait or lineament and not a bare index or catalogue of things done; and without the how and why all history is jejune and unprofitable. 13

It is an apt metaphor, suggesting as it does both the limitations of a Whig interpretation as well as justifying North's own reasons for being at times 'small and confused'. '[B]eing

12 13

Gilbert Burnet, Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale (London, 1682), p. iii. Lives of the Norths, ed., Augustus Jessop (London, 1890), i, p. 327.

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less incumbered, easier understood and retained', was Laurence Echard's goal as a historian; his abridgement of his own History of England (1706-16) ought to stand as a small classic of Whig historiography, as it forcefully illustrates Sir Herbert Butterfield's contention that 'all history must tend to become more Whig in proportion as it becomes more abridged'.14 What has struck some as an apparent 'Tory moderation' in the longer work vanishes when the work is shrunk to less than a tenth of its original size.15 Echard may be seen as bequeathing to his 'polite' audience an accessible past, an 'easy history'. Or, from North's perspective, a bare trunk. Though parts of North's relation may seem 'too minute', and largely immaterial to the matter at hand, it is, he suggests, all interrelated; a belief to which the ten-volume manuscript version of The Life of Francis North testifies. Everything in the past connects to the present, and one cannot, for the sake of simplicity, isolate certain events with certain causes. Those who 14

Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931; repr. 1973), p. 15. 15 Echard reduced the 981 folio pages of his Complete History to 271 octavo pages, and entitled the shortened version The History of the Revolution and the Establishment of England in the Year of 1688 (London, 1725). In this abridged edition Echard's support of the settlement of 1688-89 is unequivocal: 'As the governement . . . has ever since the year 1688 stood upon the same bottom, surely it must be highly useful to show what way was made for that lasting foundation . . . ' He may perhaps best be described as an Hanoverian Whig rather than a republican Whig; his arguments seem directed at those Tories who argued that since the government had been dissolved in 1688, it could easily be dissolved again and the Stuart line re-established. He enjoyed the patronage of both George I and the leading Whig prelate, William Wake. In spite of this, scholars wrongly tend to view him as a Tory; Dr Mark Goldie speaks of Echard as being 'steeped in the Tory moderation of Clarendon' (unpublished Cambridge Ph.D thesis, 1977), p. 163. Echard's political ideology aside, his style is clearly whiggish; his aim was to simplify history for a 'polite' audience. 'It is', wrote Echard in reference to his abridged history, 'a clear and full history . . . attempted in such a lively and easy manner, as may be most agreeable to the generality of readers'. Echard's political ambiguity was felt very much by his contemporaries, and he provoked attacks from both sides; when asked whether he was a Whig or a Tory, he is reputed to have replied, 'I am, Sir, a Historian', Granger's Biographical History of England (London, 1806), iii, p. 106.

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so simplify are 'florilegists, or gatherers of remarkables; they single out all extremes, whether of courage, perseverance, chastity, or piety, the more monstrous the better'.16 To push the metaphor to its full implications, such an approach is analogous to examining a flower as a separate part unrelated to the plant on which it grows. To leave unexamined the mundane and humid undergrowth that fills most lives, to say nothing of ignoring the cause that never came to fruition, distorts the nature of the past.

16

The General Preface and The Life of DrJohn North, ed. Peter Millard (Toronto, 1984), p. 69.

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8 Jacobite Ideology in Scotland and at Saint-Germain-en-Laye Murray G.H. Pittock 'James, that illustrious ruler of Scotland, greater than the greatest of his ancestors, valiant lord of earth, god of the ocean, from whose vast empire hung the shores of the sea . . . '

In such terms James Philp of Almericlose, standard-bearer in Dundee's army in 1689, celebrated the cause for which he and his fellows fought, supported abroad by 'the great Louis, in Hectorean arms'. Philp, like Dryden later, wrote of the Jacobite attempt of that year in terms redolent of classical typology. The Realpolitik of the situation (insofar as there was any when Dundee had only 2,000 supporters) received little attention in The Grameid, concerned as it is with the events leading up to the sacrificial death of that great hero, 'the heir alike of the valour and the name' of Graham, the 'last Hector' of 'the British peoples', Dundee.1 Such submergence of pragmatic manoeuvre in absolute metaphor is the business of poetry of this kind, it may be argued. It was, of course, the business of Jacobite propaganda too, with its persistent references to the sanctity and sacrifice of 1

James Philp of Almericlose, The Grameid, ed. Alexander D. Murdoch, Scottish Historical Society, 3 (Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 18, 20, 27, 40-41.

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its supporters and the corruption and party interest of its opponents, as if a great gulf were fixed between these, which none ever crossed. Yet, in Scotland especially, the presence of such absolute metaphors was a necessary outcome of the unconditional alignment of Jacobite interests with national ones. If James's cause was to be presented as Scotland's cause, it involved a distortion both of the reality of anti-Union Scotland (which contained many Presbyterians) and also of the Stuart dynasty itself, with its pan-British concerns. A limited coincidence of interests was presented in absolute terms: and Jacobitism in Scotland was frequently to be guilty of the excessive expectations occasioned by a metaphorical politics purveying itself as reality. The portrayal and identity of Jacobitism was confused with its strategies, and powerful typologies came to usurp ideological argument. The icon of the Highlander as patriot suggested the deliberately partialised truth that all Lowlanders favoured the Union; the icon of Stuart king as highlander suggested that he was a social bandit in the British state, rather than its titular head. The complexity of the politics at the centre was decentred in favour of a centring of the periphery of Scotland, and within the periphery another periphery, Gaelic culture. Atterbury, Bolingbroke, Ormonde and Wharton occupied a different world from that which obsessed itself with the experience of exile, the nature of its suffering (all peripheries are exiled), and the restoration of the dispossessed. It can be suspected that not only in Scotland, where it was most pronounced, but in England too, the unrealistic expectations of the periphery's rhetoric ignored the central realities. This was then a source of the confusion which led to so many of the failures, and ultimately the defeat, of Jacobitism. The adoption of typology in political argument can be a confession of such defeat: for typology by its very nature undermines the linearity of history identified as central by the victorious culture. Royalist typology was more pronounced in the 1650s than in the 1670s, and became marked again in the 1680s and 90s. In some degree, the rhetoric of the Grameid and

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indeed Dryden's Aeneid is a confession of the timebound nature of Stuart defeat, glossed by a timeless portrayal of Stuart suffering. The poetry of typology could only disguise the linearity of defeat in the year 1689: it could not abolish it. If Scotland was doubly peripheralist in its confusion of subsidiary national and dynastic questions with the Stuart question in Britain as a whole, there were many other peripheries within the Jacobite movement. Paradoxically, Saint-Germain was one of them. Its adulation of, and high degree of dependency on, France was a sign of this; so was, as Daniel Szechi argues, the marginalisation of its political analysis, frozen in the late seventeenth century; certain all Tories were Jacobites, and all Catholics too. In such certainties, we hear the absolute note of Philp's Grameid disturbingly echoed in the language of political negotiation. Jacobite agents so often gave a poetic account of reality. Yet although James's administration was a peripheral one, it had to arrogate to itself the powers of a centre. Often this took the form of healing divisions among its support, as in the 'soothing letters' which assured special status to Scotland, or the need to compliment both Scots and English Jacobites separately. At other times, it itself could be a flaw, as during the crucial 1710-14 period, when the insistence on centre to centre negotiations between the Jacobite court and Harley led to the further marginalising of more reliable supporters. As it was, the outdated thought of the Jacobite administration itself seems to have failed to recognise the embedded equivocation of Harley's rule. Harley, indeed, in 1713 advised James that he was over-reliant on the Scots. Two years later, he had to be.2 But the lord treasurer's advice was an implicit realisation of the fact that already there were two Jacobitisms: the international hope and pretence of the exiled court's negotiations; and the peripheral reality of its recruiting2

Daniel Szechi Jacobitismand Tory Politics, 1710-14 (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 10, 13, 27, 35, 46; Edward Gregg, The Politics of Paranoia', in Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black (eds), The Jacobite Challenge (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 4256 (43).

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grounds. Between 1689 and 1745, some 25-30,000 Jacobites bore arms on British soil; of these, perhaps 1,500 were the soldiers of foreign allies. The rest fought to defend, to a large extent, the peripheries of their own cultures: they were 'social bandits', and the literature of Jacobite culture reflects this. The chief of these peripheries was Scotland: 'Prosperity to Scotland and no Union' proclaimed the Jacobite broadswords.3 Whatever the naivete and mental provincialism of SaintGermain's posing as a core, with its fruitless negotiations, primitive ciphers and inefficient agents, there was at most stages a high degree of contact with that most important periphery of Scotland, whose geographical, institutional and ideological peripheralisms were all flattered by James's government. Scotland's national aspirations were stroked by the Jacobites, just as the opposition, such as Defoe, played on the periphery's fears of being forgotten: SCOT, . . . a Name that Foreigners can't find While mixt with English het'rogeneous kind, But now by Trade, inform the distant Poles, That Britain is the World of Gallant Souls.

But although Defoe's propaganda was meant to encourage Scotland into Union, by suggesting it would be better recognised by doing so than ever before, on the whole the British government persistently played into Jacobite hands by confirming the marginality of the peripheries, whether in Ireland, Scotland or within England itself; among Episcopalians, Catholics and even some Nonconformists. The official account of 1688-90 after all, even today, pretends that no civil war accompanied the Glorious Revolution.4 Scotland, among others, was thus ripe to be flattered by Saint-Germain, and there were many ready points of contact. It 3

Cf. EJ. Hobsbawm, in his Bandits, (London, 1969). Daniel Defoe, 'A Scots Poem, or A New Year's Gift, from a Native of the Universe, to his Fellow-Animals in Albania', Poems on Affairs of State, 1704-14, ed. Frank Ellis, vii (New Haven and London, 1975), p. 239. 4

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was fortunate, for example, that both the west and east coasts of Scotland contained areas of the most intense nationalist and Jacobite feeling. The White Rose Day celebrations in Leith in 1712 and 1713 were one indication, but more consistent support could be expected from the north east, where Aberdeen, Grail and St Andrews had not even signed the Covenant in 1638, while the West Highlands, Aberdeenshire and Banff had shown consistent Stuart support from 1637, more than 2,000 troops having been raised there in rapid opposition to the Covenant, and while in August 1638,'. . . the whole name of Clan Donald . . . swore to live and die in the king's service'.5 After 1688, James continued to nominate the Scottish bishops, consulting the pope concerning his headship of the English Nonjurors. The two groups indeed frequently operated together: for example, at Jeremy Collier's consecration on Ascension Day 1713 two Scottish bishops were necessary to continue the English apostolic line, while in 1777, the remaining Nonjurors were commended to the care of the (still officially Jacobite) Scots bishops by Bishop Gordon, last of the regular succession.6 Aberdeen and the north east was the Scottish stronghold of episcopacy (it was of course in that area that Colonel Hooke landed for his intrigues, and where James VIII himself arrived some years later). Episcopacy itself was, like the highland patriot image, one of the peripheries within a periphery in Scotland, and the fanatical loyalty of many of its adherents (proportional recruitment in Episcopalian areas exceeded that in Catholic ones by almost two to one) gave an intense and absolute flavour to its Jacobitism. Yet it was not merely a provincial faith: for it was in the Episcopal north east that the mystical pietism 'connected with Mme Bourignon and Mme Guyon' found a strong home, sympathisers including Lord 5

Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, p. 19; David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637-44 (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 71, 99, 146. 6 J.H. Overton, The Nonjurors: Their Lives, Principles, and Writings (London, 1902), pp. 87-89, 119,326.

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Forbes of Pitsligo and the Rev. George Garden, who was deprived for 'Bourignonism' in 1701. It was also in the north east that Catholicism and Episcopalianism found a strong convergence of ideologies and interests that led to a relationship between them more satisfactory than existed between Anglican and Roman worship anywhere in James's de jure dominions. Bishop Nicolson in the Roman obedience lived on the duke of Gordon's estate in Banff, seminaries subsequently being opened at Loch Morar in 1714 and Scalan in Glenlivet, again on Gordon lands, in 1717. Anne's royal proclamation against popery in 1704 was most successfully evaded in Buchan, Deeside and Strathbogie, and one must therefore postulate a close association between Episcopal and Catholic interests in the service of mutual protection. Indeed, 'Bourignonism' spread through both groups: Bishop Nicolson warned against its spread, while he in turn, like his episcopal colleagues, was involved in the Jacobite plots of the first decade of the eighteenth century.7 The Catholic seminary in Glenlivet has been described as being as cut off as the hermits of Egypt in the fourth century AD; and this is only one example of the vocabulary of periphery which indicates just how separate from the world of Louis XIV's France were the Jacobites of Scotland. The move to Versailles, which Roy Porter has categorised as a move away from folk culture by the French king, was the antithesis of the intense convergence between noble and peasant, gentle and simple, bishop and layman, in the outlawed periphery of Jacobite Scotland.8 Episcopacy itself became, in folk-song, a kind of moral exemplar of a nemesis not only theological, but 7

Bruce Lenman, The Scottish Episcopal Clergy and the Ideology of Jacobitism', in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 44-45; Peter F. Anson, Underground Catholicism in Scotland, 1622-1878 (Montrose, 1970), pp. 95, 102, 107, 108-10, 111. 8 Roy Porter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 1988), p. 276.

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personal, as in 'The Last Speech and Dying Words of the Auld KirkofTurriff: Gin ye for parties preach and pray Or greedy seek owre muckle pey Turn careless o' your family Or proud and saucy Ye'll aiblins share the fate some day OTiscopacy.9

So great a degree of personal fate was bound up among the loyal in the fate of the institutions they served, that a crucial and democratising social change sometimes took place, one perhaps not altogether recognised in the centralist machinations of Saint-Germain. Just as the privations, enforced asceticism and social pressures operating on the Catholic community in early eighteenth-century Scotland in the long term compromised the level of support the Stuart administration imagined they possessed in such quarters, so the social convergence of classes and interests in the wider Jacobite community created attitudes which their leadership did not respond to, at least in the earlier years of the century. Crucial to this social convergence was the willingness of the officer-class and gentry to unite in pursuit of what EJ. Hobsbawm has identified (though never in this context) as the 'social bandit' ethos (comparable events were occurring in Ireland too, among the Rapparees and later the Whiteboys). Hobsbawm conceives the social bandit as an outsider and 'revolutionary traditionalist', such as 'The bandits of the kingdom of Naples . . . who rose against the Jacobins', or, indeed, Robin Hood. The social bandit is a victim of injustice; rights wrongs; takes from the rich to give to the poor; never abandons his community, and dies only through treason.10 9

The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, ii, ed. Patrick Shuldham-Shaw and Emily B. Lyle (Aberdeen, 1983), p. 589. 10 Hobsbawm, Bandits pp. 21-22.

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Such figures are frequently the subjects of oral-formulaic stories and ballads among ordinary people. But in Scotland (as to a lesser extent England) something remarkable happened in the eighteenth century. Long before the ballad-collecting era of post-Jacobite times, the folk hero became the vehicle for the political protest of high culture. Songs on the execution of the social bandit Macpherson in 1700 become the highly-polished 'Macpherson's Rant', with its account of a Highland hero betrayed in the heart of Jacobite country: The reprieve was comin o'er the brig o Banff To set Macpherson free; But they put the clock a quarter afore And they hanged him on the tree. The vernacular revival itself indeed, spearheaded in the 1720s by Allan Ramsay and others, was in large part an attempt to give to overtly Scottish high culture in the British state a new language, that of the folk. Nor was this a literary device merely: it reflected a cross-class identification of political interests. 'Court, country and city/ Against a banditti' was how the centre viewed the periphery's Jacobite threat in the eighteenth century, irrespective of whether the 'banditti' were the poet Colonel John Roy Stewart or the meanest ageing labourer in the fighting tail of Glengarry. London was as ready as Scottish Jacobite ideology to confuse lowland and highland, rich and poor: the one in order to demean the social alliance of Jacobite banditti, just as the other sought to emphasise its simple patriotism.11 The 'Highland laddie' icon could be perverted by the crude Hanoverian humour of such prints as 'Sawney in the Boghouse', but its original purveyors used it as a vision which united the sexual virility of hardy but honourable poverty with 11

Cf. Tom Crawford's discussion of 'Macpherson's Rant' in Society and the Lyric (Edinburgh, 1979); Murray G.H. Pittock, The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity 1638 to the Present (London, 1991), ch. 2; David Daiches, The Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 18.

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the spiritual renewal of the Stuart king. The highlander was classless, since each was a 'gentleman': he could thus well stand for that cross-class group in both highlands and lowlands who rejected the 'parcel o rogues' who had, for 'English gold' and the establishment structures of the nascent British state, 'bought and sold' their country. In an example of the folk-high art collocation in reverse, 'BELHAYEN'S Vision', issued in broadsheet form, and based on a parliamentary speech (from a politician having live links with Saint-Germain, incidentally), was absorbed among the multitude opposed to Union and in all probability regurgitated in their own lyric interpretations of that event: While all the world to this day, Since Nimrod did a sceptre sway, Ensigns for sovereign power display, Shall it be told, We, for a little shining clay, A kingdom sold.

Hereafter the corruptness of commerce and the disinterestedness of true patriotism becomes, in its absolute and poeticised way, as much the Jacobite vision of Scottish folk-culture as it was to be that of certain strands in English Toryism.12 In that confluence of interests which occurred when the whole of society (not least its religion) was under threat, we can see the tendencies of ideology towards wish-fulfilment. I have no doubt that there was a more or less coherent Jacobite ideology in and about Scotland, and a more flexible Jacobite critique, which could be adhered to by proto-republicans like 12

James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ii (Oxford, 1986), p. 643; William Donaldson, The Jacobite Song (Aberdeen, 1988), 9ff; 'Bonny Highland Laddie: The Making of a Myth', Scottish Literary Journal, 3 (1976), pp. 30-50; LordBelhaven's Speech in Parliament, the Second Day of November 1706 . . . To which is subjoined, Belhavens Vision. A Poem (Edinburgh, 1766), p. 35; Sir Charles Petrie, The Jacobite Movement: The First Phase, 1688-1716 (London, 1948), p. 119.

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the earl marischal or nostalgic go-getters like James Macpherson (the literary, and not the social, bandit); but the language these spoke in was too vague, and too absolute, to accomplish the ends it expressed. It was around 1745 that Charles Edward's sensitivity brought image and reality as closely together as they were ever to be, in his self-portrayals as highlander and noble Roman; but at earlier, and potentially more fruitful, periods, a gulf existed which was never crossed in time.13 Uniting to defend nationalist ends emblemised in the person of an ideal king, Jacobite society in Scotland challenged the legitimacy of the British state in a lasting manner, but one divorced, like poetry, from realisable politics: Parnell came down the road, he said to a cheering man, Ireland shall get her freedom, and you still break stone.14

So in Scotland support for a Stuart restoration was powerful among those least capable of achieving it: the 195 Jacobites who joined the army in 1745 in Banff; the 110 from Oldmeldrum; the 183 from Elgin; the 335 from Montrose; the 490 from the Dundee area; the seventy from Brechin; and the 400 from Forfarshire. The 70 per cent recruitment returns from such Episcopal areas spoke less for the sophisticated manipulation of Jacobite agents, or the mainly highland privilege of forcing out (only 9 per cent of the above recruits even claimed this had happened to them), than it did for the vision of a lost Scotland conflated with the dynasty of its putative saviour. The roots of sentimental Jacobitism lie not in the works of Burns or Sir Walter Scott, but in Scottish high culture's adoption of folk motifs in eighteenth-century Jacobite propaganda. Even today,

13

Paul Monod, Tor the King to Enjoy His Own Again' (unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 1985), pp. 155ff. 14 W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poem (London, 1950), p. 359.

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popular culture's vision of the 'Fifteen' or the Torty-Five' as a predominantly highland affair, may be a response to the icon of Highlander as patriot constructed in a century when so many ordinary Scots, from Lowland areas, marched under its banner, led by a tartan prince, who for that one year conflated continental power politics and the typologies of his Scottish periphery as neither his father nor grandfather had done before him. The two Jacobitisms were illusorily, momentarily, one.15

15

For these and other recruitment figures, see Jean G. McCann, The Organisation of the Jacobite Army, 1745-46' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 75-77, 96-98 and passim.

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9 The Jacobite Press and English Censorship, 1689-95 Paul Monod

The exiled Stuart court kept a printing press at Saint-Germainen-Laye, to run off declarations, manifestoes, protests. SaintGermain, however, was never the capital of Jacobite propaganda. Almost all of the polemical literature of early Jacobitism appeared in the city of James IFs frustrated dreams, London. This suited the aggressively political purposes of Jacobite publicists, who actively sought to persuade parliament and the English people that a Stuart restoration was desirable as well as just. The Jacobite press posed a serious challenge to the Williamite regime, and elicited a sharply repressive response throughout the 1690s. This does not easily fit in with the idea that the liberty of the English press was increasing, a view epitomised in Macaulay's History of England. The Printing or Licensing Act, the mainstay of English censorhip, was almost allowed to lapse by parliament in 1693 and was not renewed in 1695. The Stationer's Company lost the privilege of inspecting works in advance of publication; from then on, censorship was restricted to material that had already appeared in print. Macaulay praised the effects of this reform as a 'great revolution', which had struck down at one blow the arbitrary power of the

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government over the printed word.1 Even Macaulay was obliged to notice, however, that when the House of Commons presented to the Lords its objections to licensing, 4[o]n the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society, not a word [was] said'.2 Nobody echoed the eloquence of John Milton's Areopagitica, the most celebrated argument for freedom of the press; few seemed to have read it. In fact, aside from a small number of radicals, the parliamentarians of 1695 were averse to conceding a broad liberty to the press. They had not renounced censorship; they had only sacrificed the Stationers' monopoly over it.3 Ample restraints continued to exist in common as well as statute law, and the limits of tolerance remained firm. Everything that menaced the 'happy constitution' was excluded: attacks on Protestantism, on monarchy, on King William's right to the throne, continued to be anathematised. Is it then necessary to reverse Macaulay's judgement on the English press? Should an outdated conception of growing liberty be replaced by the idea of a changing but ever-restrictive control over printing and publishing? Did the expiration of the Licensing Act mark a new stage of cultural hegemony rather than an era of greater freedom? We should hesitate before committing ourselves to such Foucaultian interpretations, 1

Lord Macaulay, History of England, ed. Lady Trevelyan (4 vols, London, 1966), iv, p. 171. The best recent account of these events is Raymond Astbury, The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its Lapse in 1695', The Library, 5th series, 33 (1978), pp. 296-322. For their assistance in preparing this paper, I would like to thank Jan Albers, Paula Schwartz, Eveline Cruickshanks, the Middlebury College Faculty Development Fund, and the participants in the Stuart Colloquium at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. 2 Macaulay, History of England, iv, p. 125. 3 See Frederick Seaton Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England, 1476-1776 (Urbana, IL, 1952, 1965), esp. chs 12-14; R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in the Reign of William III', Historical Journal, 18 (1974), pp. 691-704; John Downie, Tolitics and the English Press', in Robert P. Macubbin and Martha Hamilton-Phillips, eds, The Age of William III and Mary II: Power, Politics, and Patronage, 1688-1702 (Williamsburg, VA, 1989), pp. 340-46.

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which would retain for the idea of control a significance almost as absolute and inevitable as that which Macaulay claimed for liberty.4 The Glorious Revolution and its aftermath did not simply bring about the exchange of one sort of domination for another. Rather, it produced considerable disagreement and confusion about what sort of censorship might be necessary. The supporters of the Revolution did not line up methodically behind a single banner of cultural control; their ranks were sorely divided by religious, political and personal disagreements. It was possible for outsiders - radicals, republicans, Jacobites - to infiltrate the gaps in the ragged Williamite phalanx, and even bring about drastic changes in its marching pattern. The Jacobite press offers a unique angle of approach to the issue of censorship. It played a vital role in politics under William and Mary as the chief demon to be exorcised by government repression; but it was an elusive adversary. It did not restrict itself to justifying Stuart monarchy; on the contrary, it quickly appropriated the language of liberty' and resistance to tyranny that was common to all opposition groups. Although it remained beyond the official limits of tolerance, Jacobitism exercised a clandestine influence in the corridors of Parliament. Successive governments publicly reviled but could neither suppress nor ignore it. Through devious and often surprising channels, Jacobite publicists contributed to political changes at Saint-Germain as well as Westminster, and in the end they could claim a part in the unspectacular death of the Licensing Act itself. The government's outward stance towards Jacobitism was unflaggingly hostile. The severity of official censorship, however, varied according to political factors, which must be traced chronologically. The Whigs who dominated both the Convention Parliament and the government of London in the initial 4

A theoretical basis for the critique of 'liberty' can be found in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977).

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year of the new regime sought to vilify the Jacobites as 'papists' bent on enslaving the English people.5 The Whigs could also claim, with some justification, that the suppression of the Jacobite voice had popular approval. The press of James IFs royal printer, Henry Hills, a Catholic convert, had been attacked four times and finally demolished in November and December 1688 by angry crowds determined to wipe out the nurseries of popery.6 The House of Commons was therefore following the lead of 'the people' when, in April 1689, it ordered a Jacobite broadsheet, A Short History of the Convention, to be burned publicly in the capital by the common hangman. This was the first Jacobite libel suppressed by the government. Its author remained unknown; it was suspected that he was 'some papist'. In fact, this unlikely Catholic had written that 'King James restored by the Protestants, must pursue Protestant Measures'.7 From the first, the Jacobites sought to address the same Protestant nation that had driven out King James; but their message was easily distorted or silenced by their foes. The Whigs greeted A Short History with a public act of purgation, which cleansed the body politic of seditious impurity by fire; but it proved to be more a symbolic ritual than an actual deterrent. The Jacobites soon threw further accusations of moral putrefaction at the new regime, and were countered with greater severity. In November, Ralph Gray, chaplain to the late bishop of Chester, was pilloried twice and heavily fined for 'making and publishing a most villainous libell upon the king and queen and their government, entituled, The Coronation Ballad'. It was indeed a scurrilous piece, in which King 5

For the political situation, see Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (Manchester, 1977), chs 1-3; for London, see Gary de Krey, A Fractured Society: The Politics of London in the First Age of Party, 1688-1715 (Oxford, 1985), chs 1-2. 6 Tim Harris, 'London Crowds and the Revolution of 1688', in Eveline Cruickshanks, ed., By Force or By Default1? The Revolution of 1688-9 (Edinburgh, 1989), p. 55. 7 Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (6 vols, Oxford, 1857), i, p. 527. A copy of the paper is

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William was represented as having a bowel movement in the middle of the anointing ceremony: 'Therefore mark it well ye rabble rout,/At crowning the Orange the juice flew out./ Them that like not the smell, let them hold their snout/ The author of these pungent lines was, once again, 'thought really to be a papist', but his satirical verses were actually intended to instruct a Protestant audience 'To bring back great James as loyalty taught us'.8 In fact, Ralph Gray was harshly treated precisely because he was an Anglican minister. The Whigs were eager to punish high churchmen who became involved with the Jacobite press. In part, this was a way of settling old scores from the Exclusion Crisis, when high church publicists had exulted in the suppression of their Whig opponents. A few of these antiExclusionist Tories ended up in the Jacobite camp. A government warrant was issued in April 1689 for the arrest of Mary Thompson, a printer of Jacobite works; she was apparently the widow of Nathaniel Thompson, a leading Tory news-writer of the early 1680s.9 Female publicists, like clergymen, were particular targets for Whig prosecutions in the year after the Revolution, no doubt because they were easily stigmatised for undermining the proper subservience of their sex. Weak-minded women were also thought to be especially susceptible to 'papist' wiles. Elianor James, for example, was committed to Newgate in December 1689 for writing and dispersing 'scandalous and reflecting papers' calling for the restoration of James II. Nicknamed 'the she-politician', James was a staunch Anglican, the author of contained in a volume of Jacobite tracts in the British Library, shelf-mark 1484.g.5. 8 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i, p. 606; George de F. Lord, gen. ed., Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714, v, 1688-1697, ed. William J. Cameron, pp. 39-45. Thomas Cartwright, the late bishop of Chester, had been one of James II's closest Anglican collaborators. 9 William John Hardy, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of William and Mary (13 vols, London, 1895-1924), i, p. 75; Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 6.

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numerous devotional pamphlets, and the wife of an eminent publisher of religious works. Her popular high church tracts were said to have 'edified the Tripe-Women and Convinced the Porters'. James's pious reputation may have helped in her trial for seditious libel, as she was only fined 13s. 4d.10 The leniency shown towards Elianor James did not indicate popular sympathy for her principles. Jacobitism still excited in most English hearts the fear of 'popery'. The Whig administration of 1689-90 played to this sentiment by denouncing every Jacobite author, publisher or printer as an open or disguised Roman Catholic. Perhaps they overstated their antiJacobite message in the elections of February-March 1690, when the Tory party gained a majority in the House of Commons. King William had already begun to turn away from the Whigs and towards the high churchmen. Their ambivalent feelings towards the exiled king, however, made Tories less likely to pursue a vigorous repression of the Jacobite press. The Whigs who remained in government constantly tried to exploit this laxity in order to embarrass their opponents. The resulting tension and confusion were reflected in the curious case of Richard Stafford, a young law student who had converted to Roman Catholicism. He was indicted at Middlesex sessions in January 1690 for writing a Jacobite condemnation of the Convention, but was freed on bail. In April, a raging debate over the legality of the Convention's acts took place in parliament. Stafford chose this moment to appear at the door of the House of Commons itself, in order to distribute tracts which expressed a view of the Convention very similar to that of the Tory leaders. No doubt he reckoned that the Tory majority in the Commons would be sympathetic to his cause. Instead, unable to ignore him, the legislators ordered him to be committed by the sergeant of arms. The Whigs tried to use 10

Luttrell, Brief Relation, i, p. 617; Lois G. Schwoerer, 'Women and the Glorious Revolution', Albion, 18 (1986), pp. 201-2, 206-8. A fine portrait of James can be found in the National Portrait Gallery Collection displayed at Gawthorpe Hall in Lancashire.

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Stafford in order to chastise the Tories, by associating his writings with the Tory position on the Revolution. Meanwhile, the printers of Stafford's works were pursued by Whig justices in London. His relatives, however, pleaded that he was insane, and he was removed to Bedlam, a solution that must have relieved the Tories.11 From 1690 until 1693, the London courts attempted to deal with Jacobite libels without much guidance from the Torydominated government. The altered political climate may have made judges less likely to inflict stiff penalties. In 1691, for example, the Catholic bookseller William Canning, a notorious distributor of seditious broadsheets and songs, was twice arrested, but was lightly punished, and soon re-established his business.12 On the other hand, when there was clear direction from Whig politicians, Jacobite publicists could be roughly handled. The Anglican cleric John Lowthrop, for instance, was indicted in September 1690 for having written a seditious pamphlet; the warrant against him was made out by the Whig attorney-general, Sir George Treby. The court levied a huge fine of £400 on Lowthorp, imprisoned him and recommended that he be deprived of ecclesiastical ordination.13 Treby's part in the case doubtless influenced this heavy penalty. Lowthorpe, however, was exceptionally unlucky. Few other clerical publicists for the Stuart cause suffered for their efforts. The Rev. Thomas Browne managed to retain his Cambridge fellowship despite his authorship of two treatises defending 11

Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, p. 27; Greater London Record Office, MJ/SR 1752A, indt. R. Stafford; MJ/SR 1760, indt. 112; MJ/SR 1767, indt. 69; [Edward Stephens], An Apology for Mr R. Stafford, with an Admonition to him and Such Other Honest Mistaken People (London,"1690); Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics, pp. 54-55. Strangely enough, Stafford is also noticed in the Dictionary of National Biography. 12 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, pp. 308, 626. See also Joseph Gillow, A Literary and Biographical History, or Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (6 vols, New York and London, 1885), i, pp. 395-96. 13 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, pp. 73, 100. The pamphlet was A Letter to the Bishop ofSarum (London, 1690).

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James IFs right to the throne.14 Most of those who were presented to the London courts for Jacobite libels in this period were individuals of little social standing, including characters from the fringes of the criminal underworld. Two women of Covent Garden, for example, were sent to Newgate in 1692 after the discovery in their lodgings of counterfeit coins and Jacobite declarations.15 For more elevated offenders, and particularly for clerical writers, high church ties may have softened the effects of repression. This certainly protected the most important group of Jacobite writers in the early 1690s, the Nonjurors. About 500 ministers of the Church of England refused to swear oaths to the new sovereigns, and were consequently turned out of their benefices. The Nonjurors produced a prodigious number of pamphlets to justify themselves, by upholding the divine, historic and natural right of the Stuarts.16 The government of 1690-93 made almost no effort to stem this tide of treasonable libels. After all, the Nonjurors included seven bishops and an archbishop of Canterbury; not surprisingly, they enjoyed the admiration, and sometimes the veiled support, of many Tories. At least the venerated chiefs of the Nonjuring faction, like John Kettlewell or Thomas Ken, restrained their Jacobite writings to theoretical treatises; but even those who directly assaulted the regime, like the fulminous George Hickes, ex-dean of Worcester, were treated lightly by the government. When Joseph Hindmarsh, a lay Nonjuror who published many works by 14

Mark Goldie, The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument: An Essay and an Annotated Bibliography of Pamphlets on the Allegiance Controversy', Bulletin of Research in the Humanities (1980), pp. 496, 533. 15 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, p. 610; Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 112-13. 16 The best guides to this phase of Nonjuring literature are found in Thomas Lathbury, A History of the Nonjurors: Their Controversies and Writings (London, 1845); Gerald M. Straka, Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1962); J.C. Findon, 'The Nonjurors and the Church of England, 1689-1716' (unpublished D. Phil, dissertation, Oxford University, 1978); Goldie, 'Revolution of 1689', pp. 473-564.

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Hickes and others, was tried at the Old Bailey in 1691, he was sentenced only to pay a small fine.17 Nonjuring connections with Toryism made attempts at control of the press very difficult in the early 1690s. Treasonable affiliations, however, reached into both parties, and the Whigs may not have been guiltless of collusion with the Jacobite press. Two of the most important Jacobite publicists were discontented Whigs with ties to radical politics. The frenetic printer Robert Ferguson was the more prolific of the pair. A Presbyterian preacher under Cromwell's Protectorate, a fanatical Whig during the Exclusion Crisis, he had accompanied the expedition of the prince of Orange to England in 1688. After the Revolution, Ferguson developed a grudge against the new king on account of some slight to his ambitions; he angrily turned his back on a regime which he now considered the most despotic of tyrannies.18 Ferguson never shrank from recommending direct action to the Jacobites: It was no time unlawful', he exhorted in 1695, 'to fly to force for rescuing our selves from the Power of an Usurper'.19 This was the type of rhetoric that often brought on an official prosecution, but Ferguson somehow escaped the rigours of the law. He may have been protected by his erstwhile friends in the Whig party; when he was put on trial for treason in 1690, he was defended by a leading Whig Exclusionist, Sir Francis Winnington.20 Ferguson did not face a jury again until 1704. Charlwood Lawton, the other chief propagandist for the 'Whiggish'Jacobites, was less audacious but equally fortunate as 17

Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, pp. 187, 214. For his biography, see James Ferguson, Robert Ferguson the Plotter (Edinburgh, 1887). For Whiggish Jacobites, see Mark Goldie, The Roots of True Whiggism, 1689-94', History of Political Thought, 1 (1980), pp. 228-29; Paul Monod, 'Jacobitism and Country Principles in the Reign of William III', Historical Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 297-301. 19 [Robert Ferguson], Whether the Parliament be not in Law Dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange1? ([London], 1695), p. 56. S.W. Singer, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and of his Brother, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester (2 vols, London, 1828), ii, p. 319. 18

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Ferguson. A lawyer, a friend and later political agent of the Quaker William Penn, Lawton was devoted above all to religious liberty, and he saw James II as its saviour. He was probably the real author of A Short History of the Convention and of several other broadsheets that appeared from 1689 to 1693. The nation could only be saved from tyranny, Lawton believed, by 'Men of a large size, Latitudinarian Politicians; Men that are above Forms, both in Religion and Government; that are for the Ends not the Names of things; Men that can be content with Hereditary Monarchy, so that the Common Good be pursu'd'.21 For Lawton, the restriction of arbitrary power was impossible without the restoration of constitutional propriety: 'I beseech the God of Order, that He will produce it out of our Confusions; That the King may have what is due to Him, and that we may have what is as much due to us\ he wrote in a pamphlet of 1693.22 And what was due to the people? Freedom of conscience, a new and more effective 'Bill of Rights', a law for triennial elections - all were enthusiastically upheld by Lawton. He was never compelled to defend these positions in court. Although implicated in the Preston Plot of 1690, after being admitted to bail at King's Bench he never came to trial.23 Was he sheltered from harm by the Whig friends whom he believed to be sympathetic to a Stuart restoration?24 The publications of Ferguson and Lawton, like those of the Nonjurors, demonstrated that government control of the press was deteriorating long before the expiration of the Licensing Act. The Jacobite press enjoyed a certain freedom of expression on account of an unstable political situation; amidst the 21

[Charlwood Lawton], Some Remarks upon our Affairs (n.p., n.d.), p. 2. This piece is contained in BL, 1481.g.5. In identifying Lawton's authorship of anonymous works, I owe much to Paul Hopkins. 22 [Charlwood Lawton], A French Conquest neither Desirable nor Practicable (London, 1693), p. 25. 23 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii, p. 124. 24 See his letter in James Macpherson, ed., Original Papers: Containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover (2 vols, London, 1776), i, p. 397.

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alarums of party warfare, forbidden opinions could stake out their own minor territories, and even find protectors. To be sure, limited toleration was available only for Protestants Catholics need not apply. This did not, however, pose as serious a problem for the Jacobites as might be imagined. Few Catholics had been involved in printing or publishing before the Revolution, and the Jacobite press was always dominated by Protestants. The young William Canning, who kept a bookshop in the Inner Temple, was the only important Catholic propagandist among the Jacobites. His publications were mainly written by Protestants; they included the poem Tarquin and Tullia by Arthur Mainwaring, a student in the Inner Temple. Canning distributed his wares through a lawyer whose chambers were adjacent to the shop, through a ribbon weaver in Hoxton, and through coffee-houses at Temple Bar, the Royal Exchange and Princes Street. These were not known as Catholic haunts, and it seems likely that his agents as well as most of his customers were Protestants.25 The predominantly Protestant character of the Jacobite press helped its survival in the early 1690s, but it also presented a challenge to the exiled king's court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Jacobite propaganda was never directed from the court; from the start, the English adherents of James II took the initiative themselves. In fact, King James's attitude towards the press had always been ambivalent. Early in his reign, he had not only revived the Licensing Act, which had temporarily expired in 1679; he also made proclamations against unlicensed books and the spreading of 'false news'.26 After 1687, however, his opinions changed suddenly, as he allied with Whigs and Nonconformists in an attempt to promote his Edicts of Toleration. He even employed the Whig journalist Henry Care, 25

Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Allan George Finch (5 vols, London, HMSO, 1913- ), iii, pp. 364-65; Poems on Affairs of State, v, pp. 46-54. 26 Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 299-300.

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once an ardent Exclusionist, to publish a pro-government newspaper.27 After the Revolution, James remained convinced that Whigs were more adept at propaganda than Tories. In 1691 he instructed Robert Ferguson to set up a printing press 'which Wee think fitt to maintaine in the Country for sending papers through the Kingdome'.28 At Saint-Germain in 1692, the Catholic poet Thomas Sheridan was horrified when the king commanded him to write a propaganda treatise based on the 'Whiggish' Jacobite pamphlet Great Britain's Just Complaint, by the Scottish Presbyterian Sir James Montgomery.29 A little earlier, Charlwood Lawton had entered into correspondence with the Earl of Melfort, the Jacobite secretary of state. Melfort expressed indifference about the propaganda circulating in England - 'As for wreatings at ye time of ye day yr are many to be suffered can not be approved, And as such it maters not much to us what is written or printed provided it tend to ye intangling ye pr[esen]t usurpation'.30 Lawton, however, eventually persuaded him to lend private approval to 'Whiggish' tenets. The most immediate results were promises of money to cover both Lawton's and Ferguson's printing costs.31 A further consequence of Melfort's contacts with the 'Whiggish'Jacobites was the extraordinary declaration issued by King James in April 1693. The Nonjurors and Catholics were astonished to learn from this document that the exiled monarch had committed himself wholly to the 'Whiggish' programme. He promised, not only to reclaim the lost rights of his subjects, but to perfect them, through calling a free 27

Walker, 'Newspaper Press', p. 693; Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles //, pp. 120-22. Care is also noticed in DNB. 28 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Carte 181, fos 429-30. 29 HMC, Calendar of the Stuart Papers (7 vols, London, 1902-23), i, pp. 65-67; [Sir James Montgomery], Great Britain's Just Complaint for Her Late Measures, Present Sufferings, and the Future Miseries She is Exposed To ([London], 1692). 30 BL, MS Add. 37,661, p. 48. 31 Ibid., pp. 19, 53-55, 356.

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parliament to decide on liberty of conscience and the dispensing power.32 The seriousness of James's statements may be doubted - he quickly renounced them under pressure from his Tory supporters — but it is clear that he was seeking to establish a new image for himself as a promoter of liberty. He could achieve this only through a concerted publicity campaign, orchestrated by his English supporters. The English government, however, had begun to pursue repression with greater resolve, as the Tories slipped from power. By the winter of 1692-93, the administration was in disarray on several fronts, and was losing its command over the House of Commons, where radical Whigs and disgruntled Tories had come together in a 'Country' opposition. In January, the Commons voted to burn a pamphlet, King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, which upheld the Revolution as a just war of conquest. This doctrine, accepted by many Tory ministers, was abhorred by Whigs. Edmund Bohun, the Tory licenser of the press, was removed from his post for sanctioning the publication of this work. One month later, the Licensing Act itself was reluctantly renewed, and for one year only, by legislators who feared it would become a weapon against 'Country' critics.33 William III responded to these developments by turning back towards the Whigs, a move accompanied by a harsher government attitude towards Jacobitism. When a new inspector of printing presses was appointed in March, he was given explicit instructions to suppress Jacobite libels. A Nonjuring printer was arrested soon after while visiting a French spy in Newgate, which aroused Whig fears of a new 32

His Majesties Most Gracious Declaration to all his Loving Subjects. St Germains en Laye, April 17 S.N. 1693 ([London], 1693). The uproar caused by this declaration is described in J.S. Clarke, ed., The Life of James the Second, King of England, &c. Collected out of memoirs Writ of His Own Hand (2 vols, London, 1816), ii, pp. 498-514. 33 Mark Goldie, 'Edmund Bohun and Jus Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 1689-1693', Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 569-86; Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics, pp. 108-9, 113-14.

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conspiracy.34 It was in this alarmist atmosphere that King James's April declaration appeared. William Canning was soon pilloried for printing it, and 700 copies were confiscated at a press in Westminster.35 Nobody of any consequence was prosecuted in connection with the declaration, perhaps because it was the work of 'Whiggish' Jacobites. The Whig ministers, however, were already contemplating a more sanguinary example. Judicial construction of the Treason Act of 25 Edward III allowed the writing, printing or publication of a seditious libel to be interpreted as high treason. In 1664, John Twyn had been hanged, drawn and quartered in London for printing a quasirepublican tract.36 This horrendous precedent was revived early in 1693 by the predominantly Whig London justices in order to terrorise the Jacobites and highlight the Tory government's mildness. The first intended victim was an obscure female printer, Mrs Anne Merryweather, who was judged guilty of high treason and condemned to death at the Old Bailey in January 1693 for printing Jacobite pamphlets. Women convicted of such a crime were burned at the stake. Happily for her, Mrs Merryweather agreed at the last moment to reveal her accomplices and received a royal pardon.37 The Whigs soon found a more suitable scapegoat. William Anderton was the chief printer and publisher of Jacobite pamphlets in London. A Yorkshireman, like several of the leading Nonjuring ministers, Anderton was the son of a Wakefield clothier. He was well-educated and had been apprenticed to Miles Fletcher, corrector of the press under James II. After 1688, Anderton operated out of a carpenter's house in St James's Street, Westminster, a thoroughfare already known for its fashionable shops and coffee-houses. There he printed at least seven major Jacobite pamphlets, 34 35 36 37

CSPD, W fcf M, iv, p. 85; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii, pp. 66, 69, 70. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii, pp. 104, 109, 138, 140. Siebert, Freedom of the Press, pp. 265-67. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii, pp. 16, 19, 21, 30, 42.

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including several by the Nonjuring clerics George Hickes and Samuel Grascome. He served the 'Whiggish' Jacobites as well as the Nonjurors. When the messengers broke into his home in May 1693, they found copies of Grascome's Remarks on the Present Confederacy and Charlwood Lawton's A French Conquest neither Desirable nor Practicable. It is likely that he had also published Lawton's The Jacobite Principles Vindicated, and he may have been responsible for Sir James Montgomery's Great Britain's Just Complaint. Anderton's trial appears to have been stage-managed by the Whigs, no doubt in order to embarrass the Tory ministers who had done so little to hinder him. Arraigned at the Old Bailey, he was tried by the Whig Lord Chief Justice, Sir George Treby. Anderton's work for Charlwood Lawton and other 'Whiggish' authors was not mentioned; he was accused only of printing Remarks on the Present Confederacy, which attacked the war policy supported by King William and by most Whigs. In making his plea, however, Anderton drew attention to his 'Whiggish' connections by favourably quoting Algernon Sidney. He did not succeed in moving Treby, who sentenced him to death. On 16 June 1693, he was brought to the scaffold at Tyburn. In his dying speech, which may have been written by Grascome, Anderton again raised the issue of 'Whiggish' principles. The Revolution, he maintained, was justified only by the danger that menaced liberty and property - 'And now I pray consider where is this Liberty and Property? where the Rights and Privileges of the Subject? Nay, where the very Laws themselves?' After delivering these exhortations, Anderton was hanged, but by the order of Queen Mary, his body was not quartered.38 This may reflect some doubt about the propriety 38

The previous two paragraphs are based on Macaulay, History of England, iv, pp. 30-33; T.B. Howell, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials (33 vols, London, 1816-26), xii, cols 1,246-78; Goldie, 'Revolution of 1689', p. 493; [Samuel Grascome], An Appeal of Murther from Certain Unjust Judges ([London], 1693), the quote from his dying speech appears at p. 37; An Account of the Conversation Behaviour and Execution of William Anderton, Printer (London, 1693); 'Mr Anderton's Plea at the Old Baily', in A Choice Collection of Papers Relating to State continued

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of applying the Treason Act to a printer. Few, however, questioned at this time that the body politic had a right to preserve its unity by pulling apart an offensive human body. Anderton's execution was stage-managed by the Whigs in order to hasten the collapse of the Tory administration. It serves as a reminder that repression of the press was more a political weapon than the result of an ideological commitment to censorship. The Whigs were not particularly bloodthirsty, even in 1693, and they were willing to be lenient towards offenders who co-operated with them, like the printers William Newbolt and Edward Butler. They were paid by Jacobite agents to print 10,000 copies of King James's April declaration. Captured in June and questioned by the newly-appointed Whig secretary of state, Sir John Trenchard, they were prosecuted for high treason. After escaping from Newgate, the two printers were recaptured on a ship bound for Ostend, tried, and condemned to death; but they finally saved themselves, as had Anne Merryweather, by turning informers.39 Perhaps because they knew how selective it was, the threat of prosecution for high treason had little restraining effect on Jacobite publicists. The Nonjurors mourned Anderton as a martyr, but were not silenced by his fate, while Robert Ferguson continued to fire off his ferocious salvoes at the detested Williamite regime. Anderton's friend Charlwood Lawton prepared a more calculated and devastating revenge. In the fall of 1693, he published a broadsheet which became notorious as the 'Hush-money Paper', in which he accused several prominent Whig Members of the House of Commons of having taken bribes from the ministry. Lawton may have prepared it in concert with the 'Country' leader Robert

continued Affairs; During the Late Revolution (2 vols, London, 1703), i, pp. 228-32; and Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii, pp. 90, 118. 39 Luttrell Brief Relation, iii, pp. 138,164, 180-81,192; Howell, ed, State Trials, xv, cols 1,404-6.

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Harley.40 It caused a sensation, and was quickly taken up by the 'Country' opposition, who demanded answers to its allegations. It helped to initiate the 'Country' onslaught against the Whig administration in 1694-96. The government's attempts to suppress the 'Hush-Money Paper' further vilified the licensing system in the eyes of the opposition. When the Licensing Act came up for renewal again in February 1695, a Commons committee dominated by the 'Country' refused to extend it. As they also failed to come up with an alternative, the central pillar in the existing system of press control collapsed.41 The leading figure on the Commons committee was John Locke's friend Edward Clarke. An ardent Whig and no Jacobite, Clarke had nevertheless collaborated with James II in 1687-88. He had approached James through the Quaker William Penn, which makes it feasible that he also knew Penn's friend Charlwood Lawton. Clarke's papers contain copies of materials relating to the Preston Plot of 1690, in which Lawton and Penn were involved.42 Is it possible that the 'Whiggish' Jacobite Lawton somehow influenced the Lockean Edward Clarke's willingness to suspend licensing? It would provide a further strange twist to Lawton's extraordinary career. Censorship was not buried in 1695. Prosecutions for seditious libel continued; new forms of state control were proposed and implemented. Repression rose again with renewed ferocity after the Hanoverian Succession, and again a Jacobite printer,

40

[Charlwood Lawton], A Short State of our Condition, with Relation to the Present Parliament (London, 1693), repr. in William Cobbett, ed., Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England (36 vols, London, 1809), v, cols xcix-civ; J.A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 26-27. 41 Macaulay, History of England, iv, pp. 124-26; Astbury, 'Renewal of the Licensing Act', pp. 310-20. 42 Mark Goldie, John Locke's Circle and James IF, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), pp. 569, 576; Somerset Record Office, Sandford MSS, DD/SF 1699. I owe the latter reference to the kindness of Eveline Cruickshanks.

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John Matthews, was executed on a charge of high treason.43 Nevertheless, in a nation where the governing classes were divided by religion, politics and loyalty to the king, censorship was becoming increasingly difficult. Ideological control was no longer effective at the level of the educated elite, and political consciousness was extending itself rapidly among the popular classes. The government could do little more than harass booksellers and printers; even capital punishment was not enough to suppress Jacobite publicists. The security of a divided English regime, therefore, came to rest more on compromise than on control. Compromise demanded a measure of acceptance of criticism, and brought with it the benefits of a less censored press. The gain was admittedly limited; critics still had either to seek the protection of the great, or moderate the treasonable tone of their works. Yet greater tolerance of the press had become a necessary condition of party politics. If this tolerance was not the realisation of an ideal, neither was it an illusion created to mask cultural control. Were its results therefore less worthy of the name 'liberty'?

43

Howell, ed., State Trials, xv, cols 1,323-1,403; RJ. Goulden, 'Vox Populi, Vox Dei: Charles Delafaye's Paperchase', Book Collector, 28 (1979), pp. 368-90.

10 Toby Bourke, Ambassador of James III at the Court of Philip V, 1705-13 Micheline Kerney Walsh In 1705, at the court of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, an Irish man named Toby Bourke was appointed ambassador of James III to the court of Spain.1 His letters of credence are dated 16 April 1705.2 James III was then still a minor, consequently the appointment was a decision of the queen regent, Mary of Modena, and her advisers. What would they have known of this man? Twenty years earlier, like many of his compatriots, Toby Bourke had left Ireland to be educated in France. The only university in Ireland at that time had been established in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth of England and placed under the control of her government in Dublin. The English conquest of Ireland had not then been completely achieved and, by the establishment of a Protestant university, the queen hoped to spread the reformed religion among the Irish, the vast majority of whom were Catholics, and thus draw them away from the influence of her enemies in Rome and in Spain. 1

It should be noted that Toby Bourke signed 'Bourk', a spelling of the name which is no longer in use, Bourke and Burke being now the usual forms of the name. 2 Calendar of Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle (London, 1902), i, p. 200.

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However most Irish Catholics, not only those of Gaelic origin, but also the descendants of Anglo-Norman settlers, refused to conform to the new religion. Those who had the means to do so sent their sons abroad to be educated in universities of the Catholic countries of Europe. Bourke's parents chose to send him to France. In 1684, at the age of thirteen, Toby Bourke travelled to the university city of Bordeaux, where an Irish college had been established at the beginning of that century for the benefit of Irish students. In England, the following year of 1685 saw the death of Charles II and the accession to the throne of his brother, the Catholic James II. The Irish were encouraged to hope for a relaxation of the laws against Catholics; very soon however the English Revolution, the principal aim of which was to replace King James by the Protestant William of Orange, involved Ireland in a war which lasted three years and which ended with the treaty of Limerick in 1691. Under the terms of the treaty, transport to France was provided for those officers and men of James IPs Irish army who wished to follow the king's fortunes in that country, and many of them did. Meanwhile young Toby Bourke had remained at Bordeaux where he continued his studies, no doubt with much concern for the fate of his family, for his father, his uncles and both of his brothers had joined the Jacobite army in Ireland.3 In 1691, following the arrival of the Irish troops in France, Bourke left Bordeaux for Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It is most likely that he had friends at court; his family was of noble origin and was related to the earl of Clanricard; consequently he could have claimed kinship with Honora Bourke, sister of the earl and wife of General Patrick Sarsfield, earl of Lucan, and it may have been through her intermediary that he was presented 3

This information relating to Bourke's family and to his first years in France are to be found among the documents of his admission as knight of the Spanish military order of Santiago in 1702, Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid, Santiago, 1281.

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at the court of King James.4 Be that as it may, he enrolled as a volunteer in one of the Irish regiments and nothing more is heard of him until the end of the war in continental Europe and the peace treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The outcome of that war was disastrous for the Irish in France. Two main reasons had impelled them to embark for France, to the number of somje 20,000: first, the sombre prospect of a renewal of religious persecution which they feared would follow the return of another Protestant monarch to the throne of England, and also their desire to participate in the war which continued in France against William of Orange and his allies. They hoped that a French victory over the allies would see James II restored to the English throne and would enable them to return to their homes and their lands in Ireland, with generally improved conditions of life for Catholics. However, the end of the war and the treaty of Ryswick did not bring about the result for which the Irish in France had hoped, and William of Orange remained firmly established on the English throne as King William III. Moreover, the Irish regiments in France were included in the general reduction of the French army to peacetime proportions. Their thirteen regiments of infantry were reduced to eight, and their four cavalry regiments to one. More than 8,000 Irish soldiers and officers found themselves without employment. They could not return to Ireland where their lands and possessions had been confiscated and where most of them were outlawed for having taken up arms against King William. Some found employment in civilian life, but not without difficulty. A few others succeeded in joining French regiments. A letter written by the marquis de Thouy, major-general and colonel of a 4

In August 1702 James III signed a certificate stating that Toby Bourke was descended from the old and noble family of the Bourkes of Clanricard; Calendar of Stuart Papers, i, p. 176. Honora was a daughter of William Bourke, earl of Clanricard; she was just eighteen years of age in 1693 when her husband was mortally wounded on the battlefield of Neerwinden. In 1696 the young widow married the duke of Berwick, illegitimate son of James II and Arabella Churchill.

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regiment of infantry, has the following reference to the Irish and the reduction of the army which followed the treaty of Ryswick: I felt sorry for those poor Irish who did not know where to turn. I kept sixty of them because they had served me at the conquest of Savoy. I had the honour of writing about it to the late M. de Barbesieux, and I now have the honour of sending you his reply, by virtue of which I kept those sixty men, really out of pity because I had seen them serve well, and all the Irish officers who were garrisoned at Douay came to thank me on behalf of their nation, having seen that I dismissed some of other nations in order to keep them.5

It was then, in 1697, that Toby Bourke, finding himself without employment, returned to Saint-Germain and obtained from Queen Mary of Modena a letter of recommendation addressed to the princess of Carignano at Turin.6 In Italy, he was at first employed by the cardinal de Bouillon, then ambassador of France in Rome; later the cardinals of the Sacred College entrusted him with confidential missions to the dukes of Parma and of Modena. At Rome, also, Bourke became acquainted with the princess des Ursins who was to play an important role at the court of Spain and who was to be instrumental in his appointment as ambassador. In 1702 both of them were in Madrid; the princess as chief lady-in-waiting to the queen of Spain, Maria Luisa of Savoy, whose marriage with Philip V had just taken place, and Bourke with the entourage of the nuncio, Monsignor Zondadari. Bourke's friendship with the princess facilitated his access to 5

Letter of 5 December 1701 addressed to Chamillart, minister of war, Archives du Ministere de la Guerre, Vincennes, Al 1484. 6 Letter of 5 September 1697; Calendar of Stuart Papers, i, p. 126. The princess of Carignano, Angela Catherine of Este-Modena, had married in 1684 Emmanuel of Savoy, prince of Carignano, a remarkable man who was deaf from birth but had succeeded so well in surmounting this disability that he had acquired an extraordinary reputation.

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court circles and he soon became known to and esteemed by the most influential personages. He was a man of learning and talent who spoke with ease several European languages and who knew how to take advantage of opportunities, a valuable asset for an impoverished exile. It was his cousin, the famous Irish general, Count Daniel Mahony, who remarked bitterly: 'In order to be advanced, a campaign at Madrid is worth three against the enemy/7 The duke of Saint-Simon, who was ambassador of France in Madrid some years later, met Toby Bourke there and has several references to him in his memoirs, one of which is as follows: I was told he [Bourke] was a man who was devoted to France and who could enlighten me on many points. In fact he imparted much information to me, but also many fantasies. He was friendly with several distinguished persons; his country of origin and the Jacobite cause had linked him with the duke of Liria, Higgens, the duke of Ormond and several others, and he was also friendly with Sartine8; everyone knew well his character. He was well informed regarding many curious incidents within the palace and also regarding many matters in which he himself was involved, and others in which he had made it his business to become involved. He spoke well, but much, and one might say that he was obsessed with politics. He 7

Mahony to Chamillart, 17 February 1706, Archives du Ministere de la Guerre, Al 1976. 8 James Fitzjames, duke of Liria, was son of the duke of Berwick and of his wife, Honora Bourke; he took part in the expedition to Scotland in 1715 with his uncle, James III, consequently he was forced to leave the service of France and he settled in Spain. John Higgins, an Irish Jacobite, studied medicine at the university of Montpellier and spent some time as surgeon of one of the Irish regiments in France; he passed into Spain at the beginning of the War of Spanish Succession and in 1717 was appointed chief physician of the royal family by Philip V.James Butler, duke of Ormond, an Irish general who fought on the Williamite side in the war in Ireland; after the death of Queen Anne of England in 1714, suspected of conspiring with the Jacobites, he left England, joined James III at Avignon and spent some years in Spain. Antoine de Sartine, a French man in the service of Spain, where he was appointed general administrator of the navy in 1715; he was married to an Irish woman, Catherine White, daughter of the marquis of Albeville who had been secretary of state of James II and his ambassador at the Hague.

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always returned to that topic however far from it the conversation would drift. According to himself, he alone had knowledge of the interest and policies of the great and the lesser powers of Europe, and he spoke of them at length to his friends and acquaintances with the tone of authority of a minister in office. Nonetheless I derived much useful information from him, as well as much amusement. I must say, also, that I have never seen, or heard, anything bad about him. He was not mercenary and he always had the reputation of being an honourable man.9 In 1704, Bourke had an opportunity of returning to SaintGermain. The princess des Ursins had become extremely powerful in the government of Spain and her manipulations had drawn upon her the anger of Louis XIV, who ordered her to leave Madrid and return to Rome. From Versailles the king of France controlled much of what happened at the court of his grandson Philip V. The queen of Spain, much aggrieved at the departure of the princess, with whom she had become very friendly, decided to send Toby Bourke to Versailles to justify the conduct of her lady-in-waiting, to plead her case with Louis XIV, and also to solicit the support of her aunt, Queen Mary of Modena, at Saint-Germain. For her part, the princess des Ursins called into play the influence of her friends at the court of Versailles, not least among whom was the marquise de Maintenon, in the hope of obtaining the king's pardon. Toby Bourke reached Paris during the month of May 1704 and went directly to the palace at Saint-Germain to bring the messages from the queen of Spain to Queen Mary and to ask her advice.10 His delicate mission detained him at SaintGermain and at Versailles for several months. Finally, in November 1704, Louis XIV relented and in January of the following year the princess des Ursins was received with 9

Memoires de Saint-Simon, ed. A. de Boislisle (Paris, 1927), xxxix, pp. 304-5. See the letters of Torcy to the duke of Gramont, dated 15 June and 25 July 1704, Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Espagne, 141, nos 23 and 41. 10

TobyBourke

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honour by the king at Versailles. All was forgiven and forgotten. Shortly afterwards Toby Bourke was appointed ambassador of James III to the court of the king of Spain and, according to the memoirs of the marquis de Dangeau, this was due at least in part to the influence of the princess. Under the date of 23 April 1705, Dangeau wrote: The princess des Ursins is about to return to Spain and will take leave of the king next Saturday. She has obtained for the chevalier du Bourg, an Irishman whom she is bringing back with her, the post of envoy of the king of England to Madrid, and the king [Louis XIV] will pay his salary, which amounts to two thousand ecus.11

The new ambassador was then in the unusual position of having two masters to serve: James III who had signed his letters of credence; and Louis XIV who paid his salary. There followed a voluminous correspondence. From Madrid, Bourke sent regular reports to Lord Caryll, secretary of state of the queen regent, Mary of Modena, and also to the ministers of Louis XIV, Chamillart, at the departments of war and finance, and the marquis de Torcy, at foreign affairs. A number of his letters to Caryll are among the Carte Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and his reports to Chamillart and Torcy are in the archives of the relevant ministries in Paris. His French correspondence is always signed 1e Chevalier du Bourk'; he had been admitted knight of the military order of Santiago at Madrid in 1702, and he was also created knightbaronet by James III at Saint-Germain.12 11

Journal de Dangeau, xii, p. 310, quoted by the editor of Memoires de SaintSimon, xii, p. 444 n. 5. 12 Archive Historico Nacional, Madrid, Santiago 1281. Bourke was also Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, by order of 7 January 1704, Calendar of Stuart Papers, i, p. 189. The date of the knighthood conferred on him by James III does not appear in the Calendar of Stuart Papers but it would seem that it was on this same occasion before his return to Madrid; see the Marquis MacSwiney of Mashanaglass, Two Distinguished Irishmen in the Spanish Service', Studies, 28 (1939), n. 17, who quotes Ruvigny, The Jacobite Peerage, part ii, p. 191.

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On 15 May 1705, Toby Bourke, who had not yet left Paris, wrote to Gary 11 as follows: Mylord, . . . The long sejour the court of France makes in Marly has delayed my journey hitherto, and has kept me in a continual uncertainty from one day to another, but the marquis de Torcy told me yesterday that he would send me my passport from Marly and that I should be dispensed with for not taking my leave of the King of France, so that I hope I can begin my journey in two days. If your lordship do intend to honour me with an answer it may be directed at the Duke of Alba's house. I remain with all respect imaginable, Mylord, your lordship's most humble and obedient servant, Toby Bourk13 Three weeks later, following his arrival in Madrid, he sent to Caryll an account of the manner in which he had been received. He begins by describing how he was met on the outskirts of the city by a number of people from the court who had set out in their carriages to welcome him, and he continues: Very early next morning I sent notice of my arrival to the introducteur of the Ambassadors and went to the Palace at the hour appointed. I was brought immediately to the place where the King and the Queen were. They both examined me with most kind sort of curiosity about the health and circumstances of the King and Queen my masters. I endeavoured to satisfy their curiosity and, in same time, to let them know with what tender zeal and affection the Queen espoused their cause and interest upon all occasions. The Queen interrupted my discourse four different times for to make the King her husband reflect upon what I said of that subject. She spoke to the King once in these terms: That, Sire, is what is called a true friend. Would to Heaven that you had several such friends.' The King answered: 'I am much obliged to her. I have always loved the King her son and I wish with all my heart that I may be fortunate enough to contribute to his restoration.'14 13

Bodleian Library, Oxford, Carte MSS, vol. 209, fo. 487. The duke of Alba mentioned in this letter was Don Antonio Martin de Toledo who had been appointed ambassador to France in 1703. 14 Letter of 10 June 1705, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Carte MSS, vol. 209, fo. 489. The original of this letter is as above, except for the comments of the king

Toby Bourke

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Philip V was then far from being able to contribute to the restoration of James III. The first campaigns of the War of Spanish Succession had been fought beyond the eastern and northern frontiers of France; however, by 1704 the war had spread to the Iberian peninsula and King Philip was in grave danger of losing his throne to the Austrian claimant, the Archduke Charles, who was supported by William III and his allies. Toby Bourke's correspondence presents a fascinating chronicle of the life and intrigues of the Spanish court, and also of the events of the war as these were reported to him by some of the many Irish officers serving in the Spanish army. Jacobite politics are seldom mentioned and only in very general terms. In 1708 Bourke refers to the fear aroused among the enemies by the news of James Ill's departure for Scotland, soon followed by the disappointment of the Jacobites in Spain when the unfortunate end of that episode became known. From time to time he was given the task of transmitting letters from Mary of Modena to her niece the queen of Spain, and the latter's replies. He was also asked to transmit messages of friendship which reveal feelings of very real affection between those two Italian princesses. In Bourke's reports there are many references to the arrival in Spain of certain Jacobites; almost all of them were Irish officers who had served in France previously and who were recommended to him by Queen Mary. Those whose names appear most often, apart from Count Daniel Mahony, are Simon Connock, who became brigadier-general, officer of the king's guards, and later governor of the infante, son of Philip V; and Patrick Lawless, lieutenant-general and also officer of the king's guards. At the end of the war, in 1713, Lawless was

and queen which Bourke reproduces as they were spoken to him, in the French language.

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appointed ambassador of Spain at the court of St James', much to the disgust of the Whigs, for this ambassador who arrived in London with full diplomatic immunity, had fought in Ireland and in France with the army of James II and had been outlawed by the government of William III. As for Toby Bourke, the treaty of Utrecht in April 1713 signalled the end of his embassy in Madrid as envoy of James III. He had married a daughter of the marquis of Varennes in France in 1708,15 and he continued to live in Spain with his family for some time longer. In 1715 he was appointed special envoy of Philip V to the king of Sweden, Charles XII.16 It was the hope of King Philip at that time to bring Sweden into an alliance with Spain and the Jacobite party. This appeared to be a fortunate turn of events for Bourke but it was followed by a series of disasters which befell him and his family during the next few years. Before he could reach Sweden, he received the news at Hamburg that Charles XII had officially recognised the Archduke Charles' claim to the Spanish throne and, from Madrid, Bourke was ordered to return to Spain.17 He returned alone, however, for his wife had suffered a severe illness and remained in France with her children in the care of her parents. When eventually she was well enough to travel to Spain to join her husband, she was drowned at sea in a

15

Bourke's marriage took place in Paris in 1708; in the notarial archives in Madrid there is a copy of a power of attorney sent by him to two of his compatriots at Saint-Germain, John Baggot, Gentleman Usher of the Privy Chamber of James III, and Matthew Kennedy, formerly judge of the Admiralty in Ireland, giving them authority to negotiate with the marquis de Varennes a contract for the marriage of his daughter with Toby Bourke; this document is dated 2 June 1708, Archivo Historico de Protocolos Notariales, Madrid, Francisco Matienzo, 14080. 16 See Bourke's letter to Cardinal Gualterio, Madrid, 23 February 1715, BL, MS Add. 20307, fo. 285v. 17 Bourke's own account of these events is in a memorial addressed to Philip V, undated but probably 1720, Archivo General de Simancas, E 6660.

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shipwreck together with their young son and several servants. Their nine-year-old daughter, Marie-Anne, escaped, only to be captured by pirates and taken to the African coast, and it was several months before she could be found and ransomed.18 Some years later, in 1727, Toby Bourke brought his daughter to Rome where she became lady-in-waiting to Princess Clementina, wife of James III.19 In 1739 he was once again in Madrid and he died there on 12 May 1742.20

18

A printed account of the capture and rescue of Bourke's daughter was published in Paris in 1720, Archives Nationales, Paris, Salle Clisson, registre U 363. 19 Memoires de Saint-Simon, xii, p. 448. 20 Iglesia de San Sebastian, Madrid, libro 25 de defunciones, fo. 114.

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Contributors

John Childs is Professor of Military History in the University of Leeds. He has published extensively on seventeenth-and eighteenth-century British and European military history and his latest book, A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, is co-edited with Andre Corvisier. He is currently working on a biography of the duke of Marlborough as well as a study of war and society in the modern world from c. 1550 to 2000. Edward Corp is lecturer in British History at the Universite de Paris VII. He organised the exhibition on La cour des Stuarts a Saint-Germain-en-Laye an temps de Louis XIV (Musee National du Chateau de Saint-Germain, 1992), and edited the catalogue with Jacqueline Sanson (Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris 1992). He has also edited a special number of the Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale devoted to 'Les Jacobites' (1992), and L'autre exil: les Jacobites en France au debut du XVIIIe siecle (Presses du Languedoc, Montpellier 1993), to which he contributed an article on 'La maison du roi a Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1689-1718'. Forthcoming articles include 'The Jacobite Duke of Melfort' (History Today}, a study of the portraits of the duke of Berwick (Apollo), and an examination of the musical life of the exiled court of James II and James III, 'A Centre of Italian Music in

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France, 1689-1712' (Journal of the Royal Musical Association). He is also the co-author, with S.E. Crowe, of a biography of Sir Eyre Crowe, 1864-1925, Our Ablest Public Servant (Merlin Books, Braunton, 1993), and has published articles on the early twentieth-century Foreign Office in the Historical Journal. Eveline Cruickshanks worked on the History of Parliament for the years 1660 to 1754 and has been editing the 1690-1715 volumes. At present, she is directing the British section of an EU project on the European courts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. She published Political Untouchables: The Tories and the '45 in 1979 and has edited and contributed to several volumes of essays on Jacobitism and Toryism. Howard Erskine-Hill is author of The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope (1975) and The Augustan Idea in English Literature (1983). He has published articles on the literary aspects of Jacobitism, some in collections edited by Eveline Cruickshanks, which form one theme in his forthcoming work, Poetry and the Realm of Politics and Poetry of Opposition and Revolution. Paul Hopkins is an Archivist at the Northamptonshire Record Office. His Ph.D. (Cambridge 1981) was on 'Aspects of the Jacobite Conspiracy in England in the Reign of William III'. He has published Glencoe and the End of the Highland War (Edinburgh, 1986) and articles in various journals and collections on early British Jacobitism and late Stuart literary history. He is working on a book on the school and stage background to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. James F. McMillan is Professor of European History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. In addition to books on various aspects of French history, he has published a series of articles in the Innes Review on the subject of Jansenism and antiJansenism in Scotland. He has also written the entry on Thomas Innes for the Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastique.

Contributors

157

Paul Monod is Associate Professor of History at Middlebury College. He is author of Jacobitism and the English People (Cambridge, 1989) and of several articles on English Jacobitism. At present, he is writing a comparative study of European kingship, entitled The Powers of Kings: Monarchy, Religion and the Self in Christian Europe, 1589—1792. Murray Pittock has been on the staff of the University of Edinburgh since 1989. His chief research interests in Jacobitism are in the areas of Jacobite culture, Jacobitism and the Scottish identity, and the motivation and distribution of Jacobite support. He has published essays on Jacobite literature, an edition of Jacobite songs and The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity, 1638 to the Present (1991). In 1992-94 he was holder of the first Royal Society of Edinburgh BP Humanities Research Prize. Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac was trained at the Ecole des Chartes and the Ecole Nationale du Patrimoins and is at present archivist to the Ministere de la Culture. She wrote a thesis for the Ecole des Chartes entitled 'Un episode de la presence britannique en France: les Jacobites a Paris et Saint-Germainen-Laye, 1688-1715' (1991). She published The Jacobite Exiles in France' in Scotland in Europe (Scottish Record Association, 1993) and a different version of the essay published here in the Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale (no. 46, 1992), reprinted in L'autre exil: Les Jacobites en France au debut du XVIII e siecle (1993). She is preparing a doctorate at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes on the first generation of the Jacobite exile in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Roger Schmidt is Associate Professor and Director of Composition at Idaho State University. He is completing a book on Roger North and early eighteenth-century historiography. Micheline Kerney Walsh, D.Litt. (N.U.I.), formerly deputydirector of the Overseas Archives of University College,

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Dublin, is the author of numerous publications on the history of the Irish in continental Europe. She is a vice-president of the Military History Society of Ireland and was awarded the Order of Isabel la Catolica by the Spanish government for her contribution to the history of the Irish in Spain.

Index

(E= English peerage; 1= Irish peerage; J=Jacobite peerage; S= Scottish peerage) Act, Licensing (lapsing of 1695) xi, 125, 134-35, 137, 141 Act, Treason Trials (1696) 11 Ailesbury, Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of 2,6, 11, 14 Alba, Don Antonio Martin de Toledo, duke of 150 Albemarle, Henry Fitzjames, 1st duke of (J) 32, 35 Albeville, Ignatius White, marquis d' 31, 147n. Anderton, William, (printer and publisher) 138-40 Annandale, William Johnstone, 2nd earl and 1st marquess of (S) 44-46, 48-50 Anne, queen 118 Argenson, Marc-Rene de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d' 34 Argyll, Archibald Campbell, 10th earl (S) and 1st duke of (S) 41, 43, 46, 50-51 Arnauld, Antoine 96 Arran, Earl of, see Hamilton, James Douglas Arthur, Sir Daniel, banker 31-33

Arundell of Wardour, Thomas, 4th Baron 11 Ashton, John, clerk of the closet 3-4, 27, 104 Assassination Plot (1696) 8-10, 12 Association Oath (1696) 10 Atholl, John Murray, 2nd earl and 1st marquess of (S) 50 Atterbury, Francis, bishop of Rochester 114 Audley, Mr, 'of Suffolk or Essex' 26 Baggot, John, gentleman usher of the privy chamber 152n. Baluze, Etienne 94 Bander, Joseph, arrested in Paris 33 Barbezieux, Louis-Frangois Le Tellier, marquis de 146 Barclay, Sir George 8-9, 22, 87 — , Robert, principal of College des Ecossais 92, 94 Barker, Jane, poet and novelist xviii Bath, John Granville, 1st earl of (E) 45, 9, 13, 65-66 Baxter, Richard 76 Beachy Head, battle of (1690) 3, 57

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Beaton, James, archbishop of Glasgow 92,94 Beaufort, Henry Somerset, 1st duke of (E) 1-2, 5, 11 Beauvais, Toussaint Ginal, called surgeon 36-37 Bedloe, William, informer 77 Belhaven, John Hamilton, 2nd Lord (S) 121 Belle, Alexis-Simon xvi Bellefonds, Bernardin Gigault, marquis de64 Berwick, Honora Bourke, duchess of 144-45, 147n. — , James Fitzjames, 1st duke of (E) xix, 8-10, 16, 28 Billingsley, Lewis 67, 71 — , Rupert 67 Blundell, William 7 Bohun, Edmund 79, 137 Bolingbroke, Henry Saint-John, 1st viscount (E) and 1st earl of (J) 114 Bonrepaus, Frangois d'Ussan, marquis de31 Bouillon, Emmanuel-Theodore de la Tour d'Auvergne, cardinal de 146 Bourignon, Antoinette, quietist 117-18 Bourke, Honora, see Berwick — , Sir Toby xii, 143-53 Boyne, battle of the (1690) 3 Breadalbane, John Campbell, 1st earl of (S) 50 Brereton, William 68 Brest expedition (1694) 63, 67 Brewer, Richard 67 Brocard, Mr, spy xxiin. Browne, Henry, later 5th Viscount Montagu (E) 70 — , Rev. Thomas 131 Brudenell, Francis, Lord 11 Buchanan, George 99 Burlington, Richard Boyle, 3rd earl of (E) xvin. Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury 50, 108 Burns, Robert 122 Butler, Edward, printer 140 — , Thomas, thief 35

Canning, William, bookseller 131, 135, 138 Cantillon, Richard, banker 32 Care, Henry, journalist 135 Carignano, Emmanuel de Savoie, prince de 146 Carter, Theresa, nun 20 Caryll, John, 1st Baron (J) x-xi, xv, xvii-xviii, xxii, 21-22, 30-31, 58, 7390, 104, 149 — , John, 2nd Baron (J) 73 — , John-Baptist, 3rd Baron (J) 74 — , Mary, abbess 74n., 75, 78, 87-88, 90 Caryll papers 73-75, 89 Castlemaine, Roger Palmer, earl of (I)

78 Cavanagh, Felix 22 — , Richard, shopkeeper 19 Cecil, William 25 Censorship of the press 125-42 Chamillart, Michel 149 Charles, archduke (later Emperor Charles VI) 151-52 Charles I 40, 99 Charles II 75-77 Charles XI, of Sweden 54-55 Charles XII, of Sweden 152 Chesterfield, Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of(E) 1-2, 11 Churchill, Arabella xix, 8, 145n. — , Charles 67 Clanricarde, William Bourke, 7th earl of (I) 144-45 Clare, Charles O'Brien, 5th viscount (I)

37 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st earl of (E) x, 74-76 — , Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of (E) 1, 79 Clark, William, coachman 37 Clarke, Edward 141 Clemantina, queen, wife of James III 153 Clifford, Hugh, 2nd baron (E) 5 Club, The 39, 44-48, 50-51n., 59 Clutterbuck, Sir William 11 Cockburn, Dr John, visits SaintGermain 25

161

Index Colbert, Charles-Joachin, bishop of Montpellier 96 College des Ecossais (Paris) x, 92-100 Collier, Jeremy, nonjuring bishop 117 Compounders 53-55, 82, 84 Connock, Sir Simon 151 Conway, Neil, lawyer, 23 Cossart, Jean, merchant 28 Couperin, Francois xv Coy, John 67 Crane, Robert, servant of Strickland family 30 Crebillon, Claude xix, xxn. — , Marie-Henriette, nee Stafford xxn. Croissy, Charles Colbert, marquis de 52-54 Cuert, Catherine 37 Culcheth, Scholastica, nun 90 Culliford, William 68 Dalrymple, Sir John, see Stair Dangeau, Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de 149 Dartmouth, William Legge, 1st baron (E) 3-4 Day, Dr Daniel, physician to James II 36-37 Declaration of 1693 55, 136-38, 140 Defoe, Daniel 116 Delanges, notary at Saint-Germain 19 Delaval, Sir Ralph 6 Denmark 51 Devonshire, William Cavendish, 4th earl and 1st duke of (E) 13 Dicconson, William, under-governor of the Prince of Wales; treasurer of the Queen's household 5, 7, 21, 79 Dicks, Mr, keeper of an 'eating house' xxiin. Dilke, Sir Charles 73, 74n. Dillon, Lieutenant-General Arthur, later 1 st Earl Dillon (J) 16 — , Arthur Richard, archbishop of Toulouse, then Narbonne 16 — , Catherine, nee Sheldon 16 Doran, Dr Daniel, lawyer 35 Drummond, James, see Perth — , John, see Melfort

Dryden, John xviii, 77, 113, 115 Dufour, Dominique, page of the bedchamber 24 — , Rebecca, nee Menzies 24 Duguet, Jacques-Joseph 96 Dundee, Giovanni Battista Gualterio, 1st earl of (J) xvii — , John Graham, 1st viscount (S) 113 Echard, Lawrence xi, 101-2, 105-6, 110 Ellis, Sir William, commissioner of the household at Saint-Germain xxiin. Erroll, Anne Hamilton, previously countess of Southesk, countess of xix Exeter, John Cecil, 5th earl of (E) 1 Farley, John 22 Fede, Innocenzo, composer and master of the music xv Fenwick, Sir John xi, 1-2, 9, 11-13 — , Mary, Lady 12 Ferguson, Robert, printer and publicist xii, 7, 11,28,45,51, 133-34, 136, 140

Fermat, Mary, 'keeper of furnished rooms' 23 Ferraghty, John 37 Ferrers, Robert Shirley, 1st earl (E) 11 Feversham, Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of (E) 69 Fletcher, Miles, corrector of the press 138

Fline, see Flynn Floyd, Captain David, see Lloyd Flynn, Joseph 36 Forbes, Alexander, 4th lord of Pitsligo (S) 118 — , Duncan 42-45, 48 Fox, Major Charles 70 Frampton, Robert, bishop of Gloucester 1, 11 Friend, Sir John 1, 5, 9, 11-12 Galmoye, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount (I), see Newcastle Garden, Rev. George 118

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Garter, Order of the xvi Gayer, Sir Robert 103-4 Gennari, Benedetto xvi George I 11 On. Gerard of Bromley, Digby, 5th Baron (E)ll Glencoe, Massacre of (1692) 51-52, 58 Gloucester, duke of 25 Godolphin, Sidney, 1st earl of (E) 71 Gondi, Jean-Franc,ois de, archbishop of Paris 92 Goodman, Cardell, actor 11-12, 34 Gordon, Anne 2 1-22 — , Elizabeth, duchess of, nee Howard xxiiin. — , George, 4th marquess of Huntly (S) and 1st duke of (S) 118 — , James, bishop, vicar-apostolic of Scotland 95, 97, 117 Grahme, James 2, 11 — , Richard, see Preston Gramont, Claude Charlotte de xixn. — , Elizabeth Hamilton, comtesse de xviii Granville, John 13 Grascome, Samuel 139 Gray, Rev. Ralph 128-29 Greg, William xxi Griffin, Sir Edward, 1st Baron (E) 1, 57 Gualterio, Filippo Antonio, cardinal, papal nuncio in France xvii — , Giovanni Battista, see Dundee Guilford, Francis North, 1st Baron (E) xi 102 Guyon, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe, Madame 117

— , William Douglas, 3rd duke of (S) 42, 44-45 Hanover, Sophia, Electress of xixn. Harley, Robert, later 1st earl of Oxford (E)xxi, 115, 141 Harcourt, Henri, marquis, later marechal-duc 4 Hart, Sir Richard 1, 11 Hatcher, Captain 27 Haywood, Eliza, novelist xxn. Hebert, Andre, merchant 28 Herbert, Arthur, see Torrington — , Sir Edward, 1st earl of Portland (J) 29 — , William, see Powis and Montgomery Hickes, George, nonjuring dean 132-33,139 Higgins, John, physician to Philip V 147 Higgons, Bevill 4, 9 — , George xxin., 4, 9 — , Sir Thomas, gentleman usher of the privy chamber; later secretary of state xxin., 4, 9 Hills, Henry, royal printer 128 Hindmarsh, Joseph, publisher 132 Hooke, Colonel Nathaniel, Baron xvii, xxii, xxiiin., 28, 117 Hornby, Mr, alias of a Jacobite agent 70 Huguenots ix Hume, Sir Patrick 42, 44, 48 Humieres, Louis de Crevant, marechalduc d' 69-70 Huntingdon, Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of (E) 1-2

Hales, Sir Edward, 1st earl of Tenterden (J) 82 — John 67-68 Hamilton, Anthony xviii-xix — , Elizabeth, see Gramont — , Hughes 35 — , James Douglas, earl of Arran and 4th duke of (S) 11,46,49,56 — , Mary see Kingsland — , Lieutenant-General Richard xviii

Ingleton, Dr John, under-preceptor of the Prince of Wales 20, 27 Ingoldsby, Richard 67 Innes, George, principal of College des Ecossais 91, 95 — , Lewis, principal of College des Ecossais x, 22, 87, 91-100 — , Thomas, prefect of studies at College des Ecossais x, 91-100 Innes family 91

Index Irish regiments in France 16-18, 64, 144-46 Irish regiments in Spain 151 Jacobite court, see Saint-Germain-en-Laye Jacobite exiles ix, 15-38 Jacobite ideology 113-23 Jacobite press xvii, 125-42 Jacobite propaganda xi—xii, 113-14, 135-36 Jacobite religious houses in Paris 20-22, 38,92-100 — , elsewhere in France 21, 75-76, 7880, 90, 144 Jacobite regiments in England x, 4, 7 Jacobite Whigs, see Whig Jacobites Jacobites in the army of William III 66-72 — , in Lancashire 4-7 Jacobitism, study of ix James, Eleanor, pamphleteer 129-30 James II xiv, xvi-xvii, xix, 8, 10, 16, 40-44, 47, 51-54, 57-58, 62, 64, 69, 71, 79-81, 84-87, 93-94, 99, 117, 13537, 141 James III xiv, xvi—xvii, 25, 54, 85-86, 94-95, 99, 115-17, 143, 147n., 14951, 153 Jansenism 93, 95-97, 99 Jennings, Frances, see Tyrconnell Jersey, Barbara, countess of, nee Chiffinch 21n. — , Edward Villiers, 1st earl of (E) 25 Johnston, James 58-59 Kelly, Dennis, spy xxiin. Ken, Thomas, bishop of Bath and Wells 1, 132 Kennedy, Matthew 152n. Kennett, White xi, 101-2, 104-7 Kenyon, Roger 7 Kettlewell, John, nonjuror 132 Killiecrankie, battle of (1689) 3, 44 Killigrew, Henry 6 Kingsland, Mary, countess (nee Hamilton) 2 In.

163

Knight, Sir John 2, 11 Knightley, Marie, nun 89 La Hogue, battle of (1692) x, 6, 52-53, 63,72 Lancelot, Claude 96 Langs ton, Thomas 67-68 Lanier, Sir John 67 La Reynie, Gabriel-Nicholas de 33 Largilliere, Nicolas de xvi Lauderdale, see Maitland Lawless, Patrick xii, 151-52 Lawton, Charlwood, publicist xii, 13334, 136, 139-41 Leeds, Sir John 79n. Legh, Peter 7 Leinster, Meinhard Schomberg, 1st duke of (I) 68 Lely, Sir Peter 102 Le Noir, abbe, canon of Notre-Dame de Paris 96 Leslie, Rev. Charles 28 L'Estrange, Sir Roger 11 Lichfield, Edward Lee, 1st earl of (E) 1-2, 11 Liria, James Fitzjames, duke of, 2nd duke of Berwick 147 Limerick, treaty of (1691) 3, 17, 64-65, 144 Lloyd, Captain David, groom of the bedchamber In., 71 — , William, bishop of Norwich 1, 52 Locke, John 141 Lonnin, William, son of a page of the backstairs 37 Louis XIII 92 Louis XIV ix, xiii-xiv, 4, 8, 15-16, 6465, 72, 83-87, 93, 148-49 Louvois, Francois- Michel Le Tellier, marquis de 65 Lowthrop, Rev. John 131 Lucan, Honora Bourke, countess of, see Berwick — , Patrick Sarsfield, 1st earl of (J) 144 Lunt, James, informer, 7 Lutton, Edward, priest in Paris 22 Luttrell, Narcissus 77, 87

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Mabillon, Dom Jean 94, 98 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, baron xi, 125-27 Macpherson, James, author, 122 — , James, Banff freebooter 120 Magennis, Charles 22 Mahony, Count Daniel 147, 151 Maintenon, Franchise d'Aubigne, marquise de 148 Mainwaring, Arthur 135 Maitland, Richard, Lord, later 4th earl of Lauderdale (S) xviii Manchester, Charles Montagu, 4th earl and 1st duke of (E) xxi-xxii, 25-27, 34

Maria Luisa, queen of Spain 146, 148, 150-51 Marischal, George Keith, 10th earl (S) 122

Marlborough, John Churchill, 1st duke of (E) 66-67, 71 Martinash, John, yeoman of the larder 20

Mary, queen of Scots 92, 99 Mary of Modena, second queen of James II xi, xxii, 15, 35, 86-87, 94, 102, 143, 146, 148-51 Mary II 10,49-51,6878, 139 Mathews, Colonel Edward 68 — , Major William 68 Matthews, John, printer 142 Maxwell, Sir George xxiin. Mayne, Edward 68 Melfort, John Drummond, 1st earl of (S), later 1st duke of (J) xiv-xvi, 4, 11, 26-27, 30-31, 40, 47, 51-58, 79, 82, 136 Melville, George, 1st earl of (S) 43, 47-49 Menzies, John, alias Abram 27 — , Rebecca, see Dufour Merryweather, Mrs Anne, printer 138, 140

Middleton, Charles, 2nd earl of (S) x, xxii, 27, 30-31, 33-34, 37, 54-55, 57, 79,86 — , Captain Michael 37 Mignard, Pierre xvi

Milton, John 126 Molony, John, bishop of Limerick 22 Molyneux, William, 4th viscount (I) 7 Monmouth, Charles, Mordaunt, 1st earl of (E) and 3rd earl of Peterborough (E) 46, 51 Montespan, Franchise de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquis de xiv Montgomerie, Sir James x, 39-59, 136, 139

Montgomery, Lord William Herbert, Viscount, see Powis Mountcashel Brigade 16, 64 Murnahan, Thomas, valet 36 Murray of Abercairney, Robert xxiiin. Musgrave, Sir Christopher, 4th baronet 2

Nairne, David xxii, 104 Namur, siege of (1692) x, 63, 65, 72, 83

Netterville, John 28 Newbolt, William, printer 140 Newcastle, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye (I) and 1st earl of (J) 36 Nicholson, Thomas Joseph, bishop, vicar-apostolic of Scotland 118 Noailles, Louis-Antoine, cardinal de, archbishop of Paris 96 Nonjurors xii, 1, 4, 13, 54, 103, 117, 132-34, 136-37, 139-40 Norris, William 10 North, Dudley 105 — , Francis, see Guilford — , Roger xi, 101-11 Nugent, Colonel Christopher, called Milord Nugent in France 36 Gates, Titus 6, 77, 101 O'Donaghue, Lieutenant-Colonel Florent21 O'Farrell, Francis Fergus 70 Ogilvie, James xxiiin. Oglethorpe, Sir Theophilius 1-2, 56, 57n. Orford, Edward Russell, 1st earl of (E) 5-6, 53, 63, 68, 71-72

Index Orkney, Elizabeth Villiers, countess of 18 Orleans, Elizabeth-Charlotte, duchess de d' xixn. Ormonde, James Butler, 2nd duke of (E) 114, 147 Oxford, see Harley Paris, Frangois de, deacon of SaintMedard 97 Parker, Colonel John 4, 65 Parkyns, Sir William 9 Parsons, Sir John 2 Penn, William 2-3, 134, 141 Perth, James Drummond, 4th earl (S), later 1st duke of (J) xvi-xvii, 21, 3940, 83-86, 93 — , Mary, countess (later duchess) of, nee Gordon 21 Philip V 146, 148, 150-52 Philippsburg, siege of (1688) 66 Philip, James 113-15 Pitsligo, see Forbes Plunkett, James 28 Pontchartrain, Louis Phelypeaux, comtede 5 1,53-54, 86 Pope, Alexander xix, 20, 73 Porter, George 8- 12 Portland, Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st earl of (E) 9, 18, 29, 34, 45, 67-68 Portsmouth, Louise de Keroualle, duchess of 32-33 Poussin, Nicolas xv Powis, William Herbert, 1st marquess (E) and 1st duke of (J) x, 5, 29 — , William Herbert, Viscount Montgomery, later 2nd marquess (E) and 2nd duke of (J) 5, 11,29 Pownall, Thomas 68 Prendergast, Thomas 9-10 Preston, Richard Grahme, 1st viscount (S) 1,3-4, 134, 141 Prior, Matthew xxi-xxii Quesnel, Pascier 96 Ramsay, Allan 120

165

Renaudot, abbe Eusebe 26-28, 51, 53, 56-57, 86, 94 Ritton, Francis, 'keeper of furnished rooms' 23 Robert III 94 Rochford, William Henry van Nassau van Zuylesteyn, 1st earl of (E) 29 Rodney, Anthony 68 Rollin, Charles 96 Rome xvii Romney, Henry, 1st Viscount Sidney (E)and 1st earl of (E) 68, 71 Rooke, Admiral Sir George 86 Rookwood, Brigadier Ambrose 9 Ross, William, 12th lord (S) 44-46, 49-50 Ruinart, Thierry 94 Russell, Admiral Edward, see Orford — , William, Lord 102 Russia ix Rutherford, Captain Andrew 16 Sackville, Colonel Edward 2 Saint- Amand, James 27 Saint-Cyran, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbe de 96 Saint-Germain-en Laye — , chateau xiii—xiv, 15 — , correspondence with Britain xxi, 26-29 — , espionage at xx—xxiii, 33-35 — , freemasonry at xxiii — , honours at xvi—xvii, 149 — , Jacobites at 15-38 — , literature at xvii-xix, xxn., 79-89 — , music at xv — , nationalities at xiii, 15, 18 — , painting at xv-xvi — , parochial registers of 17-18 — , printing press at xi, xvii-xviii, 125 — , Stuart court at xii-xxiv — , toleration for Anglicans at xv Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, due de xii, 147-48 Sancroft, William, archbishop of Canterbury 1, 81, 132 Sartine, Antoine de 147

166

The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites

— , Catherine Charlotte de, nee White 147n. Scotland xi, xvi-xvii, 113-23, 151 Scots College, see College des Ecossais Scott, Sir Walter 122 Scroggs, Sir William 77 Seignelay, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de 26 Selwyn, William 66 Seymour, Sir Edward, 4th baronet 2 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of (E) 103 Sheldon, Catherine, see Dillon Shepherd, Thomas, servant of Strickland family 30 Sheridan, Thomas, private secretary to James II 136 Sherlock, Dr William 52 Shields, Alexander 70 Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, 15th earl (I) and 1st duke of (E) 53, 55-58, 71 Sidney, Algernon 102, 139 — , Henry, viscount, see Romney Simpson, John, (alias Jones) 45-49, 51-54 Skelton family 32 Slingsby, Colonel Henry 2 Smith, Anne, nun 21 Smithson, Hugh 5 Spain ix, xii, 18, 82, 143, 146-53 Stafford, Claude Charlotte de Gramont, countess of xix — , John, vice-chamberlain to the queen at Saint-Germain xxn. — , Marie- Henriette, see Crebillon — , Richard 130-31 — , Theresa, nee Strickland xxn. Stafford family 32 Stair, John Dalrymple, 2nd earl of (S) 42-44 Stewart, Colonel John Roy 120 Straton, Charles 31 — , Captain Henry, (alias Scougal) 27 Strickland, Robert, vice-chamberlain, then treasurer of the queen's household at Saint-Germain 104 — , Theresa, see Stafford — , Sir Thomas 30

— , Walter, groom of the bedchamber 30 — , Winifred, Lady, under-governess of the Prince of Wales, then bedchamber woman 30 Strickland family 32 Sunderland, Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of (E) 82 Sweden ix, 51,54, 56, 152 Swift, Jonathan 9 Talmash, Thomas 63, 65, 67 Taylor, Rev. Dr Ralph, nonjuring clergyman at Saint-Germain 58n. Tempest, William 5 Thanet, Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of (E)ll Thistle, Order of the xvi Thompson, Mary, printer 129 — , Nathaniel, journalist 129 Thouy, (or Thoy), Antoine-Balthazar de Longecombe, marquis de, captain-general in the Spanish army 145-46 Tiffin, Zachariah 67 Tollemache, see Talmash Torcy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de xxii, 28, 34, 87, 149-50 Torrington, Arthur Herbert, 1st earl of (E) 29, 57 Tory Party 1-2, 10 Tourville, Anne-Hiiarion de Contentin, comte de 3, 63-64, 72 Treby, Sir George 131, 139 Trelawney, Charles 67 Trenchard, Sir John 140 Troy, Frangois de xvi Turner, Francis, bishop of Ely 1-3, 11 Twyn, John (printer) 138 Tyrconnel, Frances, duchess of, nee Jennings xix — , Richard Talbot, duke of (I) 46 United Provinces 54 Ursins, Anne-Marie de la Tremoille, princesse des 146, 148-49

Index Varennes, Joseph de Nagu, marquis de, colonel of the Swiss guards of the queen of Spain 152 Vauban, Sebastien Le Prestre, seigneur de65 Villiers, Edward, see Jersey — , Elizabeth, see Orkney Wachop, Captain Edward 24 Wake, William, archbishop of Canterbury 11 On. Waldeck, George Frederick, prince of

70 Waldegrave, Sir Henry, 3rd baronet, 1st Baron (E), comptroller of the household at St-Germain 33 — , Sir William, physician to James II XV

Wales, Prince of, see James III Wallis, John, mathematician and codebreaker 28 Walsh, Thomas, valet 36 — , Toby 22 Welsh, see Walsh Weston, William, royal printer xvii—xviii Weymouth, Sir Thomas Thynne, 2nd baronet, 1st viscount (E) 1, 11

167

Wharton, Philip, 2nd marquess (E) and 1st duke of Northumberland (f) and 1st duke of (E) 114 Whig Interpretation of History xi, 101-11 Whig Jacobites xii, 55, 133, 136, 13839, 141 Whig Junto 13 White, Catherine Charlotte, see Albeville and Sartine — , Thomas, bishop of Peterborough 1 Whytford, Charles 22 Wildman, John 46 William III ix-x, 10, 15, 18, 24, 43, 45, 53, 56-57, 61-62, 65-66, 71, 78, 83, 85, 130 Williams, Charles 68 Winnington, Sir Francis 133 Witham, John 22 Wodrow, Robert 98 Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary xix-xxn. Yarmouth, William Paston, 2nd earl of (E) 1-2 York, Anne Hyde, duchess of 76 — , James, duke of, see James II Zondadari, cardinal, papal nuncio in Spain 146