His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, but sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but upon the whole, he was a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly, had he not been a coward he would never have lost his throne.There were plenty of lovers of tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would have stood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in his attempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would eventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry against him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading the country, he forsook his friends, of whom he had a host, but for whom he cared little - left his throne, for which he cared a great deal - and Popery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and escaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repaired to Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papists whom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentable condition, at the time when by showing a little courage he might have enabled them to conquer.This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed his heart to England - his right arm to Scotland -and his bowels to Ireland.What the English and Scotch said to their respective bequests is not known, but it is certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been a great-grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of the bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and having been brought up at "Paris and Salamanca,"expressed his indignation in the following strain:- "Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del olor de tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!"His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, was carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in the strictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did not prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent any one?) a worthless and profligate scoundrel; there are some doubts as to the reality of his being a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grand proof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character.It was said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said of him that he could write well, the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree.The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar.
He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with panic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselves as they best could.He died a pensioner of the Pope.
The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in later years has been said and written, was a worthless ignorant youth, and a profligate and illiterate old man.When young, the best that can be said of him is, that he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong time and place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricable difficulties.When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friend and foe.His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she did not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible - he had made it so vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy, but the coarsest grooms.Doctor King, the warmest and almost last adherent of his family, said, that there was not a vice or crime of which he was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when in their power.In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands of Scotland, which had long been a focus of rebellion.He was attended by certain clans of the Highlands, desperadoes used to free-bootery from their infancy, and, consequently, to the use of arms, and possessed of a certain species of discipline; with these he defeated at Prestonpans a body of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and artizans, levied about a month before, without discipline or confidence in each other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army; he subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, and penetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learning that regular forces which had been hastily recalled from Flanders were coming against him, with the Duke of Cumberland at their head; he was pursued, and his rearguard overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of the duke at Clifton, from which place the rebels retreated in great confusion across the Eden into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highland reels and strathspeys on the bank of the river, for joy at their escape, whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, were perishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to follow them;they themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds, arm in arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they left the poor paramours to shift for themselves, nor did any of these canny people after passing the stream dash back to rescue a single female life, - no, they were too well employed upon the bank in dancing strathspeys to the tune of "Charlie o'er the water." It was, indeed, Charlie o'er the water, and canny Highlanders o'er the water, but where were the poor prostitutes meantime? IN THE WATER.
