174 THE FIRST DUKE OF ST. ALBAN'S. island of Jersey, when he was little more than sixteen or seventeen years old, of a young lady of one of the noblest families in his dominions." He was brought up as a Protestant in Holland, whence in 1665 he was removed secretly to London, but soon afterwards, feeling unhappy on account of the equivocal position which he there held, he appears to have returned of his own accord to the Continent in 1667, bearing with him a formal acknowledgment of his parentage, signed by the king, and authenticated by the Royal seal, to which was afterwards added a deed of settlement assigning to him a pension of 500l. A few months after his return to the Continent he was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Hamburg, under the inspiration, it would seem, of Queen Christina of Sweden, then in the first fervour of her zeal for her new faith; and in the latter part of the same year he entered the noviciate of the Jesuit Society at Rome, under the name of James La Cloche (which, by the way, was the name of his mother's family), his real name being kept secret from all, with the single exception of his confessor; even the general of the order himself was not informed of it. -The Gentleman's Magazine. WHO BUILT CHELSEA HOSPITAL? The founder of the Holland family, Stephen Fox, who was a singing-boy in Salisbury choir. He subsequently obtained a situation in the royal household of the exiled Stuart family; and on the Restoration was appointed army paymaster, in which situation he amassed enormous wealth by discounting soldiers' bills. In connexion with the history of this, the first Lord Holland, a popular error falls to the ground. The general belief holds that Nell Gwyn caused Charles II. to establish Chelsea Hospital, but there is no doubt that its foundation was owing mainly to Fox, who, as some men build churches to expiate their crimes, devoted a large sum out of his enormous gains at the expense of the army to create this asylum for aged and decayed soldiers, previously reduced to constant street beggary. It is said that he built to the extent of 20,000/. of this college, as it is termed; and that he endowed it with 5,000l. per annum as maintenance. THE FIRST DUKE OF ST. ALBAN'S. The first Duke, the reader need scarcely be told, was Charles Beauclerk, illegitimate son of Charles II., by his Majesty's celebrated mistress, Eleanor Gwyn. [The family motto, Auspicium melioris avi, (a pledge of better times,) is a strange conceit.] The tradition of his first elevation to the Peerage is not so well known. Charles one day going to see Nelly Gwyn, and the little boy being in the room, the king wanted to speak to him. His mother called to him, " Come hither, you little bastard, and speak to your father." "Nay, Nelly," said the King, "do not give the child such a name." "Your Majesty," replied Nelly, "has given me no other name by which I may call him!" Upon this the WAS CHARLES II. POISONED? 175 King conferred on him the name of Beauclerk, and created him Earl of Burford; and shortly before his death made him Duke of St. Alban's. He served for some years in the Imperial armies, and gained great honour by his gallantry at the assault of Belgrade in 1688. He afterwards served under King William, who made him Captain of the band of Gentlemen Pensioners, and a Lord of the Bedchamber. Queen Anne continued him in these posts till the Tory ministry came in, when he resigned. He was, however, restored to them by George I., who also gave him the Garter. He died at the age of fifty-five, May 11th, 1726; having married Diana, heiress of Aubrey de Vere, last Earl of Oxford. HOUSES IN WHICH NELL GWYN IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED. "There are more houses pointed out," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his piquant Story," in which Nell Gwyn is said to have lived, than sites of palaces belonging to King John, hunting-lodges believed to have sheltered Queen Elizabeth, or mansions and sporting-houses in which Oliver Cromwell resided or put up. She is said by some to have been born at Hereford; by others, at London; and Oxford, it is found, has a fair claim to be considered as her birthplace. But the houses in which she is said to have lived far exceed in number the cities contending for the honour of her birth. She is believed by some to have lived at Chelsea, by others at Bagnigge Wells; Highgate, and Walworth, and Filberts, near Windsor, are added to the list of reputed localities. A staring inscription in the Strand, in London, instructs the curious passenger that a house at the upper end of a narrow court was formerly a dairy of Nell Gwyn.' I have been willing to believe in one and all of these conjectural residences, but after a long and careful inquiry, I am obliged to reject them all. Her early life was spent in Drury-lane and Lincoln's-inn-Fields; her latter life in Pall Mall, and in Burford House, in the town of Windsor. ["The Prince of Wales is lodged (at Windsor) in the Princess of Denmark's house, which was Mrs. Ellen Gwyn's." Letter, Aug. 14, 1688, Ellis Corresp. ii. 118.] The rate-books of the parish of St. Martin's- in-the-Fields record her residence in Pall Mall from 1670 to her death; and the site of her house in Windsor may be established, if other evidence were wanting, by the large engraving after Knyff.” WAS CHARLES II. POISONED? It was the belief of many at the time that Charles II. was poisoned. It was common then and in the preceding age to attribute the sudden death of any great man to poison; but in Charles's case the suspicions are not without authority. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, says: "The most knowing and the most deserving of all his physicians did not only believe him poisoned, but thought himself so too, not long after, for 176 FORTUNES OF THE HOUSE OF STUART. having declared his opinions a little too boldly." (Buckingham's Works, vol. ii.) Bishop Patrick (Autobiography,) strengthens the supposition from the testimony of Sir Thomas Mellington, who sat with the King for three days, and never went to bed for three nights. Lord Chesterfield (Letters to his Son), the grandson to the Earl of Chesterfield, who was with Charles at his death, states positively that the King was poisoned. The Duchess of Portsmouth, when in England in 1699, is said to have told Lord Chancellor Cowper that Charles II. was poisoned at her house by one of her footmen in a dish of chocolate; and Fox had heard a somewhat similar report from the family of his mother, who was grand-daughter to the Duchess. This historical evidence is, however, invalidated by more recent investigation. Charles II., according to the account of his physician, Sir C. Scarborough, had just risen from his bed when he experienced an unusual sensation in his head, shortly after which he fell down speechless, and without power of motion. An army surgeon, who happened to be at hand, bled him to the extent of 16 ounces; after which, on the arrival of the royal physician, his Majesty was cupped, and other remedies used—such as an emetic, purgatives, &c.; but he expired on the fourth day. Had there been safety in a multitude of councillors, the King's life must have been preserved, for Sir Henry Halford found the signatures of no less than fourteen physicians to one of the prescriptions. Among the remedies prescribed when the King was sinking was the spiritus cranii humani, 25 drops, which certainly has been improved upon in our modern preparations of ammonia. Buckingham and Halifax, the two men who, perhaps, were best acquainted with Charles II., both declared he was a deist. "His subsequent conversion to Catholicism,” says Buckle, “is exactly analogous to the increased devotion of Louis XIV. during the later years of his life. In both cases, superstition was the natural refuge of a worn-out and discontented libertine, who had exhausted all the resources of the lowest and most grovelling pleasures." On examining King Charles's head, a copious effusion of lymph was found in the ventricles and at the base of the cranium, from which Sir Henry Halford was disposed to think that the King might have been still further bled with advantage. It is quite evident from Sir Henry's account that Charles II. died of apoplexy-the only too probable consequence of his excesses and consequently, that his indifference to the solicitations of those about him on religious matters can only, with charity, be attributed to the effects of his disease. STRANGE FORTUNES OF THE HOUSE OF STUART. Since the days of the great Theban and Pelopid Houses of Greece, whose wars formed the staple of Athenian tragedy, there has been no family occupying or allied to a throne so incessantly haunted by calamity as the House of Stuart. Yet the last lineal heir of this doomed race was a peaceable, inoffensive gentleman, who attained almost to THE HOUSE OF STUART. 66 177 Priam's age with but few of Priam's infelicities. Henry Benedict Maria Clement was the second and youngest son of "the old Pretender." He was born in March, 1725, and died in June, 1807. Almost without a metaphor he may be said to have pertained to two different worlds, since he had nearly attained to the Psalmist's span of life when the crowning misfortune of his life overtook him, and meanwhile witnessed the final acts of the Europe which the French Revolution swept away. His Memoirs read like those of an antediluvian. In July, 1740, the poet Gray saw him at Florence, then in his sixteenth year, dancing incessantly all night long at a ball given by the Count Patrizii, and describes him as having more spirit than his elder brother." He was no further concerned with the events of 1745 than "in joining the troops assembled at Dunkirk to support his brother's operations in Scotland." Two years later, both his dancing and his active life came to an end, since he was then invested with a Cardinal's hat by Pope Benedict XIV., and passed the next fifty years of his life in the performance of the duties of religion. On the death of his brother Charles, in 1788, the only step which he took to assert his right to the British throne was to cause a paper to be drawn up, in which his rightful claims were insisted on; while at the same time he ordered a medal to be struck, with the inscription-" Henricus Nonus, Angliæ Rex" on the obverse; and the pathetic words Dei Gratia, Sed Non Voluntate Hominum on the reverse." 66 But this titular king was not destined to entire exemption from the woes of his race. He had impaired his once ample means by aiding Pius VI. to make up the sum levied on him by Napoleon. This, however, was only the beginning of sorrows. In 1798, the French attacked his palace in the neighbourhood of Rome, and compelled him to fly, an infirm and almost destitute man, at first to Padua, and subsequently to Venice. His necessities were relieved in 1800 by the occupant of his throne; and in a letter, breathing both Christian resignation and Royal dignity, he acknowledges that Henry the Ninth accepted from the hands of George III. an annual pension of 4000l. In return, the Cardinal bequeathed to George IV., then Prince of Wales, the crown jewels which, one hundred and twenty years before, his grandfather had carried off with him in his flight from England. Among these relics was the "George," which his great-grandfather had consigned to Bishop Juxon on the scaffold, uttering the valedictory "Remember." And so departed from earth and its troubles the last scion of the House of Stuart.-Saturday Review. ENGLISH ADHERENTS OF THE HOUSE OF STUART. A Correspondent of Notes and Queries, 3rd S.,No. 294, observes that the English adherents of the House of Stuart have been underrated in their services in favour of the Scotch and Irish followers of the same noble house. One may instance General Monk's great service in restoring King Charles II. Next in order comes the Duke of Berwick, N 178 KINGS AND PRETENDERS. whose successful enterprise in setting the crown of Spain on the rightful claimant's head, the Duke of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV., made the Bourbon family compact possible. Then Lord Chatham's (who, under the name of patriot, was, no doubt, a concealed Jacobite ; his frequent attacks upon the employment of Hanoverian troops in this country show his leaning) measure in attacking Canada, and taking it from the French, resulted in France and Spain joining to support American independence, and wrested the American Colonies-now the fine country of the United States-out of the hands of the House of Hanover. "Washington was the descendant of a royalist who fought for King Charles I.; and Lord Mahon mentions in his History of England, that when the Scotch in the neighbourhood of New York, offered to raise the Standard of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a paper among the Stuart papers states, that his answer was for them to mind their own business-that is, that the then representative of the Stuart family wished them to side with Washington, which no doubt they did. 6 "And lastly, let us not forget Dean Swift, whose Drapier Letters to the People of Ireland, kept them from a useless insurrection, and paved the way, with William Pitt's Union of England and Ireland, to the measure, afterwards carried by Daniel O'Connell, of Catholic Emancipation; seating the Irish Catholic members in the English House of Commons, thus creating a powerful body of Irish Catholic members in support of the English Catholics, always great adherents of the House of Stuart. This measure (the Catholic Emancipation) would have been of no use if William Pitt, the worthy son of Lord Chatham, had not, by the Union of Ireland with England, abolished the Irish Parliament, because Ireland was commanded by the English Fleet." KINGS AND PRETENDERS. A King by Act of Parliament, however essential to the liberties of a nation, is a prosaic sort of being; but a king by Right Divine presents much that is attractive to persons who weigh events and characters in the scales of sentiment. Apollo himself would have failed had he composed ballads in honour of a German Elector, stricken in years and dressed in snuff-coloured broadcloth; while even the bellman's verses rang well when a young Prince in plaid and bonnet was their theme. Had Charles I. not been drawn by Vandyke, or had he died before the raising of the standard at Nottingham, it is possible that we should esteem him a very commonplace person. His address was embarrassed, his figure was puny, he was slightly lame, and his manner was sullen and ungracious. But Charles in armour, belted and plumed, and surrounded by the gallant gentlemen of his realm, riding in triumph to Barnet, or reviewing his squadrons on the morning of Marston Moor, becomes an object of interest even to those who lean to Oliver and his Ironsides; and it needed only a tragic fate to convert this long unpopular Prince into a hero and a martyr. A similar fortune, in various degrees, attended his posterity, enthroned or exiled. There was, indeed, little |