Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/375

Mary of Modena too, such as the restoration of the forfeited charter of the city of London, her voice was raised in favour of a conciliatory policy (Klopp, iv. 165). On the other hand, she can have been no stranger to the transfer from Cardinal Howard to Cardinal d'Este of the protectorship of English catholics, and the consequent irritation of the powerful conservative section of the bodv (Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd ser. iv. 313-15).

On 19 Jan. 1688 a public thanksgiving had been celebrated for the queen's condition, but according to Clarendon amidst general coldness (Diary, ii. 156; cf. Campana di Cavelli, ii. 165). Her serious indisposition in May, due to the false news of her brother's death (ib. p. 182), caused some anxiety (ib. pp. 165, 192). After a temporary subsidence (Klopp, iv. 39), the popular belief that her pregnancy was feigned grew more obstinate (cf. Burnet's discreditable account, Own Time, iii. 245 seqq., which was refuted by Swift, ib. p. 257 n.; cf. Clarke, Life of James II, ii. 192; Scott, Works of Dryden, ed. Saintsbury, x. 289). Unfortunately the arrangements connected with the birth itself were inpart such as to strengthen suspicion.

The Prince of Wales, James Francis Edward Stuart [q. vj, was born on the morning of 10 June (O.S.) at St. James's Palace, whither the gueen had leisurely betaken herself from Whitehall on the previous evening. Of the fact there can be no question. The news, celebrated by official rejoicings at home and abroad, and by the pens of loyal poets great and small, was coldly received by the public. Burnet not only touches sceptically on the rapidity of the queen's recovery—she first reappeared in public on 5 July (Campana di Cavelli, ii. 239)— but suggests that the illness of the infant prince at Richmond in August was likewise a figment (see, however, ib. ii. 246 seqq.; Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser. iv. 119; Clarke, Life of James II, ii. 161-2). On their return to London from Windsor at the end of September, the king and queen found doubts of the genuineness of the birth generally rampant; and the attitude of the Princess Anne seems to have convinced the queen of the necessity of the proceedings taken by the king to clear up the subject (Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 198; Clarke, Life of James II, ii. 197; Dalrymple, who omits the correspondence of the Princess of Orange and Mary Beatrice, which furnishes strong internal evidence of the queen's veracity; see Ellis, Original Letters, 1st ser. iii. 348 n.; Clarendon Correspondence, ii. 190 n.; Miss Strickland, x. 3 seqq.)

Meanwhile the dangers of the situation were thickening. Early in November the queen implored the pope to protect the Prince of Wales (Campana di Cavelli, ii. 319); ten days later the nuncio reports that she had given her husband all the money in her hands to aid him in his defence (ib. p. 328). In a postscript to a letter in which she informed her uncle that Innocent XI had consented to James II acting as mediator in his differences with France, she stated that now their own affairs had overwhelmed them, the king had gone to Salisbury, the Prince of Wales had been sent to Portsmouth (ib.) At first there had been some thought of her following the infant thither (ib. p. 291; Klopp, iv. 176), but she was left alone in a ' mutinous and discontented city' (Clarke, Life of James II, ii. 220-1); and calumny was so busy against her, absurdly charging her even with maltreatment of the Princess Anne, that some loyal protestants as well as catholics were prepared: to risk their lives to protect her. One morning she found, thrust into one of her gloves, a pamphlet on the spuriousness of the Prince of 'Wales (Macaulay, ii. 517; Campana di Cavelli, ii. 341).

The most fatal act of Mary Beatrice's life was her flight to France with the Prince of Wales, which drew after it that of the king. According to Burnet, who, by the way, entirely misstates the facts of the flight, she was suddenly determined to it by the fear that she would be impeached by the next parliament. On the contrary, it is specially attested that she preserved her presence of mind (ib. ii. 368-369). According to James himself (Clarke, ii. 245), the project was so far from being advised or pressed by her, that she only reluctantly assented to it. It is not impossible that a knowledge of the design of seizing the prince imputed to the managers of the revolution might have suggested the desperate remedy of his removal by his mother (Clarendon Correspondence,)!. 336). But this could have been equally well accomplished, and an irrevocable political blunder avoided, had the queen fled to Flanders instead of to France (Campana di Cavelli, ii. 424-5). It is therefore sufficiently clear, and was in fact confessed to Rizzini by James II at Gravesend, that both he and the queen fell with their eyes open into the net spread before them by Louis XIV, whose purpose it was to furnish James with a legitimate subterfuge against being compelled by English opinion to join the League of Augsburg (ib. ii. 443), as well as to assure his own position in the event of the success of the revolution, by constituting himself the actual protector of the legitimate claimants to the English throne. The flight had been