Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/197

 12 s. i. MAE. 4, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Andrew Lang, in ' Pickle the Spy,' mentions that he had access to the papers of the late Count d'Albanie, and he leaves them with the comment : " The time has not come to tell the whole strange tale of ' John Stolberg Sobieski Stuart ' and Charles Edward Stuart/ if, indeed, that tale can ever be told." In his 'Prince Charles Edward' (1903) he is more definite. He calls their story a " legend," and suggests that they were " the victims of megalomania." He re- cognizes a strange kind of sincerity, but thinks the phenomena resemble those of hysterical illusion. Even then he is unable to account for two brothers being similarly affected. In another passage he attributes their pretensions to " an over-indulged habit of romantic day-dreaming which acquired the force of actual hallucination." They spent many years in Austria, where Charles Edward Stuart's son, Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart (born 1824, died 1882), rose to be a colonel of Austrian cavalry. If they were really the sons of a lieutenant, and the grandsons of an admiral, in the British navy, it is hard to understand why they expatriated themselves for nearly twenty years in Austria ; but this is only another of the mysteries of this case. Mr. W. Townend, in * Descendants of the Stuarts ' (second edition), takes the view that they were the descendants of Prince Charles Edward's mistress, the Lanarkshire lady Clementina Walkinshaw. But after she fled from the Prince, owing to his ill- treatment, she made in 1767 an affidavit that no marriage had ever taken place, and the Sobieski-Stuarts claimed to be legitimate heirs of the Stuarts. A slashing attack on the Sobieski-Stuarts, apropos of their book in The Quarterly Review (vol. Ixxi. p. 57) from the pen of Prof. Skene. Mr. Archibald Forbes published an article on the brothers, under the title of ' Real or Bogus Stuarts,' in The New Review, 1893, vol. i. p. 72, in which he gave some interesting details of their later life as habitues of the British Museum Reading-Room in the sixties and seventies.
 * Tales of the Century' (1847), appeared

If one may hazard a guess, the claims of the brothers and the documents they possessed owed something to that busy adventurer Dr. Robert Watson, who hanged himself in London in 1838. He had been private secretary to Lord George Gordon, and afterwards, as a member of the London Corresponding Society, was forced to fly the country. He was appointed by Napoleon Principal of the revived Scots College in

Paris. In 1813 in Rome he secured pos- session of three cartloads of papers which had been left neglected since the death of their owner, Henry, Cardinal of York, brother of the " Young Pretender." Watson's dealings with this material are described in The Quarterly Review, vol. Ixxix. p. 167, and in the introduction to vol. i. of the Stuart Papers (Hist. MSS. ) ; and it is clear that he had handed over some of the papers to various persons as specimens before the Prince Regent obtained possession of the bulk. Mr. F. H. Groome, in the ' D.N.B.' article on the Sobieski-Stuarts, says that they are known to have had dealings with Watson ; and it is safe to assume that he is the " Dr. Beaton " who appears as the authority for the romantic narrative which they put forward in their ' Tales of the Cen- tury.' Mr. Groome also wrote on their case, under the title of ' Monarchs in Partibus,' in The Bookman, September, 1892; and there is an article by Mr. Henry Jenner (which I have not seen) in The Genealogical Magazine, May, 1897. The earliest reference to their claims appeared in The Catholic Magazine in 1843. Other references will be found in Chambers' s Journal, May, 1844 ; Dr. Doran's ' London in Jacobite Times,' vol. ii. p. 390 ; Vernon Lee's * Countess of Albany ' ; and ' Under Fourteen Flags,' vol. ii. p. 146. 'The Legitimist Kalendar ' gives the descendants of Charles Edward Stuart, the younger of the brothers. R. S. PENGELLY.

12 Poynder's Road, Clapham Park, 8.W.

1 am grateful for the numerous references to your pages, 1877 passim. None of them touches the sale of the Count d'Albanie's effects, of which I quoted The Times adver- tisement. Can any one tell me how the Stuart relics at this sale were regarded- genuine or speculative ?

HAEOLD S. ROGERS.

DAVID Ross (12 S. i. 127). I believe that the marriage of David Ross and Fanny Murray took place between June, 1756, and March, 1759, but I do not know the exact date. The most circumstantial account will be found in ' Records of my Life,' by John Taylor, i. 362-6. Perhaps the Journals of the House of Lords, April 10, 1771 (when his appeal for the reversion of the decision of the Lords of Session with regard to his father's will was decided), may disclose his father's name. Or it may be found in the Records of the Court of Session in Scotland, Dec. 23, 1769, and Jan. 27, 1770.

HORACE BLEACKLEY.