The lively interest still felt in the exiled Stuarts is
illustrated anew by a handsome Volume in which Major F. J. A. Skeet describes the Stuart Papers, Pictures, dc., in the collection of Miss Maria Widdrington (Leeds: John Whitehead and Son). The papers would appear to have been abstracted from the Cardinal York's archives in Rome after his death by a Scottish adventurer named Robert Watson, and given to the husband of Lady Charlotte Bury, notorious for her libellous memoirs
of Queen Caroline. The editor has taken great pains with his work, even printing in full an untranslated cipher letter which he attributes to Bolingbroke, but the historical value of the documents, it must be confessed, is somewhat exiguous. They supplement in some details the Jacobite papers in the Royal collection which are gradually being published. Most amusing, perhaps, is a letter from Louisa, Countess of Albany, the widow of the Young Pretender, dated. from Florence in 1.816. She tells her correspondent that Lord Byron will not come to Florence because there are too many Englishwomen there who "avoid him, it is said, because of his immorality."
Previous page
