Note 1310 — Chapter XXXIX

Of the unlimited confidence which these two favourites enjoyed with Charles the Stuart Papers afford abundant proofs. Sheridan in fact directed every thing when Charles was in Scotland, and it was solely owing to his aversion to a hill campaign,—the fatigue of which he said he could not endure,—that Lord George Murray could not prevail upon Charles to desist from engaging the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden; yet so great was the ascendency which Sir Thomas had acquired over the mind of Charles, that the ruinous result which ensued did not in the least weaken it. Edgar announced Sheridan’s death to Charles in a letter dated 2d December, 1746, and sent along with it all the papers found in Sir Thomas’s repositories having relation to the Prince or his affairs, among which was a sketch of a dying speech which Sir Thomas had prepared in case he had been taken and executed. Dr. King insinuates, from the ignorance of Charles, that Sheridan was in the pay of the English government; but it would be doing injustice to the memory of the favourite to believe him guilty of such baseness without direct proofs of his criminality. The Doctor’s words are: “His (Charles’s) governor was a protestant, and I am apt to believe purposely neglected his education, of which, it is surmised, he made a merit to the English ministry; for he was always supposed to be their pensioner. The Chevalier Ramsay, the author of Cyrus, was Prince Charles’s preceptor for about a year; but a court faction removed him.” The illiterateness of Charles is very perceptible in his ignorance of the orthography of French and English. Both in style and orthography they contrast most unfavourably with those of his father, whose epistolary correspondence cannot fail to give the reader a favourable idea of his literary acquirements. Though James appears to have had a good opinion of Sir Thomas, yet after his death he complained bitterly to Charles, in a long and very interesting letter, (that of 3d February, 1747, in the Stuart Papers,) of the conduct of the favourite, and in general of the other persons who obtained the Prince’s confidence. It was James’s deliberate conviction that their object was to corrupt Charles, by withdrawing him from his “duty to God in the first place, and to him in the second!” The sequel of Charles’s unfortunate history seems to confirm this opinion. A most unfavourable sketch of the character of Kelly, the new favourite, is given by Father Myles Macdonell, his own relative, for which see the Father’s letter to the Chevalier de St. George, 4th May, 1747, in the Stuart Papers.