Note 212 — Vol. I.—24.

His Royal Highness the Cardinal de York, or as he was sometimes called, “Your Majesty,” reposes in the subterraneous church of St. Peter, under a plain sarcophagus, which bears the name of Hen. IX. No one will dispute the title of a few handfuls of dust, but it is worth observing that something very similar reappears on the monument in St. Peter’s itself. This is consistent in a Roman: legitimacy, like the priesthood, is indelible, and cannot be rubbed out by misfortune or wrong. The sketch in Forsyth is interesting and delicate, though rather Jacobite and Scotch. I met many persons who retained recollections of him at Rome, but none of these recollections are worth noticing. He seems to have rendered himself more remarkable by petty peculiarities, than any great quality of heart or head. He was supposed to be the quickest driver for a cardinal of the whole college, and sometimes came in from Frascati, (his bishopric and habitual residence,) a distance of about fourteen miles, in an hour and a quarter. This was thought in the first instance marvellous, and in the next indecorous. The only honours he retained were his titles great and little, and the privilege of mounting the Vatican in a sedan-chair.

[213] New Monthly Magazine.