Stuarts

216 THE STUARTS
and at his dinner, and in the evening after his studys are done, and at
supper. But orders must be given not to let in all sorts of people without
distinction, and care must be taken that thos who are admitted may not
talk with the Prince too familiarly without observing that distance which
ought to be kept.
26. What times are allotted upon worke days for his book, must be
imployed upon Sundays and holy days by the Preceptor in Catechisme, reading
of good books, Christian doctrine, and the like.
27. The mony appointed for the particular use of our son must be
received by the Governor, who is to dispose and order the laying it out,
according to his discretion.
When James II. and VII. lay dying at St. Germains in 1701, the French
King went thither, attended by a splendid retinue, and thus addressed the
dying exile : " I come to tell your Majesty that whenever it shall please
God to take you from us, I will be to your son what I have been to you,
and will acknowledge him as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland " ;
and so at Versailles James III. and VIII., or the Chevalier St. George —
or call him what you will — was received as his father had been before him,
sat at the right hand of " the great Monarch " and wore the imperial purple
robe of mourning. But with this, and such like empty pomp and pageant,
it all ended. The insolence of Louis had, however, the effect of exciting
public indignation in this country to such a pitch that the Jacobites who
dared to make some demonstrations in London were driven from the streets
with yells and showers of stones ; thus the result of the recognition was
rather prejudicial than otherwise to James and his cause.
It would seem that soon after James II. died at St. Germains, a prey
to melancholy and disappointed hopes, his son must have engaged in
schemes to recover the throne of England, and we find him, when he was
but fifteen years old, writing to Lord Lovat in 1703 in the tone of a
reigning monarch. This letter I reproduce.
These expectations and many more such as are foreshadowed in this
epistle came to naught. Years went by and nothing was done, till in 1708
Louis provided a fleet for the invasion of Scotland, which sailed for the
Firth of Forth ; but when Admiral Byng and the English fleet came in
sight, the invaders took to flight.
The general gloom and obscurity of the Chevalier's life was broken by