Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (5 page)

James – looking for the beam in Paris and not seeing the mote in Rome – was still obsessed with the idea that the queen’s flight was some Machiavellian contrivance of his arch-enemy the earl of Mar, and quickly revealed himself to be out of his depth. He continued to take up a rigid posture, standing on his rights as paterfamilias and insisting on Clementina’s duty to obey him.

The most the Jacobites could achieve was to limit the damage. The Pope was asked to keep Clementina in the nunnery at all costs so that her poisonous allegations could be contained within Rome.
⁷⁷
But at this stage sympathy was overwhelmingly running with Clementina. Alberoni had cleverly persuaded her to focus on the issue of the education of her son. He knew that the Pope would not support her against her husband on issues within the jurisdiction of a paterfamilias, such as Mrs Sheldon’s dismissal and the prince’s transfer from women to men. Nor would she be able to light much of a spark with her personal animosity towards the Hays. The trump card to play was the issue of religion. She should attempt to persuade
the
Pope that Charles Edward’s immortal soul was in danger, that it was James’s intention to bring him up as a Protestant.

This idea was not of recent vintage and had long worried Catholics in Rome. Much of the disappointment among the Jesuits and
zelanti
over the failure of the Atterbury plot focused on this issue. The thinking was that unless James regained the throne before Charles Edward reached the age of reason, any Jacobite restoration might involve as a
quid pro quo
the prince’s education as a Protestant.
⁷⁸
The fact that Dunbar and John Hay were Protestants provided Alberoni with the ammunition he needed. He persuaded Clementina to concentrate on this issue in her protestations to the Pope.
⁷⁹

The tactic worked beautifully. The Pope became deeply concerned about a Protestant Charles Edward. The Papal Inquisition was asked to investigate the extent of Anglican practices in the Palazzo Muti.
⁸⁰
The appearance on the scene of the Inquisition seriously alarmed James. One afternoon Charles Edward was just about to be taken out for his daily constitutional in a carriage when James issued orders that he was to be kept inside the Palazzo until further notice, for fear he would be kidnapped by the Inquisition and brought up in secret as a fanatical Catholic.
⁸¹

The perception of being under siege at the Palazzo Muti was not lessened when the Pope, acting as intermediary, gave his verdict on the affair. He informed James that if Mrs Sheldon were reinstated and the Hays dismissed, the queen would return forthwith. Meanwhile, as Sovereign Pontiff he shared the view that it was undesirable that Dunbar be put in charge of the prince’s education.

James exploded with rage at this ‘impertinent’ intervention. Loftily he answered that he did not need the Pope’s advice or consent on matters concerning the private affairs of his family. His state of mind can be seen from the following letter to Atterbury in December 1725:

It has been talked in town as if the Pope might take from me the pension he gave me, but neither threats of this kind, nor any want of regard the Pope might show me will induce me to alter my conduct and will only serve to afford me an opportunity of showing my subjects that nothing can make me alter a conduct which I think right or just.
⁸²

It has to be remembered that this was the selfsame Pope who paid the Stuarts the signal honour of christening Henry and then rebaptising Charles Edward earlier the same year.
⁸³

But for all his bluster, James was in an extremely precarious position. Not only had the Jacobites been turned into the laughing-
stock
of Europe and all their political hopes shattered; James could also count on no reliable allies in his struggle with Clementina. The queen was backed by the Pope, Alberoni and most of the cardinals. James had no one of countervailing weight. The problem was that even the Protestant Jacobites who might have supported him in a struggle against fanatical Catholicism had no time for Dunbar and the Hays. The ‘old Jacobites’ – Bishop Atterbury, the duke of Ormonde, Earl Marischal Keith – loathed and detested the Dunbar/Hay clique. While they supported the idea of a liberal and even Protestant education for the prince, they drew the line at entrusting it to Dunbar.

There was therefore a lot of covert support among the Jacobites for Clementina. It was felt that although she had not necessarily chosen the right issue to fight on, her political antennae were sharp, and at bottom her instinct of distaste for Dunbar and the Hays was correct. The only comfort Atterbury could offer James was to assure him that in the event of his sudden death, while Charles Edward was still a minor, Clementina would have no rights to the Regency. While advising him not to put anything in legal form, he assured him that the laws of England allowed him absolute prerogative of declaring who the Regent should be. Nor could Clementina have any say in the prince’s education; that was a matter for the Council of Regents.
⁸⁴

For the moment that was the only solace James could derive. What of his son and heir during the protracted crisis? We can only infer the nature of the trauma he must have suffered at the sudden departure of his mother, but it was sufficiently manifest even for James to worry about the effect the loss of his mother might be having on the boy
⁸⁵
– and this in an era when such insights would not be automatic.

Certainly one result of his mother’s departure was a drastic change in the prince’s daily routine. The frequent audiences with the Pope came to an abrupt end.
⁸⁶
James still kept up appearances, attending the ceremony of the closing of the holy gates on Christmas Eve 1725 with his elder son,
⁸⁷
but the break with the Pope was now complete. In the Vatican fears about the anti-Catholic impact of Dunbar had already reached paranoid proportions. It was alleged that Dunbar had taught Charles Edward to laugh at the Angelus bell as an absurd superstition.
⁸⁸
Cardinal Gualterio went so far as to charge Dunbar with having taught the young prince by heart certain anti-Catholic incantations: ‘I’m sick of priests; monks are great buffoons; the Mass cost my grandfather three kingdoms’ was one alleged litany.
⁸⁹

Still in fear of the Inquisition, James kept his son close to him at all times, taking him for carefully supervised excursions around Rome.
⁹⁰
Charles
Edward spent a wretched Christmas and fifth birthday. James made it clear he had no intention of bending to the papal will (or his wife’s). He went out of his way to defy them by promoting Dunbar to be Knight of the Thistle to mark the prince’s birthday
⁹¹
(ironically in view of future events, another recipient was the Earl Marischal) and by sending the prince to Albano with Dunbar for the spring
villegiatura
.
⁹²

By now pressure was being applied on James from another source. The fanatically Catholic Philip V and his termagant wife Elizabeth Farnese began to turn the screws on James, genuinely alarmed by the possibility that the prince might be brought up a Protestant.
⁹³
Elizabeth Farnese went so far as to describe his behaviour towards Clementina as detestable, and warned that he should expect no financial or political aid from Spain.
⁹⁴
So vehement was Spanish support for Clementina that it soon became a genuine obstacle to a marital
rapprochement
, since there seemed no way James could back down without a disastrous loss of face.
⁹⁵
The good offices of the duke of Ormonde and the Earl Marischal (both Protestant and both in Spain) were enlisted to persuade Philip V that a Protestant governor was mere window-dressing to appease the Jacobites’ English constituency; there was no question of the prince’s not being brought up as a Catholic. One possible way out seemed the replacement of Dunbar by Ormonde, who was acceptable in Madrid, but James refused this suggestion, on the ground that Ormonde was too valuable where he was.
⁹⁶
He was, however, induced by the intense Spanish pressure to allow Clementina to see her children. There was a tearful reunion between mother and two sons in April 1726, but Clementina went back on her promise to James by excluding Sheridan and Dunbar from her rooms in the convent and bringing in Mrs Sheldon to see them.
⁹⁷
She asked for a second visit in July, but James turned this down on the grounds of her unsatisfactory behaviour the first time. He asked for a Bible oath that if he sent the two princes to the convent again, they would not be introduced to Mrs Sheldon.

Clementina held out for two months, then agreed to James’s terms. The visit was just about to take place when Mrs Sheldon made her play. Flinging herself at the queen’s feet, Sheldon begged her tearfully not to betray her in this way.
⁹⁸
Clementina was unable to deal either with the tears or the iron will of her favourite, and the visit was cancelled. To reinforce the point that she had no intention of surrendering, Clementina had Charles Edward’s portrait painted so that it could be put upon the wall of her apartments in the convent.
⁹⁹

By mid-1726 James was friendless. A four-hour conference with
Alberoni
in April did not produce the hoped-for breakthrough. The Spanish cardinal’s hold over Clementina was as strong as ever.
¹⁰⁰
Even James’s previous allies the Jesuits had turned against him; the Father-General now shared the Pope’s religious concerns.
¹⁰¹
James was faced with a 50 per cent cut in his papal pension. Rather than come to heel, James decided to quit Rome and move to some more congenial spot. He thought first of Venice, but was swiftly turned down.
¹⁰²
Eventually he hit on the idea of Bologna.

Even so, there was a price to be paid. Before the Pope would allow Charles Edward to continue under Dunbar’s tutelage in a papal state, he wanted to be assured that the child was being brought up as a Catholic. At an audience on 16 September 1726 the Pope made Charles Edward recite several pages of catechism and then put several questions to him on Catholic doctrine.
¹⁰³
Satisfied with the prince’s answers, the Pope and James agreed on the polite fiction that the departure of the Stuart court for Bologna was simply an extended
villegiatura
. Dunbar’s name was not mentioned.

Whatever the psychological toll on the young prince of this sustained rift in the royal household, to outward appearances he was still doing well. He had learned to ride, was considered a natural horseman, and deeply impressed those who saw him. ‘The eldest is the most surprising boy in every respect that ever was seen,’ reported James Edgar the royal secretary. ‘He now behaves and talks like a man.’
¹⁰⁴

The ‘hell-fire’ duke of Wharton, newly arrived in Rome and soon to depart for Spain on a mission for James, concurred:

The Prince of Wales is one of the finest children I ever saw and daily gives remarkable instances of wit and vivacity uncommon to his age. The beauty of his person and his genteel behaviour make him the idol of the people here.
¹⁰⁵

Yet the prolonged absence of the prince’s mother must have bitten deep. So far from there being any signs of reconciliation between James and Clementina, the queen’s acquiescence in the departure of her sons for Bologna seems to have hardened James’s attitude.
¹⁰⁶
The failure of a final face-to-face plea to her to return did not help matters.
¹⁰⁷
If there were any doubts left, James proceeded to back himself into a cul-de-sac by raising the widely unpopular Hays to the peerage. They were now the titular Lord and Lady Inverness.

On 30 September 1726 the journey to Bologna commenced. Charles Edward and Henry departed from Rome with Dunbar and Lady Inverness. They spent the first night at Civita Castellana, then went
on
to Loreto,
¹⁰⁸
proceeding more slowly than their father, who went on ahead post-haste. In Bologna he awaited the arrival of the princes, who took three weeks, in slow, leisurely stages, to complete the journey.
¹⁰⁹
It was already cold when Charles Edward arrived in Bologna on 21 October 1726.
¹¹⁰

(1726–33)

A FEW DAYS
after the prince’s arrival in Bologna, James put him on public view at a ball. Wearing a scarlet coat, the young Charles Edward, not yet six, danced with a young lady dressed in blue, while his father looked on indulgently from a throne surrounded by his courtiers.
¹
Now at last aware of the possible effect on his son of a long separation from his mother, punctuated by the brief, lachrymose meeting, James exhorted Sheridan and Dunbar to divert Charles by all possible means. His love of horses was encouraged. He was already an accomplished rider (‘as well as if he had fifteen years of age’) and had a large stable, in which his favourite was a little grey colt.
²

All who saw the prince spoke of his manly bearing and behaviour,
³
but this was the credit side of a nature that was already revealing wilfulness and obstinacy. As long ago as June 1724 the prince had shown that he had a mind of his own. When James and Clementina were received then by the new Pope Benedict XIII and ceremonially kissed his feet, the young Charles Edward could not be induced either by threats or cajolery to follow suit.
⁴
At this stage in his development it was probably a mistake, in retrospect, to indulge him, but James’s humanitarian instincts must nevertheless be applauded.

Because of the continuing question-mark over Dunbar’s future, the day-to-day education of the prince was largely left to Sheridan, the under-governor. His idea of pedagogy was the inculcation of a series of pious and devotional maxims, and the learning of the catechism by rote.
⁵
But Charles Edward relished his tutor’s indulgence. In many ways Sheridan became his true father but he was a father without tears – it was all spoiling and pampering, no discipline and authority. Yet for good or ill a strong bond was forged. Charles
Edward
ever afterwards entertained strong filial feelings for Sheridan.
⁶