Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/97

 III SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES II. In the register of the House of Novices of the Jesuits at Rome there is the following entry : Jacobus de la Cloche ingressus 11 Aprilis 1668. From another list, which is signed by the novice himself, we learn that he came from the island of Jersey, and was a subject of the King of England ; that his age was about twenty-four ; and that he presented himself for admission in the dress of an ecclesiastic, with scarcely any luggage but the clothes he wore. This youth, whose name occurs no more in the books of the Order, and has never yet been pronounced by history, was the eldest of the sons of Charles the Second, the elder brother of Monmouth, and destined to be For a moment his rival in the fanciful schemes of his father. So well was the secret of his birth preserved that throughout the long intrigue to save the Protestant succession, and to supplant the Duke of York by the son of Lucy Walters, no man ever discovered that there was another who, by his age and by his mother's rank, had a better claim than the popular favourite, and who had voluntarily renounced the dazzling fortunes which were once within his grasp. The obscurity which he preferred has endured for nearly two hundred years, and even now is not entirely dispelled ; but the facts which I have to relate add a new and interesting episode to the chequered history of the Stuarts, and clear up whatever remained uncertain as to the attachment of Charles II. to the Catholic Church.

This attachment, which excited so keenly the curiosity of the world, and influenced so many of the actions of his 85