Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/419

A.D. 1726 pretended to become true to the cause of George, but in reality remained true to neither side, yet professing adhesion to both. Finally, he lost the confidence of the pretender, who dismissed him.

About this time Allan Cameron was sent into the Highlands to ascertain the disposition of the clans towards a new rising. He was assured that the zeal of the Jacobites had not cooled, but that no rising was to be expected unless a strong army was sent into England from abroad. But James's own conduct was, as usual, doing him more harm than all his friends could do him good. He had transferred his favour from Mar to colonel John Hay, brother of lord Kinnoul, whom he created earl of Inverness, and James Murray, son of lord Stormont, and brother-in-law of Hay. Murray was made governor of the prince and earl of Dunbar. These two men now ruled everything at the court of the pretender, and excited the greatest dissatisfaction by their arrogant and selfish conduct; and to make matters still worse, James quarrelled with his wife, the princess Clementina Sobieski. She complained of the insolence with which she was treated by Inverness and his wife, a proud, vain woman; and James, with the weakness of his race for favourites, would listen to no complaints against them. Clementina, by the advice of Alberoni, who was now her adviser, quitted the palace, and retired to the Convent of St. Cecilia, at Rome. The complaints of the princess excited the resentment of the emperor and the king of Spain against the pretender. The emperor was related to Sobieski, and the queen of Spain resented in the treatment of the nominal queen of England the injury done to one of her own rank and sex. This was a fatal state of affairs for James, for it was from these two royal houses that he had expected his support against that of Hanover. He endeavoured to mystify his English partisans on the subject, but in vain, for Lockhart of Carnwath, one of his stanchest and most penetrating adherents, plainly told him by letter that his conduct to the queen excited the utmost indignation amongst the English Jacobites, and warned him solemnly to remodel his behaviour towards her; that they held the queen in the highest estimation, and that nothing would induce them to think otherwise.

Two new allies which James acquired at this time did him little service. These were lord North and the duke of Wharton. They went over to the continent, and not only openly avowed themselves as friends of the pretender, but renounced protestantism and embraced popery. Lord North, however, found himself so little trusted at the pretender's court, notwithstanding his apostasy, that he went to Spain, entered its service, and there continued till his death, in 1734. Wharton also arrived at Madrid in April of the present year. Wharton had been very active in the pretender's service before changing his religion, and now he was sent as ambassador to Spain, to vindicate the conduct of .lames towards his wife, and to assist Ormonde in urging on an expedition for England. There was not much to boast of, however, in the acquisition of such a partisan as Wharton. He was a confirmed drunkard, seldom had his pipe out of his mouth, and was so great a braggart and talker, that there was not much safety in intrusting him with secrets of importance. He intruded himself with singular lack of delicacy on Mr. Keene, the British consul at Madrid, boasting that he was the pretender's prime minister, and that neither Sir Robert Walpole nor king George should have six months' ease so long as he had the honour of holding that employment. An order was delivered to Wharton, under the privy seal of England, commanding him, on his allegiance, to return forthwith on pain of outlawry in case of disobedience, but he treated the order with contempt.

At Madrid Wharton fell in with a congenial spirit. This was Ripperda, the renegade Dutchman, now created a duke and made prime minister of Spain. He had lately returned from a mission to Vienna, and was as full of foolish boastings as Wharton himself. He told the officers of the garrison at Barcelona on landing, that the emperor would bring one hundred and fifty thousand men into the field; that prince Eugene had engaged for as many more within six mouths of the commencement of a war; that in that case France would be pillaged on all sides, the king of Prussia, whom he was pleased to call the grand grenadier, would be chased from his country in a single campaign, and king George out of both Hanover by the emperor, and Great Britain by the pretender; that so long as he was in authority there should never be peace betwixt France and Spain. Yet to Mr. Stanhope he declared, that though he had talked both in Vienna and Spain in favour of the pretender, he was, nevertheless, as sincerely attached to the interests of his Britannic majesty as one of his own subjects; that he would prove that on the first opportunity, and that he only talked as he did to please their catholic majesties, and avoid being suspected for a traitor, and falling into the hands of the inquisition, which he knew kept a sharp eye on him as a recent convert.

Stanhope, of course, did not credit a single word of this prating gasconade, but informed his government that Spain was making active preparations for war; that the fortifications of Cadiz were being increased, artillery, tents, and magazines were preparing, and that the squadron was under orders to put to sea.

The folly of Ripperda, however, had ruined his credit with his own sovereigns and the nation even more than with foreign powers. His swaggering and inflated language, in which he imagined that he was enacting Alberoni, had destroyed all faith in him. At one of his levées he boasted that he had six very good friends, God, the Holy Virgin, the emperor and empress, the king and queen of Spain. It was well that he omitted the people, for they detested him. His fellow ministers and every class of the community despised him. But his final blow came from his own false representations to each other of the preparations for war made by Austria and Spain. Count Konigseck was most indignant when he discovered the miserable resources of the Spanish monarchy in comparison of the pompous descriptions made of them by Ripperda at Vienna, and the Spanish court was equally disappointed by a discovery of the real military status of Austria. He was suddenly and ignominiously dismissed on the 14th of May, and he had the meanness on his fall to seek refuge in the house of the British minister, and there consented to reveal the secrets of the state which he had sworn to preserve, and which to that moment he had