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me with the motives which had induced him to hazard a journey to England at this juncture. The impatience of his friends who were in exile had formed a scheme which was impracticable; but although it had been as feasible as they had represented it to him, yet no preparation had been made, nor was any thing ready to carry it into execution. He was soon convinced that he had been deceived, and therefore, after a stay in London of five days only, he returned to the place from whence he came. As I had some long conversations with him here, and for some years after held a constant correspondence with him, not indeed by letters but by messengers, who were occasionally despatched to him; and as during this intercourse I informed myself of all particulars relating to him and of his whole conduct, both in public and private life, I am perhaps as well qualified as any man in England to draw a just character of him; and I impose this task on myself not only for the information of posterity, but for the sake of many worthy gentlemen whom I shall leave behind me, who are at present attached to his name, and who have formed their ideas of him from public report, but more particularly from those great actions which he performed in Scotland. As to his person, he is tall and well-made, but stoops a little, owing perhaps to the great fatigue which he underwent in his northern expedition. He has an handsome face and good eyes; (I think his busts, which about this time were commonly sold in London, are more like VOL. LXI.

him than any of his pictures which I have yet seen ;*) but in a polite company he would not pass for a genteel man. He hath a quick apprehension, and speaks French, Italian, and English, the last with a little of a foreign accent. As to the rest, very little care seems to have been taken of his education. He had not made the belles lettres or any of the finer arts his study, which surprised me much, considering his preceptors, and the noble opportunities he must have always had in that nursery of all the elegant and liberal arts and science. But I was still more astonished, when I found him unacquainted with the history and constitution of England, in which he ought to have been very early instructed. I never heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiments, the certain indications of a great soul and a good heart; or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortunes of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause.t But the most

*He came one evening to my lodgings and drank tea with me: my servant, after he was gone, said to me, "that he thought my new visitor very like Prince Charles." 66 Why," said I, " have you ever seen Prince Charles ?""No, sir," replied the fellow, "but this gentleman, whoever he may be, exactly resembles the

and are said to be busts of Prince busts which are sold in Red-lion-street, Charles." The truth is, these busts were taken in plaster of Paris from his face.

+ As to his religion, he is certainly free from all bigotry and superstition, and would readily conform to the religion of the country. With the Catholics he is a Catholic; with the Pro2 G

most odious part of his character is his love of money, a vice which I do not remember to have been imputed by our historians to any of his ancestors, and is the certain index of a base and little mind. I know it may be urged in his vindication, that a prince in exile ought to be an economist. And so he ought; but nevertheless his purse should be always open, as long as there is any thing in it to relieve the necessities of his friends and adherents. King Charles the second, during his banishment, would have shared the last pistole in his pocket with his little family. But I have known this gentleman with two thousand Louis-d'ors in his strong box pretend he was in great distress, and borrow money from a lady in Paris, who was not in affluent circumstances. His most faithful servants, who had closely attended him in all his difficulties, were ill rewarded. Two Frenchmen, who had left every thing to follow his fortune who had been sent as couriers through half Europe, and executed their commissions with great punctuality and exactness, were suddenly discharged without any faults imputed to them, or any recompense for their past service. To this spirit of avarice may be added his insolent manner of treating his immediate depend

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ants, very unbecoming a great prince, and a sure prognostic of what might be expected from him if ever he acquired sovereign power. Sir J. Harrington, and colonel Goring, who suffered themselves to be imprisoned with him, rather than desert him, when the rest of his family and attendants fled, were afterwards obliged to quit his service on account of his illiberal behaviour. But there is one part of his character, which I must particularly insist on, since it occasioned the defection of the most powerful of his friends and adherents in England, and by some concurring accidents totally blasted all his hopes and pretensions. When he was in Scotland, he had a mistress, whose name is Walkenshaw, and whose sister was at that time, and is still housekeeper at Leicester House. Some years after he was released from his prison, and conducted out of France, he sent for this girl, who soon acquired such a dominion over him, that she was acquainted with all his schemes, and trusted with his most secret correspondence. As soon as this was known in England, all those persons of distinction, who were attached to him, were greatly alarmed; they imagined that this wench had been placed in his family by the English ministers; and, considering her sister's situation, they seemed to have some ground for their suspicion; wherefore they dispatched a gentleman to Paris, where the Prince then was, who had instructions to insist that Mrs. Walkenshaw should be removed to a convent for a certain term; but her gallant absolutely

refused

refused to comply with this demand; and although Mr. M'Namara, the gentleman who was sent to him, who has a natural eloquence, and an excellent understanding, urged the most cogent reasons, and used all the arts of persuasion to induce him to part with his mistress, and even proceeded so far as to assure him, according to his instructions, that an immediate interruption of all correspondence with his most powerful friends in England, and in short that the ruin of his interest, which was now daily increasing, would be the infallible consequence of his refusal; yet he continued inflexible, and all M‘Namara's intreaties and remonstrances were ineffectual.

M'Namara staid in Paris some days beyond the time prescribed him, endeavouring to reason the Prince into a better temper; but finding him obstinately persevere in his first answer, he took his leave with concern and indignation, saying, as he passed out, "what has your family done, Sir, thus to draw down the vengeance of heaven on every branch of it through so many ages?" It is worthy of remark, that in all the conferences which M'Namara had with the Prince on this occasion, the latter declared, that it was not a violent passion, or indeed any particular regard, which attached

* I believe he spoke truth when he declared he had no esteem for his northern mistress, although she has been his companion for so many years. She had no elegance of manners: and as they had both contracted an odious habit of drinking, so they exposed

him to Mrs. Walkenshaw, and that he could see her removed from him without any concern; but he would not receive directions in respect to his private conduct from any man alive. When McNamara returned to London, and reported the Prince's answer to the gentlemen who had employed him, they were astonished and confounded. However, they soon resolved on the measures which they were to pursue for the future, and determined no longer to serve a man who could not be persuaded to serve himself, and chose rather to endanger the lives of his best and most faithful friends, than part with an harlot, whom, as he often declared, he neither loved nor esteemed. If ever that old adage Quos Jupiter vult perdere, &c. could be properly applied to any person, whom could it so well fit as the gentleman of whom I have been speaking? for it is difficult by any other means to account for such a sudden infatuation. He was, indeed, soon afterwards made sensible of his misconduct, when it was too late to repair it for from this era may truly be dated the ruin of his cause; which, for the future," can only subsist in the N-n-ing congregations, which are generally formed of the meanest people, from whom no danger to the present government need ever be apprehended.

themselves very frequently, not only to their own family, but to all their neighbours. They often quarrelled and sometimes fought they were some of these drunken scenes which, probably, occasioned the report of his madness.

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apprehended. Before I close this article, I must observe, that during this transaction, my lord Mwas at Paris in the quality of Envoy from the Kof P. ; McNamara had directions to acquaint him with his commission: my lord Mnot in the least doubting the Prince's compliance with the request of his friends in England, determined to quit the K- of P's service as soon as his embassy was finished, and go into the Prince's family. This would have been a very fortunate circumstance to the Prince on all accounts, but more especially as nothing could be more agreeable to all those persons of figure and distinction, who were at that time so deeply engaged in his cause; for there was not one of all that number who would not have reposed an entire confidence in the honour and discretion of my lord M- - But how was this gentleman amazed, when he perceived the Prince's obstinacy and imprudence? who was resolved, by a strange fatality, to alienate the affections of his best friends, and put an absolute barrier to all his own hopes. From this time my lord M

would never concern himself in this cause; but prudently embraced the opportunity, through the K of P- 's interest of reconciling himself to the English government.

MR. HOWE.

[From King's Anecdotes.] About the year 1706, I knew one Mr. Howe, a sensible well

natured man, possessed of an estate of 700l. or 800l. per annum: he married a young lady of a good family in the west of England, her maiden name was Mallet; she was agreeable in her person and manners, and proved a very good wife. Seven or eight years after they had been married, he rose one morning very early, and told his wife he was obliged to go to the Tower to transact some particular business: the same day, at noon, his wife received a note from him, in which he informed her that he was under a necessity of going to Holland, and should probably be absent three weeks or a month. He was absent from her seventeen years, during which time she neither heard from him, or of him. The evening before he returned, whilst she was at supper, and with her some of her friends and relations, particularly one Dr. Rose, a physician, who had married her sister, a billet, without any name subscribed, was delivered to her, in which the writer requested the favour of her to give him a meeting the next evening in the Birdcagewalk, in St. James's Park. When she had read her billet, she tossed it to Dr. Rose, and laughing, "You see, brother," said she, "as old as I am, I have got a gallant." Rose, who perused the note with more attention, declared it to be Mr. Howe's handwriting,; this surprised all the company, and so much affected Mrs. Howe, that she fainted away; however, she soon recovered, when it was agreed that Dr. Rose and his wife, with the other gentlemen and ladies who

were

were then at supper, should attend Mrs. Howe the next evening to the Bird-cage Walk: they had not been there more than five or six minutes, when Mr. Howe came to them, and after saluting his friends, and embracing his wife, walked home with her, and they lived together in great harmony from that time to the day of his death. But the most curious part of my tale remains to be related. When Howe left his wife, they lived in a house in Jermyn-street, near St. James's church; he went no farther than to a little street in Westminster, where he took a room, for which he paid five or six shillings a week, and changing his name, and disguising himself by wearing a black wig (for he was a fair man), he remained in this habitation during the whole time of his absence. He had had two children by his wife when he departed from her, who were both living at that time: but they both died young in a few years after. However, during their lives, the second or third year after their father disappeared, Mrs. Howe was obliged to apply for an act of parliament to procure a proper settlement of her husband's estate, and a provision for herself out of it during his absence, as it was uncertain whether he was alive or dead: this act he suffered to be solicited and passed, and enjoyed the pleasure of reading the progress of it in the votes, in a little coffee-house, near his lodging, which he frequented. Upon his quitting his house and family in the manner I have mentioned,

Mrs. Howe at first imagined, as she could not conceive any other cause for such an abrupt elopement, that he had contracted a large debt unknown to her, and by that means involved himself in difficulties which he could not easily surmount; and for some days she lived in continual apprehensions of demands from creditors, of seizures, executions, &c. But nothing of this kind happened; on the contrary, he did not only leave his estate quite free and unencumbered, but he paid the bills of every tradesman with whom he had any dealings; and upon examining his papers, in due time after he was gone, proper receipts and discharges were found from all persons, whether tradesmen or others, with whom he had any manner of transactions or money concerns. Mrs. Howe, after the death of her children, thought proper to lessen her family of servants, and the expenses of her housekeeping; and therefore removed from her house in Jermyn-street to a little house in Brewer-street, near Golden-square. Just over against her lived one Salt, a cornchandler. About ten years after Howe's abdication, he contrived to make an acquaintance with Salt, and was at length in such a degree of intimacy with him, that he usually dined with Salt once or twice a week. From the room in which they eat, it was not difficult to look into Mrs. Howe's diningroom, where she generally sate and received her company; and Salt, who believed Howe to be a bachelor, frequently recommended his own wife to him as a suit

able

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