Part 11 (2/2)
[Footnote 36: Macpherson, _Hanoverian Papers_.]
[Footnote 37: Carte MSS. In the Bodleian.]
Miss Oglethorpe also knew that Sir Thomas Hanmer and Bishop Atterbury were the two persons who sent the messenger (mentioned only as Sir C.P. in the Carte Papers) to warn Ormond to escape to France in 1715.
Women seem to have managed the whole political machine in those days, as the lengthy and mysterious letters of 'Mrs. White,' 'Jean Murray,'
and others in the Carte MSS. testify.
We are not much concerned with the brothers of the Oglethorpe girls, but the oldest, Theophilus, turned Jacobite. That he had transferred his allegiance and active service to King James is proved by his letters from Paris to James, and to Gualterio in 1720 and 1721.[38]
According to the second report on the Stuart Papers at Windsor, he was created a baron by James III in 1717. In 1718 he was certainly outlawed, for his younger brother, James Edward (the famous General Oglethorpe), succeeded to the Westbrook property in that year.
[Footnote 38: Gualterio MSS. Add. MSS. British Museum.]
In July 1714 f.a.n.n.y Oglethorpe, now about nineteen, turns up as an active politician. The Chevalier at Bar and his adherents in Paris, Scotland, and London, were breathlessly waiting for the death of Queen Anne, which was expected to restore him to the throne of his ancestors. f.a.n.n.y had been brought up a Protestant by her mother in England, under whose auspices she had served her apprentices.h.i.+p to plotting. Then she came to France, but f.a.n.n.y cannot have been Thackeray's 'Queen Oglethorpe' at Bar-le-Duc. In the first place, she was not there; in the second, a lady of Lorraine was reigning monarch.[39]
[Footnote 39: Wolff, _Odd Bits of History_ (1844), pp. 1-58.]
With the fall of Oxford in 1714 ended Anne's chief opportunity of serving her King. The historian therefore turns to her sister Eleanor, who had been with her in the f.a.n.n.y Shaftoe affair, but remained in France. Penniless as she was, Eleanor's beauty won the heart of the Marquis de Mezieres, a great n.o.ble, a man over fifty, ugly, brave, misshapen. Theirs, none the less, was a love match, as the French Court admiringly proclaimed. 'The frog-faced' Marquis, the vainest of men, was one of the most courageous. Their daughters became the Princesses de Montauban and de Ligne, whose brilliant marriages caused much envy. Of their sons we shall hear later. Young f.a.n.n.y Oglethorpe, a girl of twenty in 1715, resided with her sister Eleanor (Madame de Mezieres), and now Bolingbroke, flying from the Tower, and become the Minister of James, grumbles at the presence of f.a.n.n.y, and of Olive Trant, among the conspirators for a Restoration. Olive, the Regent's mistress, was 'the great wheel of the machine,' in which f.a.n.n.y 'had her corner,' at Saint Germains. 'Your female teazers,' James calls them in a letter to Bolingbroke. Not a word is said of a love affair.
How the Fifteen ended we all know. Ill-managed by Mar, perhaps betrayed by Bolingbroke, the rising collapsed. Returning to France, James dismissed Bolingbroke and retired to Avignon, thence to Urbino, and last to Rome. In 1719 he describes 'Mrs. Oglethorpe's letters' as politically valueless, and full of self-justifications, and 'old stories.' He answers them only through his secretary; but in 1722 he consoled poor Anne by making her a Countess of Ireland. Anne's bolt was shot, she had had her day, but the day of her fair sisters was dawning. Mr. John Law, of Lauriston _soi-disant_, had made England too hot to hold him. His great genius for financial combinations was at this time employed by him in gleek, trick-track, quadrille, whist, loo, ombre, and other pastimes of mingled luck and skill. In consequence of a quarrel about a lady, Mr. Law fought and slew Beau Wilson, that mysterious person, who, from being a poverty-stricken younger son, hanging loose on town, became in a day, no man knows how, the richest and most splendid of blades. The Beau's secret died with him; but Law fled to France with 100,000 crowns in his valise. Here the swagger, courage, and undeniable genius of Mr. Law gained the favour of the Regent d'Orleans, the Bank and the Mississippi Scheme were floated, the Rue Quincampoix was crowded, France swam in a dream of gold, and the friends of Mr. Law, 'coming in on the ground-floor,'
or buying stock before issue at the lowest prices, sold out at the top of the market.
Paris was full of Jacobites from Ireland and Scotland--Seaforth, Tullibardine, Campbell of Glendaruel, George Kelly (one of the Seven Men of Moidart), Nick Wogan, gayest and bravest of Irishmen, all engaged in a pleasing plan for invading England with a handful of Irish soldiers in Spanish service. The Earl Marischal and Keith his brother (the Field-Marshal) came into Paris broken men, fleeing from Glens.h.i.+el. _They_ took no Mississippi shares, but George Kelly, f.a.n.n.y Oglethorpe, and Olive Trant, all _lies_ with Law and Orleans, 'plunged,' and emerged with burdens of gold. f.a.n.n.y for her share had 800,000 livres, and carried it as her dowry to the Marquis des Marches, whom she married in 1719, and so ceased conspiring. The Oglethorpe girls, for penniless exiles, had played their cards well.
f.a.n.n.y and Eleanor had won n.o.ble husbands. Poor Anne went back to G.o.dalming, where--in the very darkest days of the Jacobite party, when James was a heart-broken widower, and the star of Prince Charles's natal day shone only on the siege of Gaeta--she plotted with Thomas Carte, the historian.
The race of 1715 was pa.s.sing, the race of 1745 was coming on, and touching it is to read in the brown old letters the same loyal names--Floyds, Wogans, Gorings, Trants, Dillons, Staffords, Sheridans, the Scots of course, and the French descendants of the Oglethorpe girls. Eleanor's infants, the de Mezieres family, had been growing up in beauty and honour, as was to be expected of the children of the valiant Marquis and the charming Eleanor. Their eldest daughter, Eleonore Eugenie, married Charles de Rohan, Prince de Montauban, younger brother of the Duc de Montbazon, whose wife was the daughter of the Duc de Bouillon and Princess Caroline Sobieska, and so first cousin to the sons of James III. That branch of Oglethorpes thus became connected with the royal family, which would go far towards rousing their hereditary Jacobitism when the Forty-Five cast its shadow before.
In May 1740, Madame de Mezieres took it into her head to run over to England, and applied to Newcastle for a pa.s.s, through Lady Mary Herbert of Powis--a very _suspect_ channel! The Minister made such particular inquiries as to the names of the servants she intended to bring, that she changed her mind and did not go. One wonders what person purposed travelling in her suite whose ident.i.ty dared not stand too close scrutiny. There was a brave and eager Prince of Wales over the water, nearly twenty, who had some years ago fleshed his maiden sword with honour, and who was in secret correspondence on his own account with his father's English supporters. Could he have had some such plan even then of putting fate to the touch? He is reported in c.o.xe's _Walpole_ to have been in Spain, in disguise, years before.
In 1742 Eleanor had the sorrow of losing a daughter in a tragic way.
She had recently become a canoness of Povesay, a very n.o.ble foundation, indeed, in Lorraine, where the Sisters wore little black ribbons on their heads which they called 'husbands.' She was twenty-five, very pretty, and most irreligiously devoted to shooting and hunting. Though these chapters of n.o.ble canonesses are not by any means strict after the use of ordinary convents, there were serious expostulations made when the novice insisted upon constantly carrying a gun and shooting. She fell one day when out with her gun as usual.
It went off and killed her on the spot.
Whatever Eleanor aimed at in 1740 by a journey to England, was baulked by Newcastle's caution. In 1743 the indefatigable lady, 'and a Scottish lord,' submitted a scheme to Louis XV., but it was thwarted by de Noailles. Then Prince Charles rode secretly out of Rome, landed, like Napoleon, at Frejus, and at the expedition of Dunkirk met the Earl Marischal and young Glengarry.
The Chevalier de Mezieres, too, Eleanor's son, went to Dunkirk with Saxe to embark for England. There was a great storm, and the s.h.i.+ps went aground. Several officers and soldiers jumped into the sea, and some were drowned. The Chevalier de Mezieres came riding along the sh.o.r.e, to hear that a dear friend was drowning. The sea was going back, but very heavy, and de Mezieres rode straight into the raging waters to seek his friend. The waves went over his head and carried away his hat, but he persevered until he had seized a man. He dragged him ash.o.r.e, to find it was a common soldier. He hastened back, and saved several soldiers and two or three officers. His friend, after all, had never been in danger.
The Saxe expedition never sailed, so Eugene de Mezieres went to beat Hanoverians elsewhere, and was wounded at Fontenoy. Consequently he could not follow the Prince to Scotland. His mother, Eleanor, plunged into intrigue for the forward party (Prince Charlie's party), distrusted by James at Rome. 'She is a mad woman,' said James. She and Carte, the historian, were working up an English rising to join the Prince's Scottish adventure, but were baffled by James's cautious, helpless advisers. Then came the Forty-Five. Eleanor was not subdued by Culloden: the undefeated old lady was a guest at the great dinner, with the splendid new service of plate, which the Prince gave to the Princesse de Talmond and his friends in 1748. He was braving all Europe, in his hopeless way, and refusing to leave France, in accordance with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. When he was imprisoned at Vincennes, Eleanor was threatened. Catholic as she was, she frankly declared that Prince Charles had better declare himself a Protestant, and marry a German Protestant Princess. He therefore proposed to one, a day or two before he disappeared from Avignon, in February 1749, and he later went over to London, and embraced the Anglican faith.
It was too late; but Eleanor Oglethorpe was not beaten. In October 1752 'the great affair' was being incubated again. Alexander Murray, of the Elibank family, exasperated by his imprisonment for a riot at the Westminster election, had taken service with Prince Charles. He had arranged that a body of young Jacobite officers in foreign service, with four hundred Highlanders under young Glengarry, should overpower the Guards, break into St. James's Palace, and seize King George; while the Westminster mob, Murray's lambs, should create an uproar. Next day Glengarry would post north, the Highlanders would muster at the House of Touch, and Charles would appear among his beloved subjects. The very medal to commemorate the event was struck, with its motto, _Laetamini Cives_. The Prince was on the coast in readiness--nay, if we are not mistaken, the Prince was in Westbrook House at G.o.dalming!
This we conjecture because, in that very budding time of the Elibank Plot, Newcastle suddenly discovered that the unwearied Eleanor Oglethorpe, Marquise de Mezieres, was in England,--had arrived secretly, without any pa.s.sport. He tracked her down at Westbrook House, that lay all desolate and deserted, the windows closed, the right-of-way through the grounds illegally shut up. General Oglethorpe after 1746 had abandoned his home, for he had been court-martialled on a charge of not attacking Cluny and Lord George Murray, when the Highlanders stood at bay, at Clifton, and defeated c.u.mberland's advanced-guard. The general was acquitted, but, retiring to his wife's house at Carham, he deserted Westbrook Place.
The empty house, retired in its woodlands, on the Portsmouth road, convenient for the coast, was the very place for Prince Charles to lurk in, while Murray and Glengarry cleared the way to the throne. And so, in fact, we find Eleanor Oglethorpe secretly ensconced at Westbrook Place while the plot ripened, and local tradition still shows the vault in which 'the Pretender' could take refuge if the house was searched. All this, again, coincides with the vague legend of the tall, brown-haired ghost who haunts Westbrook Place,--last home of a last hope.
The young Glengarry, as we know, carried all the tale of the plot to the English Prime Minister, while he made a merit of his share in it with James at Rome. Eleanor, too, was run to earth at Westbrook Place.
She held her own gallantly. As to having no pa.s.sport, she reminded Newcastle that she _had_ asked for a pa.s.sport twelve years ago, in 1740. She was now visiting England merely to see her sister Anne, who 'could not outlast the winter,' but who did so, none the less. Nor could Anne have been so very ill, for on arriving at Dover in October Eleanor did not hasten to Anne's sick-bed. Far from that, she first spent an agreeable week--with whom? With my Lady Westmoreland, at Mereworth, in Kent. Now, Lord Westmoreland was the head of the English Jacobites, and at Mereworth, according to authentic family tradition, Prince Charles held his last Council on English ground. The whole plot seems delightfully transparent, and it must be remembered that in October Newcastle knew nothing of it; he only received Glengarry's information early in November.
The letter of Madame de Mezieres, with her account of her innocent proceedings, is written in French exactly like that of the Dowager Countess of Castlewood, in _Esmond_. She expressed her special pleasure in the hope of making Newcastle's personal acquaintance. She went to Bath; she made Lady Albemarle profoundly uncomfortable about her lord's famous mistress in Paris, and no doubt she plunged, on her return, into the plots with Prussia for a Restoration. In the Privy Council, in November 1753, her arrest was decided on. Newcastle jots down, on a paper of notes: 'To seize Madame de Mezieres with her papers. No expense to be spared to find the Pretender's son. Sir John Gooderich to be sent after him. Lord Anson to have frigates on the Scotch and Irish coasts.'
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