Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/205

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

graphy of Sir John Bramston, ed. J. W. Bramston for the Camden Society, 1845. The revolution period in particular is illustrated by John Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire's fragmentary Some Account of the Revolution, in his Works (1723), ii. 69–102; and, locally, by the Earl of Balcarres's Memoirs touching the Revolution in Scotland, 1688–90, presented to the king at St. Germains, 1690, ed. (with Introduction) by Lord Lindsay for the Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1841. For the life of James in France the principal authorities are the Mémoires of St.-Simon, ed. Chéruel and A. Regnier fils, 20 vols. Paris, 1873–7; the Journal du Marquis de Dangeau, ed. Feuillet de Conches, 19 vols. Paris, 1854–60; Mme. de la Fayette's Mémoires de la Cour de France, 1688 et 1689, recently republished in E. Assé's Mémoires de Mme. de la Fayette, Paris, 1890; the Mémoires du Duc de Berwick, vol. i., collection Petitot et Monmerqué, vol. lxv. Paris, 1828, which also contains the Memoirs of Mme. de la Fayette; together with the Lexington Papers, ed. H. Manners Sutton, 1851, and the various collections of letters of Charlotte Elizabeth, duchess of Orleans, and of the Electress Sophia, who thought that in James saintliness was next to childishness. The transactions during Middleton's secretaryship are narrated in A. E. Biscoe's The Earls of Middleton (1876). A series of papers illustrating Irish affairs in 1689 is included in Somers Tracts, xi. 426 seqq. The general political tracts throwing light on the biography of James II are legion; many of them are among the State Tracts printed in the Reign of Charles II, published collectively in 1689, and in vol. i. of the State Tracts published on occasion of the late Revolution in 1688 and during the Reign of William III, 1725. The verse satires and libels by Denham, Marvell, and others, of which the duke was a principal victim, were collected in Poems on State Affairs (here cited from ed. 1703). The small but scandalous Secret History of the Reigns of Charles II and James II is dated 1690; the more elaborate and bolder Secret History of Whitehall, attributed to David Jones (fl. 1676–1720) [q. v.], was issued in three series, dated (i. and ii.) 1693 and (iii.) 1717. The whig History of the Desertion (1689; reprinted in State Tracts, 1705), and the Quadricunium Jacobi (1689) are publications of a different type; the Secret History of Europe (4th ed. 3 vols. 1724) contains much valuable, together with much questionable, material. In the Tragical History of the Stuarts (1717) James's reign occupies only nine pages. A sketch of James's life was put together during his residence in France by his biographer, Father Saunders; and on this was based a French biography by the Franciscan father Bretonneau (Paris, 1703). Another life by Father Walden is said to have been destroyed in the Benedictine church at Paris. Some curious information is contained in the Supplement to the loosely compiled Life of James II, late King of England (3rd ed. 8vo, 1705); and other anecdotical matter will be found in vol. iii. of J. H. Jesse's Memoirs of the Court of England under the Stuarts (3 vols. ed. 1876). C. J. Fox's history produced the Observations of G. Rose (1809) and a Vindication by S. Heywood, 1811. Among older histories Echard's and Kennett's (vol. iii. in both cases) are of occasional use; Echard also wrote a separate narrative of the revolution of 1688 (1725). Macaulay's History is unduly severe on James's character. Hallam's Constitutional History is little more favourable.]

A. W. W.


JAMES FRANCIS EDWARD STUART (1688–1766), prince of Wales, known as the Chevalier de St. George, and also as the Old Pretender, only son of James II, by his second wife, Mary of Modena, was born at St. James's Palace, London, on 10 June 1688. Five years had elapsed since the queen had given birth to a child; her previous children had not survived infancy, and the king's designs for the re-establishment of catholicism made the birth of an heir highly desirable. When thanksgiving was appointed for the queen's pregnancy open incredulity was expressed, and when the birth of a male child was announced the previous suspicions of deception became convictions. The publication, ‘by his Majesty's Command,’ of the ‘Depositions made in Council, on Monday, 22nd October 1688, concerning the birth of the Prince of Wales,’ simply suggested the concoction of the ‘warming-pan’ fiction. More careful precautions might have been taken to provide evidence; the information that has led posterity to acquit the king of the fraud imputed to him was in substance always available (cf. Lingard, Hist. of Engl. x. 167; Burnet, Hist. of his own Time, ed. 1823, iii. 239 et seq.) But the nation was prepared to disbelieve almost any evidence. When King James set out for Salisbury to oppose the march of William of Orange towards London, the infant prince was sent to the fortress of Portsmouth, then under the command of the Duke of Berwick (Clarke, Life of James II, pp. 220–1), but as soon as James had decided on flight from his kingdom the child was brought back secretly to Whitehall on 9 Dec. (ib. p. 237), and along with his mother was sent by night to Gravesend, whence they crossed to Calais, and proceeded to St. Germains (cf. Macaulay, Hist. of England, i. 597). In Clarke's ‘Life of James II’ (ii. 574) it is stated that subsequently the king of France ‘had, underhand, prevailed with the Prince of Orange to consent that the Prince of Wales should succeed to the throne of England after his death,’ and this is confirmed by Dalrymple, who indicates that William