Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles. Lang Andrew

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СКАЧАТЬ will, I hope, open the eyes of the people who are blind to that Prince’s monstrous faults, if any such are still left amongst us, and I doubt not but it will save His Majesty the trouble of sending Sir C. Hanbury Williams or any other minister to that perfidious Court.

‘Hyndford.’

      This was all a mare’s nest; but Hyndford is for kidnapping the Prince. He writes:

‘Moscow: June 26, 1749.

      ‘My Lord, – Since the 19th inst., which was the date of my last letter to your Grace, I have been with the Chancellor, who made his excuses that he had not sooner communicated to me the intelligence which Mr. Gross, the Russian minister at Berlin, had sent him concerning the Pretender’s eldest son. The Chancellor confirmed all that I wrote to your Grace on the 19th upon that subject, and he told me that he had received a second letter from Mr. Gross, wherein that minister says that the Young Pretender had left the country house where he was, in the neighbourhood of Berlin, and had entirely disappeared, without its being hitherto possible for him, Mr. Gross, or Count Choteck, the Austrian minister, to find out the route he has taken, although it is generally believed that he is gone into Poland; and that now the King of Prussia and his ministers deny that ever the Pretender’s son was there, and take it mightily amiss of anybody that pretends to affirm it. I am sorry that the Russian troops are not now in Poland, for otherwise I believe it would have been an easy matter to prevail upon this Court to catch this young knight errant and to send him to Siberia, where he would not have been any more heard of; and if the Court of Dresden will enter heartily into such a scheme, it will not be impossible yet to apprehend him, and as it is very probable that the King of Prussia has sent him into Poland to make a party and breed confusion, it appears to be King Augustus’s interest to secure him.

‘Hyndford.’

      Many months later, on Feb. 2, 1749–1750, Lord Hyndford, writing from Hanover, retracted. The rumour of Charles’s presence at Berlin, he found, was started by Count de Choteck, the Austrian ambassador. In fact, Choteck used to meet a fair lady secretly in a garden near Berlin, and near the house of Field-Marshal Keith and his brother, Lord Marischal. Hard by was an inn, where a stranger lodged, a rich and handsome youth, whom Choteck, meeting, took for Prince Charles. He was really a young Polish gentleman, into whose reasons for retirement we need not examine.

      Frederick, in his mischievous way, wrote about all this from Potsdam, on June 24, 1749:

      ‘We have played a trick on Choteck; he spends much on spies, and, to prove that he is well served, he has taken it into his head that young Edouard, really at Venice, is at Berlin. He has been very busy over this, and no doubt has informed his Court.’

      On July 7, 1749, Frederick, in a letter to his minister at Moscow, said that only dense ignorance could credit the Berlin legend. 64

      These documents certainly demonstrate that the Prince fluttered the Courts, and that the Jacobite belief in English schemes to kidnap or murder him was not a mere mythical delusion. Only an opportunity was wanted. He had spared the Duke of Cumberland’s life, even after the horrors of Culloden. But Hanbury Williams knows a Pole who will waylay him; Hyndford wants to carry him off to Siberia. It was not once only, on the other hand, but twice at least, that Charles protected the Butcher, Cumberland. In 1746 he saved his enemy from Lochgarry’s open attempt. In 1747 (May 4), a certain Father Myles Macdonnell wrote from St. Germain to James in Rome. He dwells on the jealousies among the Jacobites, and particularly denounces Kelly, then a trusted intimate of Charles. Kelly, he says, is a drunkard, and worse! It was probably he who raised ‘a scruple’ against a scheme relating to ‘Cumberland’s hateful person.’ ‘Honest warrantable people from London’ came to Paris and offered ‘without either fee or reward’ to do the business. What was the ‘business,’ what measures were to be taken against ‘Cumberland’s hateful person’? Father Myles Macdonnell, writing to James, a Catholic priest to a Catholic King, does not speak of assassination. He talks of ‘the scruple raised against securing Cumberland’s person.’ ‘I suspect Parson Kelly of making a scruple of an action the most meritorious that could possibly be committed,’ writes Father Myles. 65 The talk of kidnapping, in such cases as those of Cumberland and Prince Charles – men of spirit and armed – is a mere blind. Murder is meant! Father Myles’s letter proves that (unknown to James in Rome) there was a London conspiracy to kill the Butcher, but Prince Charles again rejected the proposal. He was less ungenerous than Hyndford and Hanbury Williams. The amusing thing is that the English Government knew, quite as well as Father Macdonnell or James, all about the conspiracy to slay the Duke of Cumberland. Here is the information, which reached Mann through Rome. 66

From Mr. Thomas Chamberlayne to Sir H. Mann‘Capranica: November 18, 1747.

      ‘.. The family at Rome.. was informed, by one who arrived there last October from London, that there are twelve persons, whose names I could not learn, but none of distinction, that are formed in a club or society, and meet at the Nag’s Head in East Street, Holborn. They have bound themselves under most solemn oaths that this winter they will post themselves in different parts of the City of London mostly frequented by His Royal Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, in his night visits [to whom?], and are resolved to lay violent hands on his royal person. The parole among the different parties in their respective posts is The Bloody Butcher. They are all resolute fellows, who first declared at their entering in this conspiracy to despise death or torture. This motive is worthy of your care, so I am certain you’ll make proper use of it.

‘Thomas Chamberlayne.’

      If Charles afterwards attempted to repay in kind the attentions of his royal cousins, or of their ministers, this can hardly be reckoned inhuman. If he was fluttering the Courts, they – Prussia, Russia, France, Poland – were leading him the life of a tracked beast. They were determined to drive him into the Papal domains; even in Venice he was harried by spies. 67 On May 30, to retrace our steps, Mann, from Florence, reports that Charles has arrived at the Papal Nuncio’s in Venice, attended by one servant in the livery of the Duke of Modena. Walton adds that he has not a penny (June 6). Walton (July 11) writes from Florence that the Prince is reported from Venice to have paid assiduous court to the second daughter of the Duke of Modena, a needy potentate, but that he suddenly disappeared.’ 68 On Sept. 5, 1749, Walton says he is in France. On Sept. 26, Walton writes that he is offering his sword to the Czarina, who declines. He is at Lübeck, or (Oct. 3) at Avignon. On Oct. 20, Mann writes that, from Lübeck, Charles has asked the Imperial ambassador at Paris to implore the Kaiser to give him an asylum in his States. On Oct. 31, Mann only knows that the Pope and James ‘reciprocally ask each other news about’ the Prince. On Jan. 23, 1750, poor Mann is ‘quite at a loss.’ James receives letters from the Prince, but never with date of place, otherwise Mann would have been better informed. Walton hears that James believes Charles to be imprisoned in a French fortress. From Paris, Jan. 17, 1750, Albemarle wrote that he heard the Prince was in Berlin. The Prince later told Pickle that he had been in Berlin more than once, and, as we shall see, Frederick amused him with hopes of assistance. Kelly has left Charles’s followers in distress at Avignon. Kelly, in fact, received his congé; he was distrusted by the Earl Marischal, and Carte, the historian. On Jan. 28, Albemarle hears that Charles has been in Paris ‘under the habit of a Capuchine Fryar,’ and this was a disguise of his, according to Pickle.

      Meanwhile the French Government kept protesting their total ignorance. On April 3, 1750, Walton announces that James has had a long letter from Charles containing his plans and those of his adherents, for which he demands the Royal approval. James has sent a long letter to Charles by the courier of the Duc de Nivernais, the French ambassador in Rome. By the middle of June, James is reported by Walton to be full of hope, and to have heard excellent news. But these expectations were partly founded on a real scheme of Charles, partly on a strike of colliers at Newcastle. A mob orator there proclaimed СКАЧАТЬ