Descendants of the Stuarts

126 THE DESCENDANTS
This assertion, though correct in the phraseology of
royalty, is not so in the sense usually attributed to
it, which will he perceived when we state, that, in
the phraseology of royalty is understood by the
words, " the Queen's family," all the princes and
princesses descending from her Majesty's direct
ancestress, the Princess Sophia; whilst the vulgar
acceptation of the term circumscribes it to her
Majesty's immediate relatives, the children of her
grandfather, George III.* Hence the miscom-
prehension innocently enough has arisen. The
Duke of Buckingham claims only after all the
descendants of the Princess Sophia, and as they count
at the present time about a hundred in number, his
prospective vista of royalty is a contingency which
(humanly speaking) can never be realized.
The Ten Members of the Royal Pamily of England
who were excluded the Throne of Great Britain by
their non-compliance with the Protestant Church
as by law established, were,
I.
James, Prince of "Wales, — son and heir of King
James II., born the tenth of June, 1688, who
* A case in point suggests itself, familiar doubtless to our readers ;
we allude to that afforded by the late ex-king of the French, Louis
Philippe, who, in royal phraseology, was always termed the cousin of
Charles X., whereas, in common parlance, he was not even distantly
related to him; his sole bond of aflBnity being his descent from one
common ancestor Louis XIII. If we might be allowed to coin language,
apparently unknown to Johnson, we should designate him as a " ninth
cousin " of Charles Dix.