Stuart dynasty

xii PREFACE.
edit this priceless collection, failing health however
precluding the necessary sojourn in London.*
The additions to historical knowledge hitherto
derived from the Stuart Papers are three. First,
Sheridan's memorandum containing the views of
James II. upon Ireland previous to the siege of
Londonderry and the campaign of the Boyne, a
source out of which Lord Macaulay compiled several
pages of his history,f eliciting the fact that in this
crisis of his fortunes the last Stuart king declined to
appoint an Irish Lord Lieutenant, fearing for the
integrity of Great Britain. Secondly, the letters
which appear in the Appendix to Lord Stanhope's
History ; and thirdly, the volume of correspondence
between the Chevalier de St. George and Bishop
Atterbury which appeared in 1847, edited by the
late librarian to Her Majesty, Mr. Glover.
The descriptions of and allusions to passing events
in the Stuart Papers now selected for publication
indicate the development of that Jacobite movement
which resulted in the Bebellion of 1715. The more
we learn of this epoch, the blacker and more numerous
seem the clouds which enveloped the throne of
George I., and threatened to darken permanently
the hopes of his dynasty. The Stuart Letters show
that in 1715, Marlborough, the Captain-General,
thought so gravely of the situation, that with his
accustomed adroitness he had both striven to dis-
count that long chain of offences registered against
* Lockhart's ' Life of Sir Walter Scott,' edition 1836, p. 706.
t Macaulay's ' History of England,' first edition, vol. ii. p. 137.
y